President Arroyo flew from The Mansion in eastern Baguio City to peaceful Sagada in Mountain Province two days ago. This morning, Dominic and I left Tuding, bordering Baguio City, to ride a GL/Lizardo bus on Halsema Highway from Baguio City to Sagada. The journey lasts six hours (including two rest stops), as we don’t have a helicopter.  Our old bus suffered the separation of the retread on an inner rear tire, so the bus was sidelined for a while as the driver and conductor removed the outer wheel and tire, then the tangled-up, separated tread, then the tire that it had come off, then put on the spare tire.

We got back onto Halsema Highway to resume our journey.  After a while, without explanation, the bus swerved right into an old, disused highway rest stop.  The driver and conductor disembarked, then a passenger did, then another stepped down, so I followed.  I asked the driver and conductor why we had stopped.  What I gleaned from broken English was that we were awaiting delivery of a replacement spare tire.  That’s sensible, I thought.  Soon enough, a pickup truck swung off the highway behind us and a ‘fresh’ spare tire was loaded into its cradle.

The GL / Lizardo bus that departed Baguio City’s Dangwa terminal after us passed us while we were stationary.  And it had plentiful empty seats, unlike our ancient bus which was overloaded, with passengers perched on jumpseats in the aisle and two jump seats within head-banging distance of the windshield.  I would have liked to hop onto the other bus, as I had been seated on a slippery, uncomfortable front seat, with a backpack between my legs and another atop them, while Dominic sat on one of the dilapidated jump seats beside the driver.  So it’s unfortunate that the other driver didn’t stop so that we could evenly distribute the passenger load between the two buses.

Around 4:45 we arrived in ‘downtown Sagada’ after traveling 149 km.  Dominic and I knew that Sagada Home Stay had only one available room, so I had phoned to Traveller’s Inn and George Guest House to find two rooms.  So we walked down the main street to George Guest House to register and get keys to rooms in the new George Guest House Annex, across the street.  I asked for rooms on the top floor, assuming that they’d be further from any noise and offer a better view of Sagada.  Well, the rooms were essentially in the ‘attic.’  At least my irregularly-shaped room was.  I don’t remember Dominic’s room.  His was on the ‘front’ of the building, with a balcony overlooking Echo Valley, so his may’ve been a normally-shaped, rectangular room with headroom.

I wanted to eat dinner in Haddeku’s restaurant, so Dominic agreed to walk uphill to it (then down the stairs).  I ate tuna & vegetables & fried rice, which I ate the last time that we came to Sagada.  After dinner, we had coffee and tea in Bana’s Café, as is customary.  What else can we do in this town?  One can go to Persimoon’s and drink alcohol. But I don’t drink.

I later bought marshmallows and wood skewers then toasted the sugar nuggets over the fire pit outside George Guest House Annex.  Then I retired to my top-floor room to read iBreviary and two essays on my iPod Touch.

On New Year eve, Filipinos fired shotguns, rifles, pistols and fireworks, and they beat gongs and drums.  I read and looked out windows at the town below and wondered what the new year holds for me.