Travelogue - Sagada

A signal no. 2 typhoon didn't stop me and my friend from visiting Sagada last year. There were several landslides, and road accidents along the way that made the usual 12-hour ride from Manila to Bontoc, a grueling 15 hours. Imagine sitting in a very cramped bus with not enough leg room (filled with bags, containers, boxes of vegetables, and a few noisy chickens) for 15 hours. My body was aching all over, and my butt sore, and if not for the decadent buko pie we bought somewhere in Nueva Vizcaya, I would've gone straight to a mental institution. We arrived in Bontoc around 12 in the afternoon, exasperated, and terriblly hungry (we only had buko pie all throughout the insanely long bus ride). It took another hour of incredibly bumpy jeepney ride from Bontoc to Sagada, but it's all worth the pain (in the butt) when you get to see the mountains covered in lush green trees, and some, slightly covered in mid-afternoon fog. There were a number of rivers we passed by, all seemed clean and pristine. I strained my neck from gazing at the wonderful scenery for the whole hour.

Sagada is a very small village where everyone seems to know one another. The villagers talk in English (that could put those who work at call centers to shame) as if it's their native tongue. The air is a bit damp and cool against the skin, but except for a few tricycle fumes, the air seemed perfectly fresh. After getting a room at St. Joseph's, we headed to Yoghurt House, a small but famous restaurant in the area. We had pancit, club sandwich, and spicy chicken curry in huge servings, and for dessert we tried their famous home-made yoghurt which is too sour for my taste. We were tired from the trip and couldn't do much of sightseeing, so after visiting the famous Episcopalian church, we called it a day.

The weather was perfect the next day, we got to see the weaving place, hanging coffins, and the waterfall. It was also their market day, so cheap but delicious street-food sold in styro packs were plentiful. For dinner, we ate at Log Cabin, another famous buffet restaurant in the area. I spoke with the French chef who fell in love with Sagada and decided to live there, he was nice and very welcoming. I asked him the recipe for his Couscous and Eggplant Lasagna, and he was more than willing to share his recipes. We went to a bar after that to unwind and mingle with the locals and other tourists who seemed to know one another (frequent visitor perhaps?).

The next day was spent on cave tours which proved to be very difficult. I strained every muscle in my body, but I was lucky to get out unscathed. It was my most memorable part of the trip. We got invited to go camping with a few other tourists after that, so we spent the night in a tent somewhere in the mountains..

My legs and arms hurt like hell the following day that we had to cancel the hiking tour. We spent the rest of the day walking and looking at nearby places before we took the bus going to Baguio. After the exhilirating Sagada trip, Baguio seemed to be a bore that we decided to skip the city, and took the first available bus going to Manila..