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Ill try to get photos up sometime soon but my camera broke. FUCK@! Some salt got into the card slot (some waterproofing) so i hope the card didn't get corrupted.
The boat to Camiguin Island was a slow 4 hours between islands. Camiguin from the sea looked like a dimpled, unmistakably volcanic cone but up close it was actually a collection of cones. Im not sure if the island is still active but there was a major eruption in 1951 that killed 600 people and earthquakes are still common. I arrived and jumped into the hustle, being told by a tricycle driver that P600 per night was the cheapest i would be able to find... but he could find me a nice cottage at a resort for P1500... I had him drive my into Mambajao, the main city on the island with 30,000 people living in it.
I found a hotel right in the center of town for P300 per night with a really nice family running the show. Just like usual my sense of time was off by a day or two so I was frantic trying to set up a dive for the morning, calling all the dive resorts in my Lonely Planet. Diving here is a bit pricey, $35US, so I opted for just one dive. Off the coast there is a shelf where thresher sharks and manta rays go to sleep but I was in the wrong season so we would be going to Old Volcano.
The dive had pretty good visibility, 20m+, and was along a boulder strewn slope. The coral was pristine; soft corals I'd never seen before flowing with the currents like trees in the wind. Schools of color with lots of lionfish hiding very visibly. A meter long banded sea snake, one of the most poisonous snakes on earth with venom 10x more powerful than a rattlesnake, drifted down from the surface and picked his way through cracks looking for a meal before returning for air. The coup-de-gras was a bold cuttlefish who stayed put for probably 10 minutes while I stared at it. A master chameleon, the cuttlefish can change color AND texture. He meandered from a dark gray rock to white pebbly sand to shade, skin rippling from smooth to lumpy and dark to speckled, mimicking the bottom with near precision .
The hotel owners agreed to rent me their motorbike for P350 for the day so after staying up until sunrise watching the USA get stomped out by stupid Ghana, I took the bike around to some spots on the island: a cemetery submerged a hundred years ago by an earthquake and every kind of natural spring i could find; soda, cold, and hot.
Travel Day: Did the jeepney, ferry, van, taxi, plane, taxi, bus, tricycle hop and went from Mindanao in the south to deep in the mountains in the north in a mere 26 hours. Eric was all set to meet me at the airport in Manila but a downpour grounded all flights in the area. We circled for 30 minutes waiting for the rain to subside and eventually were diverted to Clark, an hour and a half north... but just as we flew over Manila air traffic started allowing flights again and we landed a mere 50 minutes late.
-More fun Manila airport, NAIA, facts- This massive infrastructure project towards which i have expressed much hatred is even worse than I knew before. It was built to replace the other two airports in Manila but some International Pilots Union refuses to fly there because the runways are too close together to safely land 747's... so the old Int. Terminal is still in use. And the runways flood in moderate rain... Why plan when you can squander public funds?
Anyways, we bussed overnight on the arctic express to Banaue. They like to keep the AC at full blast all night so I was lucky to have my pants, sweater, and sleeping bag with me. As the sun came up an entirely new Philippines emerged. Lush, razor-backed mountains slashed their way upwards from deep cut canyons. The air was cool(er) but the sun still beat down. We put down and repacked our bags at a hotel where we had some breakfast and got our first real glimpse of the rice terraces. Although I'd never heard of them before, the rice terraces around Banaue are World Heritage Sites. These monumental feats of engineering were built by the Ifugao people up to 2000 years ago. Whole valleys are stepped with rock, hauled up from along the rivers long ago. Harshly steep mountains transformed into fertile arrable land. We headed to Batad, deeper into the mountains. Our tricycle struggled over the rocky narrow road, closed just the day before by rockslides. We once had to get out and push just to get the trike over some obstructionist boulders. He let us off at the bottom of a jeep track and we hiked over a ridge into Batad.
Batad is a wonder to behold. The village sits center stage in a colossal amphitheater ringed with rice terraces rising hundreds of feet up onto the mountain sides. We found a hotel with epic views from both balcony and room. It was the beginning of harvest season and green and yellowing rice shifted imperceptibly in the breeze. The owners of the hotel were in the process of harvesting their own plots and had bundles of rice drying in the courtyard. Eric and I went down to inquire as to how rice was produced in the area. The son-in-law, a tour guide, unloaded upon us more information about rice than we could hope to retain. We also helped out a little with the milling and had some good old smash time with a heavy ebony wood pestle and big stone mortar. Ill put some stuff about rice and the Ifugao in another blog to keep this one under 3000 words.
After some serious chillin we decided to get out onto the terraces. We managed to find a trail down the hillside (easier said than done since most trails led next to or under peoples houses) and found ourselves out on the terraces. The walls are built with neatly stacked rocks beveled 5-20 ft high. Larger stones jut out from the wall at certain intervals creating a ladders for easy up and down mobility. Channels ran down the hill acting as irrigation to drain the paddies or water them during dry spells. Picking a path through the terraces was a little easier (if not way sketchier) than our previous path. The stone tops of each wall made for an easy road but the drop to one side kept us on our toes. Down into the bowl and up the other side, we strove to reach the top terrace for the view but instead we found a concrete pad, smooth and flat. It led away from Batad so we naturally headed that way. The trail turned suspiciously into a concrete irrigation channel but we kept walking along the 6-10" wide pathway. It skirted the cliffside soon becoming scary at the best of times with the odd 100ft drop here and there. Around another bend we came to another smaller valley riddled with terraces. We passed a little old lady, teeth long gone from a lifetime of chewing beetlenut. She smiled and waved as we hugged up against the cliff to let her pass. We turned around after learning we were on the road to Cambulo (next town over). On the way back we came to the old lady again, this time she was clearing landslide debris out of the channel. She was looking to bring water to her thirsty rice down the hill. We got down in the mud with her and cleaned out all the rocks and branches along the way until she reached her fields. She spoke some rapid Tuwali at us sprinkled with pure golden laughter. We waved goodbye after a picture (please let my card be ok!) and headed down several hundred more stairs to a big waterfall where we spent a few hours just laying on warm rocks.
The Lure of the World Cup: The next day we decided to head out of the valley and back to Banaue, the long way. According to the book, it was an 8 hour hike through terraces and forest and 2 villages. They strongly recommended a guide but since we had found the road to Cambulo by ourselves and the trail simply went up valley, easy, we struck out on our own.
The stairs into and out of Batad seemed somewhat harder with 30lbs packs on, but we were feeling strong from the days before. We headed back to the irrigation channel/trail and worked our way around the bend, across a creek and followed the trail up into the hills. We came upon a house in the woods and asked them the way, they pointed over to some stairs. Oh mercy they were stairs. Several hundred feet later and a liter of sweat lost, we made it to the highest point we had yet been to. A road? At the top of the stairs waited for us a jeep, ready to head back to Banaue. Apparently there is now a road to Cambulo but no books or hotels in town tell you this. For P60 i was pretty ready to head back. Really ready. Eric pointed out that it was only 9am and we would be cutting the adventure short (and you can't do that) so we took off down the road. We finally got above Cambulo, a mere hour longer than the book had described. Shortcuts are good. We kept going, pretending we knew where we were, and ended up at another village close to Cambulo and were given directions by a few people. They said we should be in Pula in 1 hour (2 hours less than the guidebook said). I knew it was a shortcut! We followed the trail (a trail) until we were clinging and scrambling up the terraces. Someone across the canyon finally whistled at us to turn around and we crossed a bridge to the real trail. From the base of the bridge we scrambled for 30 minutues up more stairs, high onto the hillside above. This trail continued for a grueling 3 hours up and up the valley. When we thought we had finally reached our halfway point we were greeted with more stairs. Many, many more stairs. Finally we made it to our "halfway point", the village of Pula. We ate lunch in town consisting of rice and delicious but possibly old pork. Thunder threatened rain. It was 1:30 when we left Pula so we had a good 5 hours of light remaining and an "easy 4 hour walk" ahead. We rose out of rice terrace country and into the cloud forest. Despite logging and slash and burn agriculture, tall trees still stood in the forest dripping with moss. Proud tree ferns poked through the underbrush while native pines stuck out darkly above the canopy. We trudged forward up a constant but gentle slope for 3 hours before the path finally started to descend. As darkness began to fall, we made it back to the road, just in time for violent tumbling thunder and torrential rain. We sat under a shelter at the end of the trail praying for a jeep or tricycle to pass by but none came. According to our map (Lonely Planet edition), the trail head was only a mile from a Banaue lookout. We tried for the lookout, praying for some street traffic but my exhausted body couldn't take any more and we sat under a shelter and called our hotel to send us a tricycle. Its a good thing it came because the map was a little not to scale and we were a good 5-7 miles from town. We made it back to the hotel 12 hours after setting out.
It became clear that night that, Yes, the pork we had for lunch was very old and consequently poisonous. A sleepless feverish night interupted with violent puking was my only rest from the long walk. When morning came I was pretty sure I could make the 630 bus until I tried to sit up. Both afflicted, we stayed for a whole day in our beds trying to shake the fever and caught the bus the next day.
After a long day on the bus and a snap decision to go to the beach, we made it to San Fernando. We called 5 resorts and took local advice on 2 and finally found one that was playing the world cup. We stayed up until 430am watching football and had a short sleep before heading up the road to the local surf spot. Flat. Dead flat. We started walking up the road to San Juan but changed our minds half way and jumped on a bus to Angeles, our original destination from Banaue.
The town of Angeles is located near Clark Airport, a former US military base. Leftovers from that era are evident everywhere. There are an estimated 10,000 prostitutes in the city (sometimes 9000 prostitutes just isn't enough), a number greatly reduced from its glory days when 100,000 - 200,000 women sold themselves to our soldiers and sailors.
Angeles is a small city but full of tourists (mostly sex tourists) and bars playing the World Cup are scattered. To reach these bars you must pass the gauntlet of skeez: a road choked with prostitutes who reach for and call at you, the visual bombardment is punishing. They claw at your arms, pulling you with full weight towards their lair, or grab at your nutsack with the same intent. You pretty much have to run through busting spin moves and karate chops at anyone who looks at you. We made it to the game in a bar crowded with orange Netherlands fans and back out as if it were only a dream, a slight interruption in the sleep I had before and after the game.
Now we are off to the airport and a few days in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia before heading to Bali for surfin and surfin. Surfin!
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