Banaue, Ifugao,
Philippines
18 May 2009
Our weekend assignment for May 16 and 17 was to attend a regional meeting in Santiago, Isabella and provide training. Santiago is over five hours from Tarlac and required almost a full day’s drive over a couple mountain ranges and because the Banaue Rice Terraces are nearby we decided to drive up a couple days early and visit this site.
We left and drove over known roads to San Jose, Nueva Ecija then new territory into the mountains. Roads were fair but heavy trucks were using and abusing it in numbers. We saw beautiful mountain country with valleys that reminded us of home (except all the tropical plants, farms, etc., etc.) then back into a big open valley with mountains out in the distance. We did have our lunch at new McDs in Solano, Nueve Vizcaya which was a good time for our break. We drove from there into the mountains from Bababag to Banaue. Emong the serious storm that came through last week caused uncountable landslides on the roads with large rocks, trees and dirt in our way. Some had been cleared, some were one lane passage, some were being worked on causing some delay.
Arriving at the Banaue Hotel we were welcomed and given a room that from the balcony you could look almost straight down into the valley and see villages, rice terraces, mountains, and more mountains.
The Banaue Rice Terraces are over 2,000 years old and cover over 400 square Kilometres of these mountains. It is so impressive to think of what they were able to and are still doing. They have to make repairs in the walls after storms like Emong.
Rain is regular and so everything is very green. We took a day tour and rode in a Jeepney out into the mountains to visit the village of a mountain tribe. We walked down steps into the village over 1,000 vertical feet to be among them and saw a house of one of their leaders, inside and out with all of its uniqueness. They were reroofing his neighbour’s house so we took some pictures.
Our guide asked us how old we were when we hiked out and we told him and he was impressed with our strength and stamina. We were out in 30 minutes where many of his groups take over an hour. We did find an ice cold coke and it was refreshing.
Our guide asked us how old we were when we hiked out and we told him and he was impressed with our strength and stamina. We were out in 30 minutes where many of his groups take over an hour. We did find an ice cold coke and it was refreshing.
At the main overlook there are hundreds of terraces in view and it is an impressive picture as you can see above. If you have not seen it in person it is worth the trip to see this world wonder.
Elder NB & Sister MB
3 comments:
Thank you so much for telling us your blog address. Wonderful work you are doing with entrepreneur and employment training! There is such a need for that here in Albania, too.
Glad to hear that you can get a Coke when you need one! It might make serving a foreign mission more desirable to someone I live with!!
I had a lot of catching up to do-this is a fascinating blog! And thanks for the extra pictures. It's such a beautiful country. Those rice terraces are quite amazing to ponder the labor involved.
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