{"id":659,"date":"2008-02-20T12:07:53","date_gmt":"2008-02-20T12:07:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/archives\/2008\/02\/20\/into-the-mountains\/"},"modified":"2008-03-03T12:33:30","modified_gmt":"2008-03-03T12:33:30","slug":"into-the-mountains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/archives\/2008\/02\/20\/into-the-mountains\/","title":{"rendered":"Into the mountains"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From the airport in Manila I took a (very expensive) taxi straight to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.victoryliner.com\/\">Victory Liner<\/a> bus terminal and caught the bus to Baguio.<\/p>\n<p>Baguio&#8217;s an interesting place, once the American summer capital of the Philippines it has pleasant peaceful areas as well as the jeepney-clogged, grimy, polluted areas.  It was only really a stopover on my way further into the mountains though.<br \/>\n<a href=\"\/media\/Philippines\/Baguio\/BoatingLake2_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Philippines\/Baguio\/BoatingLake2_t.jpg\" title=\"The boating lake and provincial capitol.\" alt=\"A lake with various small boats (some shaped like swans), with a building with a spire in the background.\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"\/media\/Philippines\/Baguio\/ParkCycling_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Philippines\/Baguio\/ParkCycling_t.jpg\" title=\"Cycling in Burnham park.\" alt=\"Children cycling on a quiet road in a park.\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I then spent a few days in Sagada, one of the tourist centres of the Cordillera.  It&#8217;s a nice little town, with plenty of hotels, caf&eacute;s and restaurants and you can get a really good cup of local coffee there.  Unfortunately the cost of guides to go and see most of the local sites was beyond my budget, but I did spent a morning sightseeing.  Sagada is famous for coffins, both hanging off cliffs and stacked up in caves, as well as the rice terraces found all around that area.<br \/>\n<a href=\"\/media\/Philippines\/Sagada\/HangingCoffins_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Philippines\/Sagada\/HangingCoffins_t.jpg\" title=\"Hanging coffins in Echo Valley.\" alt=\"Wooden coffins hanging on a cliff face.\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"\/media\/Philippines\/Sagada\/CaveCoffins2_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Philippines\/Sagada\/CaveCoffins2_t.jpg\" title=\"Coffins in one of the caves.\" alt=\"Wooden coffins piled up in a cave.\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"\/media\/Philippines\/Sagada\/Sagada2_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Philippines\/Sagada\/Sagada2_t.jpg\" title=\"Sagada town, hills and cloud.\" alt=\"Houses built on steep hills, below terraced fields.\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Not having had enough of rice terraces yet I made my way up to the village of Batad, via Bontoc.  It&#8217;s the most famous of the terraced areas, and a little difficult to get to.  From Banaue I hired a tricycle, which took me along the terrible road to Batad junction and then struggled up through mud and rain (with me pushing some of the time) to reach the saddle from where I walked down into the village.  The weather was terrible while I was there, almost constant rain and low cloud, but I managed to wander around a bit and visit a nearby waterfall.  I stayed in the only house in Batad village with electricity, owned by Gilbert who runs it as a homestay.  On the evening of the first night we joined his next-door neighbours as they made the local rice wine.<br \/>\n<a href=\"\/media\/Philippines\/Batad\/BusAtPass_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Philippines\/Batad\/BusAtPass_t.jpg\" title=\"The bus stopped at a pass on the road to Banaue.\" alt=\"An old bus stopped outside some shacks on a muddy road.\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"\/media\/Philippines\/Batad\/BatadVillage_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Philippines\/Batad\/BatadVillage_t.jpg\" title=\"Rice terraces and Batad village.\" alt=\"Small houses with thatch or metal roofs among rice terraces in the mountains.\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"\/media\/Philippines\/Batad\/BatadTerraceWalls_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Philippines\/Batad\/BatadTerraceWalls_t.jpg\" title=\"The stone faces of the rice terraces above Batad village.\" alt=\"Stone-faced rice terraces leading up a steep slope.\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"\/media\/Philippines\/Batad\/Waterfall_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Philippines\/Batad\/Waterfall_t.jpg\" title=\"Piled stones and the waterfall near Batad.\" alt=\"Stones piled on top of each other in front of a waterfall.\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"\/media\/Philippines\/Batad\/MakingRiceWine2_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Philippines\/Batad\/MakingRiceWine2_t.jpg\" title=\"The neighbour making rice wine.\" alt=\"A man pours pounded rice from a wicker tray into a bucket lined with palm leaves.\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"\/media\/Philippines\/Batad\/Neighbours_w.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/media\/Philippines\/Batad\/Neighbours_t.jpg\" title=\"The neighbours, Batad.\" alt=\"A woman and young boy in a wooden house.\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the airport in Manila I took a (very expensive) taxi straight to the Victory Liner bus terminal and caught the bus to Baguio. Baguio&#8217;s an interesting place, once the American summer capital of the Philippines it has pleasant peaceful areas as well as the jeepney-clogged, grimy, polluted areas. It was only really a stopover [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,25,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philippines","category-rtw","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caboose.org.uk\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}