Week 74 - Banaue, Cambulo, Batad, Manila, Cebu (Philippines)

Our guesthouse restaurant was manic when we woke, full of people getting ready for one trip or another. We had time for a coffee before our guide turned up to collect us. His name was Johnny and we would be spending the next three days with him. Outside, we bundled in to a tricycle and head off for the starting point of our trek, a couple of kilometres north of the Banaue Viewpoint we’d been to the day before. We made a couple of stops on route including the point where the image for the 1,000 peso bill was taken from. At the start of the trail we left our tricycle and began the 24km walk to Cambulo where we would be spending the night. Other than an Israeli couple who we leap frogged for the first hour or so and a few couples coming the other way, the trail was quiet. We stopped for lunch by a river in a tiny village called Pula before pushing on to Cambulo. Although we’d been told the walk would take 4-5 hour it ended up taking 6 hours and we were the first in for the day (there were 7 of us at our guesthouse in Cambulo and the Israeli couple staying elsewhere), i’m not sure how 4 hours would ever be achievable unless you ran it. 

Rhys in the tricycle at the start of the trek, Banaue.

Newly planted Rhys terraces near Pula.

Our guesthouse was far nicer than we’d expected and after Rhys had had a quick dip in the ice cold river to freshen up, we showered and got the cards out for a few games with our new Dutch friends over dinner and lots of cups of coffee.

Cambulo village.

As we were the only people spending the night in Batad, we had a relaxed morning and waved the others off before packing our bags and eating humongous pancakes. Back on the trail we had a leg burning hour and a half into Batad. We entered the village over a ridge and were rewarded with the ampitheatre of rice terraces stretching out before us. At the moment it is planting season so rather than being a patchwork of green the terraces are a mix of brown - where they are yet to be cleaned and prepared, white - where they have been cleaned and the water reflects the sky, speckled green - where the seedlings have been planted 4 inches apart, and bright green - where the seedlings are clustered in nurseries awaiting planting. 

View of Batad from the ridge as we entered the village.

View of the rice terraces at Batad as we walked in to the village.

It was a good time to be there, we had perfect trekking weather, a little overcast but warm and no rain and as it’s planting time there are people working on the terraces as you pass and the town is busy as the younger generation have returned from the city to help (they have to work in the city to send back money to their families as the rice they grow isn’t enough and they have to buy more). We dropped our bags at a guesthouse in the centre of the village, the only one there, away from all the tourist hotels up on the ridge near the saddle where you enter the village if you come straight from Banaue. After lunch and a rest Johnny took us down the 937 steps leading to a waterfall where Rhys swam again before we climbed back up into the village. Leaving Johnny there we decided we hadn’t quite had enough of stairs for the day and continued up to the ridge to a guesthouse called Ritas with a little restaurant with views out across the terraces. We sat there with coffees and a puppy taking it all in. The rain started and we figured it was time to head back down to our guesthouse before the stairs and the mud walls of the terraces got too slippery, walking around the walls requires a lot of balance at the best of times. We ate at the guesthouse and went to bed.

View of Batad from Ritas, a guesthouse near the saddle.

After a bad nights sleep due to a mix of it being the hardest bed in the world and pretty chilly in the night, we were feeling a little less motivated than we had the day before. Nevertheless we packed up, ate our pancakes and laced up our boots ready to hit the trail again for the final push to Bagaan. It was another 14km, the same as the previous day but after an initially steep climb and lots of sliding about on wet paths from the rain in the night, the track evened out. We wound our way out of the valley passing a few smaller areas of rice terraces before meeting the road where our tricycle was due to collect us. In places the road is just a mud track and the rain had turned it in to slush. We ended up walking all the way in to the village to find the tricycle and just as we climbed in the clouds drew in and it started to really drizzle. A freezing 45 minute journey later with a couple of stops at view points and we were back in Banaue. 

We collected our laundry and walked back to our guesthouse where we’d left our bags, paid for a hot shower and repacked our backpacks. We had about 6 hours to waste so after lunch we sat in our guesthouse, drank coffee, caught up on admin and played cards. At 6:30pm we climbed the stairs out of the town to the bus terminal and boarded the night bus to Manila.

For once, Rhys managed to sleep and we pulled in to the city on time at 4am. We’d been a bit apprehensive about the journey as one of the night buses went off the cliff last week and was still laying there when we came in from Sagada. In response, our bus took a different route and went back to Manila via Solano.

We’d messaged our hostel in Manila to warn them we’d be arriving in the early hours of the morning and after a short taxi ride from the bus terminal we had checked in and were in bed by 5am. After a lay in, Rhys decided MacDonalds was calling and we wandered out for lunch and to head back to Market! Market! a shopping mall we visited on our last stay in Manila. This time we stumbled across a floor with market stalls and lots of cheap clothes and ended up buying more T-shirts than we needed. We walked back via the Bonifacio Highstreet, another area we seemed to have missed last time, lined with shops, posh malls, bars and restaurants. By the time we got back to the hostel we were shattered and ended up ordering a pizza delivery for dinner.

We left the hostel early the next morning and flagged a cab to take us to the airport. This was our 4th time through Manila Domestic Terminal and we were starting to feel at home. Our flight left early and we arrived in Cebu 20 minutes ahead of schedule. Another cab ride and we checked in to our hotel. We’d treated ourselves to a nice place with a pool thinking as we had a couple of days in the city to sort out our visas and to wait for Tim to arrive we wouldn’t be spending much money elsewhere. It wasn’t quite what we’d hoped for, the room was fine but was two twin beds and there was no wifi, the toilet seat was broken and the pool was out of order. After an hour of going back and forth to reception we had the beds pushed together and a wifi router put in our room. We popped out to the shopping mall next door to the supermarket and then later we wandered out again to the Terraces, an outdoor restaurant area of the mall, where we ate Japanese for dinner.

The next day we had arranged to meet an agent in the hotel reception to pick up our passports and the £200 visa fee to extend our visas past the 59 day mark (we will be in the Philippines for 71 days), it’s a bit nerveracking handing your passport over to a stranger in a hotel lobby but fingers crossed everything will go smoothly. We were going to head into the old town that afternoon but Rhys’s i-touch was playing up and he spent 3 hours putting music on it just for it to crash and he had to start again. Leaving him to it, I wandered over to the shopping mall for a while before we headed out again to the supermarket together to pick up some bread, pate, cheeses and pork for dinner. Rhys’s i-touch crashed yet again and I went to bed while he was sorting it out for the 3rd time, a 12 hour job and a very annoyed Rhys.

Tim was due to land in to Cebu airport at 11am the following day, by noon he was at the hotel. We had picnic lunch in the room before heading out to a random bar Tim had found in Lonely Planet. A bizarre shack with weird paintings and cheap beer. We didn’t stay long before wandering over to the shopping mall yet again, after a drink on the Terraces and a chat with a strange Australian we walked back to the hotel to freshen up. Despite telling us they’d put a third bed in our room when we got back we found out they’d been ‘looking’ for us and we had to change to an identical room a floor up. A few drinks in the room and a couple of rounds of penny can (thanks Tam, best present EVER!) and we went back to the random bar for dinner, stopping by another bar across the road with a live band and very hot fried chicken on the way back.