North Luzon, Philippines

The final post from the Philippines.  We spent our last few days on the island of North Luzon (same island as Manila).  Our plans were not well laid out, thanks to me, so there were some hiccups, but we managed.

Jeepneys are everywhere in the Philippines.  It all began with leftover Jeep parts after the war.  Interesting to see all the different sizes and colors and names.

Our first stop was a beach town on the north coast called Pagudpud.  The place we stayed was on more of a dirt, fishermen beach, but we spent the afternoon at one of the whiter sand beaches nearby.

This was a Saturday afternoon, so the beach was full of Filipinos.  As far as I could tell, we were the only white people on the whole beach, so the girls were never alone.

We also took a hike to Kabigan Falls.

You know you've been in Asia too long, when you walk right past the water buffalo without hardly noticing he's there!

On the way back, we grabbed some Filipino empanadas--bright orange dough and filled with green papaya, pork, and an egg.

Our final stop in the Philippines was the rice terraces near Banaue.  I was ready to give up on this because transportation did not easily flow from place to place.  But I'm so glad we found a way to make it happen--the beauty was so worth it.

The view of Banaue and some rice terraces from our lodge.

These terraces were carved out over 2000 years ago.  The terraces are passed down to the children--largest one to firstborn.  If someone wants to sell their terrace, they must first go back to family members and a family member will always snatch it up first.  The rice is a very ancient, good rice and the people have been asked to sell it, but they still only grow it for their personal use.

These terraces are in the middle of the Cordillera mountain range, where all the roads look like this.

At Batad, another village nearby, we hiked down into the rice terraces.  This little girl was helping us down the steps.

This hike was petrifying for me and tiring for us all.  Hard to tell in the pictures, but we walked right along the rock wall on the edge of the terrace with a drop off down the side.  I call it my fear of heights; the girls call it my fear of falling!

We hiked over an hour through the terraces and then down over a hundred (two hundred? a thousand?!!) steep stone steps to a waterfall, and then of course had to hike the whole thing back out.  It was beautiful but so relieved to finally sit down in this restaurant.

Amazing views of the terraces all around us

This was a really interesting end to our time in the Philippines.  Then it was an overnight bus ride to Manila to catch our flight to Seoul.