Banaue- Camote Girl

This little girl is about two years old, couldn’t talk yet but could express what she wants. She came near me and lifted her arms and I understood that meant she wanted me to carry her and sit her on my lap. So I did. It was a sweet act, and I don’t know what went on her mind as she did that. She obviously liked me and trusted me so that she’s willing to approach a total stranger like me.

Her mother says she was fed camote, that’s why she is heavy and round. Camote is a familiar rootcrop in the mountains, easy to plant and easy to grow. Many years ago, in other parts of Mountain Province (the province next to Banaue, Ifugao) I would see old women digging the ground with a stick and unearthing camote from the soil. The women would do this for so many hours that they become permanently stooped.

This little girl’s mother and father own the small store at that place they call Saddle Point, where hikers like us stop to take a rest after some two hours of hiking, and from where we descend to another 30 minutes to one hour hike to Batad. Her mother sells softdrinks, cookies, candies, and local craftswork—necklaces, wood sculptures, and the like.

We bought softdrinks from her, since the hike was so challenging that one could not resist a bottle of softdrink to recharge (of course fresh fruit juice would have been better). Of course it cost us three times the price. The joke was that okay you can go back and buy softdrinks in town which is much cheaper, if you don’t want to pay the store price here.

On a normal day, we would have taken a jeep ride up to Saddle Point and would have avoided the two-hour hike. But we went there during the stormy season, October-November, and the roads were closed due to landslides. The hike was not an easy one as we had to navigate fallen rocks, stones, mud and slippery cement (where I slipped and landed on my butt), fallen trees and plants (where I fell again as my feet got tangled in vines). But the view was breathtaking. I’m glad we hiked instead of taking the jeep. It wouldn’t have been as wonderful an experience.

Banaue- the hanging bridge

The hanging bridge straddles the river which cuts  through the middle of the town. Made of scraps of iron sheets put together by wires, it swings as it bears the weight of the locals who cross it everyday; this path enables them to reach the lower part of the town in a few minutes instead of half an hour.

The people here are used to heights. They can look down at the river while crossing the bridge and they don’t feel any fear or anxiety in doing so. For them, the experience of being suspended in air, amidst the high mountains and rivers, is a very natural thing.Their kids grow up crossing such bridges in other parts of the mountains.

M, my friend, was so scared of crossing this bridge, more so when three men came down the steps and started walking toward her, causing the bridge to sway. She wanted to tell the men to stop so she can cross over first. The men did not stop; I didn’t tell them to stop because I felt foolish doing so, seeing that there was no real danger. It might have been insensitive of me but I was confident she would be okay. And she was, after going through some scary moments up in the air between river and sky. It was exhilarating despite the fear, but she didn’t venture to cross the bridge again to go back to the same end where we came from.We climbed the steep stone stairs up the mountain into the market instead.

 I could not imagine how fear of heights can be so real to some people. I think this is for people who have grown in the city and have not been out to the countryside so often as to get used to the expansive space above and below them. It is truly a strange thing to me. I guess civilized man started to have the fear of heights and open spaces when he started living in the city and lost the natural human response to high mountains and the vast wide sky. For people in Ifugao and the Mountain Province though, immense heights and spaces will always be part of their reality.

Banaue- the river view

The view from Greenview Lodge. Raging river down below, houses by the winding road. We walked this road on our way to the hanging bridge. These orchids, probably taken from the mountains. The sound of the flowing river puts us to sleep at night, and we woke up to the same sound in the morning. If this is where you live everyday of your life, one wonders what changes in one’s mind-frame will happen. I would think there would be a space and silence in the mind that will drown out a normally chattering city mind full of civilized concerns like today’s appointments and businesses, last night’s movie, facebook, and yes, the recent blog entry. If you want to quiet the mind, I would suggest one go to the river and listen to it all day long.

Banaue on a rainy day

The fog covers the sleepy town of Banaue on a rainy morning in November. The houses are engraved on the slopes of the mountain, descending (or ascending) on each other.They appear even more gray on this foggy day, which, on a sunny day, are as gray-looking as they are now-- the locals are very sparse with the use of color and paint.

Made of a combination of wood, cement and galvanized iron,  only the red roofs of these houses appear colorful. There is only one kind of house design here, the rectangular-shaped, and I would think that the people have not given much thought to the designing and painting of houses, as much as they did in planting rice and maintaining the rice terraces in good form. This is understandable,  producing rice for food is a basic need and one which will come first before the desire to paint or design ones house.

From my window, one can see the road that winds down through the town, with small buildings and houses on both sides. There is a church on the right, as could be seen in the white cross that stands on top of the building. This is the same road that led us to the more isolated village of Batad, where a more panoramic view of terraces could be seen .

It is as ordinary as any other Philippine provincial town, except that Banaue is surrounded by its terraced mountains and its ricefields, which altogether makes it an enchanting small town engulfed by mountains and fields.That their forefathers were able to come up with an amazing system of rice terraces that exists to this day should be remembered when one considers how un-ordinary the people here are.