Rice Terraces

 

Above is a picture I took 23 years ago on my first trip to the Philippines. There were a lot of memorable events that happened on that trip, namely that I received an official blessing to marry my fiancée. However in terms of sheer beauty, walking among the rice terraces near Sagada is the event that I only have to close my eyes to remember. Back then, we just stumbled upon a path descending the mountain behind the motel we were staying and came across a native village full of nipa huts and a little girl who guided us further down into the rice terraces themselves. It was a beautiful place full of golden rice and purple mountains. For the next 23 years, I have been wanting to get back to this region before it changed to something unrecognizable and this trip worked out.

After breakfast, we drove up the road aways to pullout where guided hikes were offered through the rice terraces to see a large waterfall. Foreshadowing a bit, I think the reason this place remains largely undisturbed from mass tourism is that they require you to use locals as guides and they also prevent non-natives from even buying land. This land remains only in the hands of the locals and they control how and who sees it... as they should in my opinion. Above is where our hike started, just across the road from the pullout and gives absolutely no hint of the beauty that lay beyond.

A little ways down the mountain side and away from the houses and properties that lined the road, we came to a spot in the trees where we could view our route. Below was a native village with no roads leading to it that we would walk to and through to get to the gorge in the distance where the waterfall lay.

As we got closer to the village, we came across some terraces dedicated non-rice crops that was the village's grocery store. There were all manner of things I saw growing there from beans and coffee, to corn and bananas.

It was all so neat and orderly and took full use of the limited space. I can't imagine the amount of work that went into creating each and every single one of these terraces and there were literally thousands of them all around.

We came to the first village, this one without any access to roads at all. We walked down and through the village on sidewalks and paths that served as their streets. In the center, there was a communal shelter open on three sides where a lot of kids and even a few adults were hanging out. Not being sure on their customs regarding pictures since some areas don't allow them, I didn't take any pictures. The guide did tell us that the reason there were a number of villagers there is because of Elon Musk's Starlink satellites allowed them to get wireless reception for their phones because there was definitely no cell signal this far down. 

Below the village we started nearing the rice terraces. They look fairly diminutive from this distance but among them they were quite large. At times we walked on the stone terrace walls themselves which were sometimes close to 15 feet or more above the surface of the terrace below. Being only a foot or so wide, we had to watch our step and go slowly so not to fall. 

Finally down in the rice terraces and it was as beautiful as I remembered from 23 years ago. This time we didn't have a young girl but a lady in her 60's (I think) doing the guiding. She was full of knowledge being local to the area and told us many things about the local customs, many that I have since forgotten. One of the things I retained is that all these terraces we could see belonged to people in the nearby villages and was all for growing grain that they would consume themselves. Almost none of it was sold for money. Most of it was red rice but we did see a few plots of white rice too.

Down to the gorge, we came to a bridge where the locals crossed to the terraces on the other side. We however didn't cross and kept on the path heading upstream of the creek in the chasm below.

Although technically our destination and beautiful in it's own right, I was in this hike for the rice terraces and cultural experience. High above you can see water lines strung up that carried water from the top of the falls or perhaps even further upstream to a different village than the one we hiked through earlier. We would hike to the village that receives the water on our way back.

The hike had several options. We could hike down and back from where we parked our car or we could get a ride to a neighboring village that was closer to the falls and at a bit lower elevation. We opted to hike down and back having been told it was only 4 km there and back. But I think that wasn't quite right and by a long shot as I think it was closer to 4 km one way. While I was up for that amount of hiking, I regularly hike where my BIL, SIL and their children don't hike. Hiking is a recreational sport of those with money and those without are either working or not actively burning excessive calories that must be replace with more food. Not wanting to completely wear down our hosts, we opted on the way back up to hike to another closer village that had a single road accessing it and get a ride back for a few hundred more pesos, I think around $5 U.S.D. It was still a long hike back up out of the gorge, through more rice terraces to reach the village but worth every cent for the experience. Above as we hiked up, we came across some terraces either recently planted in vegetables or getting ready to be planted. Indeed, at one point we met two native women out working their terrace which had I think beans planted on it.

Soon we were back in the rice terraces again and I was struck by the beauty of the area and the moment. Seeing my family and that of my BIL's family hiking on the terrace walls in front of me with rice ripening all around me is something that I will be able to picture for many years to come.

The village we were heading to for our ride was mostly out of view but off over the rice terraces where you could see some smoke but before the final steep part covered in jungle. Our van rented from John Wayne, was at the top of the jungle covered ridge off to the left out of frame of this picture.

This picture shows the scene to the left of the picture before. In it we can see the original village that we hiked down through, the one with no road access and somewhere at the top of the ridge is where we started our hike.

I can't help but showing another picture of rice terraces, this one with a little corn being grown at one end. You can also see the rock wall between the terrace on the left and the one on the right that is much much lower. We used the top of these walls as paths though the ones we mostly walked on were in a bit better shape though not any wider.

We came across a man sitting underneath a tree resting by a small pond with tilapia in it that isn't visible from this distance. I couldn't resist taking a picture of him and he didn't seem all to concerned with us passing by. Although this was a spot tourists visit, our guide said during the rainy season, they would only get a few groups a week on the hike to the falls.

We finally made it to the second village, this one like the first had only sidewalks for streets that went in-between the houses this way and that like a maze. Although this town had a single very narrow road accessing it, it was only to a small graveled parking lot on the very uphill edge of town. There is where the locals visiting or perhaps the wealthier locals that owned a car, parked them and walked down through the sidewalks to their house. 

The houses were compact in some places but in others, more scattered out. There are no numbers or identification for any of the houses that I saw so you either had to just no which house and which path to take or stop and ask someone. Our guide however knew the way and guided us through town to the parking lot where our shuttle was waiting.

The road out was a narrow two track path with mostly cliff on one side and solid rock on the other. There were only a few places where one would squeeze to one side or the other and let oncoming traffic by. Fortunately, we only met two vehicles heading down to the village, the jeepney above and a motorcyclist who actually didn't wait for us to backup to a spot wide enough to let him by. Although there was barely enough room for him to squeeze by, he never slowed down and indeed, hit the rear quarter panel of the shuttle van which looked nearly brand new. The motorcycle never stopped and though our driver muttered a few what I would assume were choice words in his dialect, he continued on as well. There really wasn't anyplace to stop and though I didn't see him, I assume the motorcyclist was able to stay on the road and didn't go over the cliff. When we got back to the pull out where our rental van waited, the drive immediately got out and found a large dent in the rear quarter panel of the van and wasn't too happy. I was just happy it hadn't been us in our rental van that had the dent.