The spectacular Rice Terraces of Banaue and Batad – and the hanging coffins of Sagada…

When I first visited the Philippines about 20 years ago, I travelled to the famous rice terraces of Banaue on a local bus which ended up taking two days to get there after suffering a breakdown and two flat tires. Fortunately the route is now serviced by modern air-conditioned coaches and the night bus departs at 10h00 and arrives in Banaue at 07h00 the next morning. Not that having air-con is necessarily so great, as in the Philippines it runs at full blast, keeping temperatures so low that one needs to dress for arctic conditions to feel comfortable. Akhona wore shorts, so I gallantly gave her my jacket to put over her legs for half of the trip, but at 03h00 I was forced to snatch my jacket back as it was so cold 🙂

The Ifugao region of Luzon is the home to some of the original tribes of the Philippines who have farmed on the steep slopes of the mountainous area for thousands of years. Over time they carved rice terraces into the mountain sides, supporting them with hand-built stone walls. It is mind-boggling to think that all of the hundreds of terraces were built by hand with no modern equipment. Stones had to be carried from river beds and mountainsides and laboriously fashioned into precise walls. We used the village of Banaue as our base while we explored the area, as it at least has some restaurants and accommodation which surrounding villages lack. The Banaue Sunrise Guesthouse offered a fair-sized room with private bathroom and hot shower for $25/night. It’s views out over the valley and terraces were hard to beat.

Without doubt the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Batad is the most dramatic and spectacular example of rice terraces anywhere in the world, and well worth the full day involved to travel to Batad and the subsequent 5 hour hike to see the full expanse of the rice terraces. The hiking was quite demanding, often involving walking on foot-wide walls with 5m drops, so a focus on balancing rather than taking photographs is essential. I lost concentration for a few seconds on the walk back to the departure point and lost my footing, ending up hanging over a sheer drop wrapped around a fence pole until Akhona ran and pulled me up 🙂

We employed the services of a local guide Sherwin to get us from Banaue to Batad and back safely, and he proved to be a wise choice of guide. He was informative and helpful, and set an achievable pace for two unfit South African travellers. I was glad I had carried a folding hiking stick with me in my bag for the past 5 months – Akhona had to use a wooden stick 🙂 We had a chance to shoot some really cool photo’s of the terraces, and I even flew my little drone to get some cool aerial shots…

We hiked for around five hours from start to finish, with several breaks to rest and take in the surroundings. When we started it looked like an impossible task to reach the distant viewpoint that Sherwin pointed out to us, with literally hundreds of steps both up and down. I am most definitely not very fit, and climbing uphill is often quite exhausting. Amazingly we managed to do it, and after our hike we ate a good lunch at a local restaurant looking out over the terraces.

We reached Batad on a tricycle, which is a motorbike attached to a four seater sidecar, with Sherwin and the trike driver on the bike and Akhona and I in the sidecar. At one point the road was so steep that we had to get out and walk for 50m while the trike was raced up the mountain at full revs. It was all part of the adventure 🙂

After a full day of rest – totally needed as both of us woke up with aching leg muscles which made walking so painful that we had to limit our walking and take pain killers, we decided to make another day trip out to the terraces of Hapau – made more appealing by the presence of natural hot springs at the end of the hour long hike through the terraces.

Although nowhere near as dramatic as Batad, the rice terraces of Hapau are also a declared UNESCO World Heritage site. Our guide was a local guy who was born in the village and who worked on the terraces until he was a young man, so it was great hearing his stories about how the terraces were maintained and what it was like living and working there. Of course, I never missed the chance to shoot a few cool shots of Akhona along the way….

We reached the oasis of the hot water springs after about an hour of hiking, and quickly changed into our swimsuits and climbed into the relaxing waters, where we stayed for about an hour. During this time we were joined by a guy from Austria and ended up talking SA politics with him for half an hour…So surreal to have someone from Austria discussing South Africa in a hot spring in a remote village in Philippines.

On the return walk to the village I got out my drone again and grabbed a few shots of the rice terraces from a different perspective. Luckily the little Dobby drone weighs around 400g with its batteries so it was not too much effort to take it along on a hike.

Our visit to Banaue and the surrounding rice terraces was one of those memorable experiences which was worth all of the effort. To see with your own eyes the physical work which generations of villagers have done to create the rice terraces shows an impressive human accomplishment, which has withstood earthquakes, bombing during World War II and numerous typhoons over the centuries. 

We decided to take a three hour bus ride to the village of Sagada once our time in Banaue was over – it was a somewhat hair-raising trip over a cliff-hugging mountain pass with evidence of many rockfalls and landslides. When we arrived in Sagada we had to drag our luggage for well over a kilometer to our log cabin lodgings, which was really beautiful and cosy. The reason for our visit?  The famous hanging coffins of Sagada, which we hiked to the following day…

While some may find it somewhat macabre, I had always wanted to visit Sagada to see this unusual method of burial. In Hapau some families keep the bones of their forefathers in small wooden boxes attached to the outside of their homes under the eaves of the roof, so it was interesting to witness another approach to burial a few villages away.

Some coffins are actually hanging, while many more are actually stacked up in a hard to reach entrance to a massive cave. Akhona was a bit freaked out by the whole thing, and was not keen to take any photographs as in her culture it would be taboo to disturb the ancestors. I can understand her reservations and I appreciated the fact that she hiked to these sites with me regardless of her reservations.  Our style of traveling involves traveling to sometimes hard-to-reach places, sometimes just because one of us really wants to visit a particular place or see a particular spot. We try and support each other as much as possible so that we can both get to experience our travel bucket list.