Sometime in the middle of 2006, I sent out a message to my former college classmates if they would like to go to Sagada. With the help of my best bud, Biela, three joined: Tere, Roselle and Andrea. Another one, Jowee (Biela’s friend and officemate) enlisted.
Unfortunately, only Tere weren’t able to go because nobody was going to look after her baby (my godson).
On our first day, I took them to Sumaguing Cave. Everybody was so excited and enamored of the scenic beauty of Sagada that we took every chance we could get to snap photos. This caused the 30-minute walk from the town proper to the cave’s entrance last almost an hour.
We were all clean, dry and fresh when we posed before the cave’s entrance…
…but just an hour later, we were dirty, wet and dead-tired hungry.
The next day, I planned to take them to Bomod-ok Falls (Big Falls) but we were told it was off-limits because the locals were holding a ritual there. So as a second option, we hired a guide that would take us to the underground river and the Bokong Falls (Small Falls) instead.
As always, every five or ten minutes we would stop walking, find a good spot, pose and have our photos taken.
After a great stay in Sagada, we rode a bus to Baguio City. What would have been an equally beautiful scenic trip resulted to an experience we didn’t dare imagine.
On the road along Halsema Highway (the highest highway in the country) we got caught in the middle of a super typhoon. We encountered three landslides. The first two we actually saw rocks rolling down the mountainside and onto the front of our bus. The last one was the worst. The landslide covered the whole road that we got stranded for five hours. We had to wait for bulldozers to clear the road.
When we finally reached Baguio City, Biela and Jowee separated from us and boarded a bus to La Union where Biela’s boyfriend lived.
Roselle, Andrea and I then went straight to the Victory Liner terminal for our Manila return trip.
In recollection, although every Sagada trip I made was memorable, this one would be on top of my list because it was the first time I ever encountered actual danger on the road.
So lesson learned for me was to be extra wary of weather forecasts and don’t push through if the weather is really bad.
