My itinerary was planned as follows: I would catch a ride down the main road from Banaue to Mayuyao and get off at a place from which I can hike to the village of Cambulo. According to my guide book this would have been a 4 hour walk. I would spend the night there, and then walk to Batad in the morning, and from Batad, back to Banaue (2.5 hours according to the guide book). The hour values turned out to be somewhat underestimated, and the hardship of the trail severely understated. By the way, the reason for my wanting to stay in Cambulo was that Batad is a major tourist destination, while only a few hike as far as Cambulo. I've had enough of the tourism industry in Banaue to risk staying the night in a similar place!

So at 9AM, after getting back to the hotel and lamenting the missing phone, I went outside and sat on the curb, waiting for the 11AM bus going in the direction of Mayuyao. The trike drivers did their best to get me to ride with them. The actual price for riding a trike alone for a few kilometers is 100 pesos, but filipinos often wait for more passengers to show up so they can share the cost. In the case of tourists, however, the quoted prices for riding alone range from 250 to 400 pesos. One thing I found hillarious about the way the trike drivers offered their services was their (quite accurate, in my opinion) perception of western mentality. Their sales pitch to me was, "Dont you want to go there RIGHT NOW?" In a place where nothing is done immediately or right away, urgency can be a great selling commodity. Its understandable why most western tourists visiting Banaue might rush - the week or two of vacation can't be wasted waiting for buses and all, and what's an extra 5 bucks compared to the cost of an airplane ticket? But many filipinos I've met truly believe that westerners are like that in their every day life: always rushing, always on a deadline, etc. I guess hollywood movies contribute to that also. 

So I digress. I'm sitting there waiting, and finally one trike driver decides to make friends with me. He sat down next to me, and began asking me where im from, etc. As he was talking, I noticed his gums and teeth were bright red. In fact, everyone i met in Banaue had what I thought was a bad case of scurvy. Turns out, the redness is not blood, but betel nut juice. I asked him if I could try some, and with his patient coaching, I chewed a nut and experienced a sensation of mild euphoria, warmth, and elevation of spirits - not unlike a glass of really good wine. Best thing about the betel nut is that its legal in all countries, including the US (as long as it imported in the whole, unprocessed form).

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How to chew a betel nut:

The art of betel nut chewing involves putting the right ingredients into your mouth at the right time, and avoiding swallowing anything at any time. You start by putting the actual nut into your mouth, and chewing it until it feel soft and malleable in the mouth. Then, the leaves (which according to wikipedia come from the betel pepper plant, unrelated to the betel nut tree) are added, and the whole mixture is chewed, while excess saliva is spat. Finally, the most important ingredient, lime (white powder derived from limestone, i think it's some kind of oxidizing agent) is carefully added pinch by pinch on top of the nut and leaf mixture in the mouth, while care is taken not to let any of the powder touch the mucosa of your mouth first. The powder reacts with the betel mixture and turns the juice bright red. Apparently, this process extracts the psychoactive ingredients, and it is at this point you feel the "high". After spitting out the excess red juice, and chewing for a while, one adds a bit of tobacco leaf to the mixture which contributes to the subjective high as well.

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So we chewed betel nut for a while, then the trike driver told me his grandmother is going to her place not far from the Cambulo trail, and he agrees to take me there for 50 pesos. Reluctantly, i agreed: I really wanted to start my journey, and the fact that he agreed to the actual price made me trust him a little bit. I was so wrong!!

When his grandmother got off, we took some pictures


and went on our way. The road is very rough and trike shakes very violently as it goes over the rocky road up the mountain. Finally, the trike driver tells me we've arrived, and points to the long, narrow steps up the face of a mountain. He asks me for the 50th time if Im sure I don't want to hire him as a guide, but I thanked him and went on my way. The climb was quite tiring, but 300 steps later I was at a fork in the road with no idea which way to go. I went left first, but 15 minutes later encountered a local who adamantly insisted that this was NOT the way to Cambulo. I went back and took the right fork, and shortly ended up at a small wooden house with no apparent trail leading further.

"Ayoh!" I called, and suddenly I saw an old lady appear from the tall grass in the steep cliff leading down the face of the mountain. She didn't speak much english, but understood that I was going to Cambulo. WRONG WAY! I was told. Then she explained that if I take a short cut through her rice terrace fields, i will get to the main road faster than back tracking. She began quickly bouncing from rock to rock leading me down the treacherous path down the face of the mountain to her rice terraces, and then then down the terraces toward the road. I was quite embarrassed since it took me painfully long to follow her without losing my balance, and then i even fell twice, and at one particularly high step, i had to sit and slide on my ass like a baby. She had a blast watching me, and didn't hide her amusement at my feeble efforts. At the end, i was full with gratitude to her for showing me a quicker path and saving me almost an hour, and gave her the dried mango pack I had in my bookbag as a snack. This is the face of the mountain that i came down from:

And so I ended up on the same road the trike driver let me off on, but further up, and continued walking towards Mayuyao, cursing him for not taking me all the way to my destination. Did he do it on purpose, to make it back to Banaue quicker? Or did he make a genuine mistake and let me off at the wrong path innocently? The point is that after 45 minutes of walking in the scorching sun, I finally came to a big sign, "Cambulo Elementary", and a wide path leading into the mountain that looks nothing like the narrow fungus covered steps the trike driver showed me.

The dirt road quickly narrowed, and became quite steep. As an inexperienced hiker, i began running out of strength and breath in the first hour. To help myself with the climb, i broke off a sturdy stick from a dead tree, and used it to prop myself up with every step. About 90 minutes later I was walking down a narrow trail along the top of the mountain, with a cliff several meters deep just a foot away from my foot!! To the other side was a steep mountain face which i relied on at times for balance. Along the way, I encountered evidence of recent mud slides, two of which completely blocked the road, and I had to climb over. I also saw gorgeous waterfalls, all of which i had to cross. 

Although the locals do it almost every day, for me it felt suicidal to step into a fast running waterfall stream that rushes towards the cliff on a trail that's narrower than my shoulders. 

Still, there was little choice, and having wasted 3 hours and having been exhausted by the wrong way detour (courtesy of the trike driver), I knew I had to hurry. I would surely not survive on the trail in the dark...

No matter what the danger, the scenery was absolutely breathtaking. 

I tried taking pictures, but truly, nothing compares to the panoramic scene that opened up whenever i turned the corner to the other face of some mountain. The mountain ranges, the beautiful rice terraces carved like giant green steps into the face of each mountain, the gorgeous trees along the way.. it was breathtaking.



Along the way, I also got to see some exotic butterflies. One, for instance, looks like the head of a fish when it closes its wings. Another is charcoal black, with 3 bright circular spots running down its wings.

As I entered deeper into Ifugao province country, I met locals on the trail. Farmers with giant 100lb bags on their heads, hunters with a 20" machete hanging on their side, and a rifle on the shoulder, as well as some guides heading back to Banaue. Because I was such a slow walker, some locals caught up with me from behind. These three were teachers from Cambulo Elementary, going home for the weekend. 

They slowed down to my pace, and I attempted to speed up to theirs, and we continued onward. Im glad we met – they showed me the proper way to cross streams, to walk over mudslides, to use my walking stick (which they said was inadequate) and to navigated the extra narrow cliffhanging parts of the trail. I asked them if anyone ever fell from one of those, and the answer was, "oh, last week, from that one. But he was drunk anyway."

We kept walking, and the beautiful rice terraces finally opened up in the scenery below the cliff along which we walked.


One could also see tiny villages scattered along mountain faces.  Although they look deceptively close, it would take much longer to walk from one to the other.  The direct path is often impossible.

We took a short rest stop above Cambulo, where I took some pictures, and observed a local chopping up firewood

before bringing it down to the village of CAMBULO: