Banaue and the Cordillera Central

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Banaue and the Cordillera Central

Philippines' tourist brochures mostly focus on the incredible beauty of many of the country's 7000 or so tropical islands. The other huge selling point of this former US colony. English is the defacto national language and most Filipinos speak it very well.
Then at the other end of the rainbow, not usually mentioned in the brochure, are the many girly bars inhabited by touts selling fake erection drugs, the services of women and hugely overpriced "scotch". Signs directing guests to leave their guns at the door should serve as a warning, although these can also be seen outside popular family restaurants guarded by security officers.
In between these opposites, the Philippines has something else.
The remote parts of Luzon, the largest of the philippine islands, is to be found on the road less travelled - the one leading northeast out of the capital.
This route takes you into the area known as Cordillera Central, away from the wet-season smells, smog and humidity and to the fresh air of the cool mountain provinces.
Freeways gradually become winding mountain roads rougher and more nerving the higher you go, until they turn to dirt tracks with sheer drops of 500m down each side.

At the very top of the Philippines' highway system, about 2000m above sea level, in the small
mountain tourist towns like Sagada where they conceal their dead in hanging
caskets on the hillsides and there's just one dirt road in and out and it's pretty cold at night.

Palms change to pines planted in the early 20th Century by gold fossickers and homesick American colonisers seeking something more familiar than tropical lowland, headhunting natives and the thousands of hectares of paddy fields.
Unlike the Spanish who occupied the country before them, the Americans went into the deep, dark heart of what, must be one of the Planet's more bizarre quirks of geography.
Travel here is rough and accommodation rougher, and something bizarre always happens winding up the road on the way to Banaue – and the ancient rice terraces Filipinos proudly call the eighth wonder of the world - stops for a break and have a lookout at the spectacular view down the valley.



philippines travel

philippines travel

philippines travel