Don't Sleep Through This Road Trip

Usually a road trip through the Philippines isn't very exciting, it's for the most part very flat terrain covered with coconut trees in the South and rice fields in the North. Sure there are some exciting features like the ride up to Baguio which if you've seen once is good enough or back then the lahar fields left by the Mount Pinatubo eruption, which have since been reclaimed by mother nature. Nope, for the most part, sleeping through a ride through the countryside is totally acceptable.

Coming back from Sagada however, I decided to drive down since I had slept or was for the most part groggy going up (we decided to go up at night). I'm glad that I decided not to sleep through this road trip. The road near Sagada is approximately 50 km of rough road which at some parts are just cut into the mountainsides. Scarring from previous landslides are visible and on some sections you can look up the mountainside and think "I'd better get out of here fast, this one could go any minute". At one point I saw a stone skip across the road ahead of me and by the time I reached that point I looked up and saw another two or three following it. Needless to say I floored it. There's another place where we reached a one lane road with a bus going up (the rule is anyone going up gets the right of way) so I thought I'd pull over and let him pass only to realize that pulling my car into the shoulder would send us a couple of hundred feet down the mountain express style. Nope, I had to back up a about 50 feet to find a place where we could both safely pass each other.

These obvious dangers are easy to miss though since you are driving through some of the most beautiful countryside in the Philippines. I'm talking about seeing whole valleys with rivers snaking through them, hillsides where ingenious farmers have ecked out a plots to plant their crops, small little glints of sliver where fresh mountain water briefly springs out before disappearing into the mountain again. You get glimpses of this type of terrain on the way up to Baguio but not on this scale. In some sections you can actually trace ahead and see the roadway you will take and realize that you'll be on this mountain for a while. You realize then that you are driving through big country . . . . . . . and in the earlier parts fog and mist hang around making you realize this is definitely one road trip you wouldn't want to sleep through.