Monday, October 11, 2010
Monday, October 4, 2010
Sept. 13, 2010 it is.... hmmmm... : ) Woke up at 4AM, as always, to drive north...... again...... : ) and head to the mountains with my family and friends. I don't know if i were a fox in my past life. My son is older now, and I hope that he appreciates the beauty of outdoors. : ) This time to HAPAO-HUNGDUAN 16° 53' 41.17" N 121° 1' 42.37" E. Once in a while if not always, I always dream of the mountains....
I searched the net for a not so popular place in BANAUE area and came up with UHAJ NATIVE VILLAGE INN. Hmmm..... other blogs say the place is nice and you will literally stay in an IFUGAO HUT. : ) And so we did..... And why BANAUE? Our target was supposedly KIANGAN, it is a place southwest of BANAUE. But we wanted to stay somewhere in banaue because of higher altitude and presumed lower temperature. Then planned to go to KIANGAN for other adventures like CAVES, LAKE, WATERFALLS.
We again drove north at NLEX, turned right to SAN SIMON, then turned left when we reached GAPAN, drove north to BAGABAG, then went straight to BANAUE. BTW, we ate breakfast at San Jose. The road from MANILA to BANAUE is paved.... and you know that by now. By 1100 hours, we were already eating lunch in BANAUE town proper. We just took it slow. I am not as young as i used to be, to drive fast. Like 6 years ago, Manila to Sagada was just 8 hours straight drive. And 3 years ago, Baguio city to Balintawak was just 3 hours drive via kennon road. : ) It is alright if you don't believe.. : ) yup we were young and crazy. And to those who rode with me, some things change, some things never change. hmmm.... haha....
The first segment of the road going to HAPAO-HUNDUAN was already paved. But man, after awhile driving, the road got more narrow... We literally drove into landslides partially cleared by a payloader. At our left side were mountains with landslides, and at our right side was a cliff. : ) And there were segments that we had to drive over landslides... These really got me scared... Those landslides were just sooooooo big they could eat herds of horses, houses, vehicles, whatever.. They could bury you alive...!!! That was not for a weak heart : ) And it was raining when we were driving there. Any stronger rain could create another landslide.. I even told my company if they wanted us to drive back and stay at banaue town proper. But my company said, let's go ahead with the plan A and see how UHAJ was, then decide if we should want to stay at UHAJ or drive back to banaue town proper (plan B). BTW, our plan C was to stay at KIANGAN, our plan D was to stay in SAGADA again. Plan E was to stay at Mt. Data hotel, Plan F was to drive north to PAGUDPUD.
So we did PLAN A, removed the cover of the winch just in case and every step of the way look for a tree or whatever to anchor our winch cable for winching out..... I told mardi that if ever something underneath our truck moves, he should run as fast as he can to grab the winch cable and secure it to a tree, a fig, a person, to himself, or to whatever that will keep our 3 tonner pick up truck somewhere not in the ravine. The landslide might slide with us.... Remember, we were driving over landslides with just 1 meter or less clearance at our right side to the ravine. And there were many landslides : ) Not for the weak heart.
But when we reached NATIVE VILLAGE INN 16° 53' 41.47" N 121° 1' 45.28" E , man, the place was nice... : ) It had enough parking space. The place was clean. The caretakers were nice too. We unloaded our pick up truck then we went to our huts. We rented 2 huts and they were clean. We then ordered something to eat for supper such as pancit, chicken curry, beef stew, and of course rice. The dining area was nice and spacious. After supper, we went to the terrace table outside to drink some shiraz :) The cold atmosphere was soooo pleasant. When we got sober, we had to sleep.
On our 1st morning at HUNGDUAN, mardi and i went for a walk to feel the place. It was a misty / foggy morning. It was nice. We walked southwest down to the river. There were small waterfalls along the way. When we reached the river, we decided to climb back to UHAJ to get the pick up truck and drive further southwest to see the rest of the rice terraces. On our way to the truck, there was this cobra that almost bit mardi..... Thank u it was mardi not me.... So we ran like cowards and shouted like girls..... During the drive, we were a bit scared because there were a lot of landslides along the way. But.....we had to conquer our fears i guess. Anyway it wasn't raining that time. There were segments we had to drive over landslides again, well, we did it before, so it wasn't new to us. But still we were scared.
On the afternoon we went to reconnaissance KIANGAN. We were supposed to do some trek there to the waterfalls, then to the caves, then to the lake. But, i didn't know why we didn't have enough motivation to do those things that time. Hmmmm..... maybe some other time. Maybe we already had enough adrenaline rush and worries driving over landslides and snakes :). We just went to the KIANGAN SHRINE to take pictures then went back to UHAJ. At night, we did nothing but drank more shiraz : )
We then decided to go to BAGUIO the next day via ARITAO. The road from ARITAO to BAGUIO is paved, very different 5 years ago when we went to KABAYAN BENGUET to see the MUMMY and to do some reconnaissance about PULAG drop off point. That time, the road was single vehicle lane muddy terrain, and it took us 10 hours from BAGUIO-KABAYAN-BAGUIO. :) But now, i think you can drift your car if you have proper gear :)
ARITAO-BAGUIO is veeeeeery long and veeeeeery winding road. We were in a moderate mode to reach baguio before sundown. We could hear our radials squeaking at every turn swaying our heads from left to right and so forth due to centrifugal force. The first few kilometers, my son was laughing, so we laughed with him. After sometime, all of us were silent and dizzy, and nauseated, that i had to slow down. I glimpsed at our GPS, and baguio was still a long way. I was hungry i could eat a horse again. The view at that road was nice. We were welcomed by mountains of pinetrees when we reached BENGUET. And of course the top view of AMBUKLAO dam was nice : ) These mountains have always been our playground : ) I really respect this place.... At BAGUIO, we stayed in a transient house, ate, and slept. The next morning, went to CAMP JOHN HAY for brunch then went to good shephered to buy ube jam and peanut butter then headed back to MANILA : )
There are tracklogs available. You can also visit my panoramio.
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