Day 19

Last day in Sagada. After breakfast of fruits we did internetting including skyping Krishna and obtaining the remaining web and email information we needed to plan the remainder of our Philippines trip.

Then we took a walk to Suyo, at the bottom of the Sagada area valley. We spent 7 hours walking down to Suyo and back up the other side of the valley, passing through villages named Ambakling, Balugan, and Pido, where we took several dozen photos of the beautiful rice terraces, many streams flowing together, butterflies, and bridges over the streams. It was a very long walk but very rewarding in its really unsurpassed views of the terraces and village life centered on them. We lunched at a SariSari store in Suyo where, Romana, the owner was gracious enough to let us dine on cooked rice in her kitchen. We had brought vegetarian lumpia (spring rolls) with us which were a perfect accompaniment to the native rice.

Ambakling has many banana plants and the ground is covered with kamote plants (sweet potato). The villagers eat what they can and feed most of the leaves to the pigs. Pigs are big business for the families with each pig bringing about PHP8,000 or maybe more. Each family has about 2 to 4 pigs kept in pens.
Gone are the thatched roofs which Ole saw 23 years ago. The houses all over the mountains now are made of concrete cinder blocks and corrugated metal roofs. Plain metal sheets are becoming popular, too, used as walls. In the lowlands there are still remaining nipa huts standing.

Some old women still wear traditional clothes. The fabric is woven locally. Because of the cool climate, nobody wears skirt. In Sagada and surrounding villages, the children are free to roam. We met a bunch of them in Suyo swimming in the river. They saw us and quickly joined us taking fun watching Ole taking pictures and were especially tickled pink when he took a shot of them and showed them their faces on the camera’s viewfinder. They were fearless as they ran back and forth on the bridge and swung on the railing of the bridge with a drop of 50 feet! And there I was having butterflies just crossing the 2 feet metal bridge.