Day 14

We're here at Sagada, our second destination in the Philippines. Although Sagada is only about 146 km away, it was a 6-hour trip from Baguio through the Philippine's highest mountains with beautiful vistas of rice terraces, little villages and through a very, very windy road, halfway paved and halfway gravel. We passed through the highest point in the country, 7,400 ft and also the coldest point where it can get down to freezing level. The only way I made it was to close my eyes most of the time as I was getting sick.

In one of the stops, we bought two kinds of rice cakes for lunch. One kind was called 'puto', steamed rice flour with delicious freshly grated coconut. The other was gelatinous rice flour mixed with brown sugar and topped with boiled syrupy shredded coconut. Very custardy, closest thing to jello.

We arrived in Sagada around 2 pm and quickly found a place to stay called Alfredo's Inn and Cafe. It is situated right in the town plaza where there are vegetable, fruits and baked goods stalls. There are many children running around and many dogs as well which play and bark all the time. After checking in, we strolled through this sleepy, laid-back village and to Ole's delight and total surprise found a wireless connection.

We had an early dinner (3 pm) of fried rice with vegetables and 'chopsuey', a mixture of stir-fried vegetables with cornstarch sauce. For desert we bought mangos, oranges, bananas and cinnamon rolls. I was hoping to shed some more pounds but it doesn't seem to be happening with all these goodies available. But for sure our legs are getting stronger from all these walking. We probably spend 5 to 7 hours of walking everyday, and these are hilly places.

Today, we're going to Bontoc, half-an-hour ride to attend a vegetarian buffet. It should be fun.

Later...

We had a 65 peso per person, all-you-can eat vegetarian buffet. This was at the Chico Restaurant, owned by Dr Penelope Domogo, whom we met. We had a long conversation with her about vegetarian and traditional diets. Apparently, many locals are now succumbing to Western-style chronic diseases, like hypertension, diabetes, and coronary heart disease brought about by the radical change in eating habits. The traditional mountain diet had no refined carbohydrates or oils, for example, but nowadays refined fats, sugar, and carbohydrates have become the norm.