Tourism 101: How my Banaue trip brought my true self back

I was hesitant to go at first because of the low pressure weather forecast on the news. The August 2 reports said a storm will hit Banaue where I was heading. But I could not let Yukio, a Japanese professor and friend, down who just called up and said we have to go. We’ll study the impact of tourism on the lives of Ifugaos.

It was raining heavily that night and on the way to our rendezvous I defied floods and gusty winds. As if something was stopping me. As if Mother Nature was telling me not to go. But relent I did not.

I went charging mightily while a movie clip played in my head taunting Mother Nature, Dirty Harry-like, to make my day. I arrived late but it’s not really a problem because I know Yukio understands that when it rains in Manila, everywhere turns into Venice minus the pleasantries of old and romantic Venetian architectures.

We met around 8:30 pm in Quezon City and headed to the bus terminal in Sampaloc. I was imagining a first class behemoth to cut the North Luzon expressway in half.

When I saw the bus, my jaw dropped six floors down. I was time-warped back in 2005 to La Habana Vieja (Old Havana) seeing Wawas, Cuba’s local buses that are as old as the Cuban revolution. I could even hear in my head passengers singing Guantanamera.

In the bus, I asked Yukio what his research plans were. “Well, I haven’t really thought about it yet,” he said. With clear danger in sight plus the certainty of death, I don’t see bright prospects in this trip.

To my surprise, there’s not much rain in the expressway. Considering the features of the bus the ride was long, arduous, and uncomfortable but the driver was extra careful and brought us safely to our destination.

I was stressed throughout the trip because I suffer from motion sickness. It got worse because I was peeking out the window every ten seconds waiting for gigantic rocks to roll over us and crush all passengers into jigsaw puzzles.

When we arrived in Banaue, we booked in People’s Lodge and decided to rest for several hours before we started working. Yukio was sound asleep but I was awake and restless because we didn’t set the needed appointments.

After three hours, Yukio woke and found me standing at the lodge’s veranda. I was staring at the rice terraces and wondering what it was like to live out there. All my life I have been a city dweller and eight years of it have been spent in a condominium.

Yukio asked me if I was ready to start working. I said yes and asked what his game plan was. “There,” Yukio pointing to the top of the mountain telling me he wanted to climb.

I wasn’t ready for a trek because the only exercise I had in many years was surf cable channels. I told him that I have too much blood in my nicotine-stream and climbing that height would be suicide.

“I need to talk to the locals and know their plight as farmers,” he said.

I looked at the map and tried to understand the terrain then glanced at the mountain. Rain clouds covered half of it and I knew that climbing in this weather was impossible.

I’ve asked some townsfolk how the mountain trail was like and they’ve advised us to be careful.

“The steps going up are slippery and it’ll be dark soon,” said some of them advising us not to go.

All I did was sigh because I knew Yukio had limited time and he needed as much data as he can get. As we slowly climbed the mountain, I realized that one wrong step would mean disaster.

The steps were so narrow and water from the mountain was streaming down which made the climb even more dangerous. Beside the slippery steps, you can see rice paddies several hundred kilometers below.

I almost fell off the mountain thrice but was able to hang on to weeds, rocks, and mud for dear life. While keeping my balance, elementary students living in the mountain were running up and down our trail.

“Are you scared?” said one grade schooler who was on his way to class. “No I’m not,” I answered but was close to shouting at the charming critter to get out of my way.

When we reached the mountain top, the rain stopped. There, we were welcomed by total strangers with huge smiles.

The Ifugaos we spoke to were very accommodating. They let us rest in their Baleys, Ifugaos’ native houses, while Yukio chatted away.

“We eat what we harvest and we don’t like commercial rice unless we ran out of supplies,” Junibelle Dang-Iw, a forestry graduate who tills the land and carves wood during off season, told Yukio of farmers’ way of life. “We share everything here fifty/fifty. And we also share it to our neighbors who lack food.”

While Yukio fired all his questions, my mind was flying and my eyes were wandering. While I could not fathom how these people live with limited food supply in a tiny house that’s good for one person only, there’s also a powerful attraction in their simplicity. I’m five feet and eleven inches tall and I can’t fit in the house but I felt so relaxed for once in my life.

Then it hit me. I was too concerned about my material yearnings having grown and lived in the city. I realized that the stress I had during the trip was not really about survival and security. It was about me having to leave behind the comforts of urban life.

Having lived in the city for thirty-two years, I always get everything with ease. Going up the mountain was not easy but I felt some degree of accomplishment, some degree of peace.

Of course I’m happy I came back alive. But I’m much happier now not only because I helped a friend but most importantly I also get to see life’s simple beauty through its simple people – the Ifugaos.