Our tricycle driver, YenYen was our tour guide for today. For a trek up the mountain, and visit to Tamad Village, it was 700Peso (SGD$20) for 2 pax. My favourite part was the trek up the mountain. It was a little difficult at the start, due to the intimidating number of STEEP steps and thin air due to high altitude. But we soon got the hang of it. YenYen was always way... ahead of us, walking as if he was walking on flat ground. I guess the locals are really used to climbing up and down such steps.
We met some really interesting people along the way up. My favourite was the Ifugao native man who was digging the stones at the waterfalls. He was trying to clear the path for the river to flow downstream. I was amazed at how the locals have such initiative to make sure that the environment is well-maintained. We offered him some SkyFlakes for his hard work ;) When I asked him through the guide how old he is, he says he doesn’t know! I guess for the local natives, they had little education and age is of little significance. They live life as simple and essential as it can get. It was a joy to just sit there, looking at him at work, listening to the falls, water flowing across the pebbles.
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| Banaue Mountain Trek Trail |
Tired from our trek, we went back to the homestay to have our lunch before continuing our walk to Tamad Village. We had a beautiful lunch at the patio, overlooking the rice terraces on a sunny afternoon! Vie laid the table, and cutlery at the patio and it was a really nice lunch!
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| Lunch at Patio |
We took a 5 minutes walk to Tam-an Village and visited a house where he showed us the skeletons of his Grandfather. The Banaue natives have a way of burying the dead by mummifying them. Apparently his father is still being mummified and it takes 60 years for a corpse to be fully mummified. Before he took out the weaved bag to show us the skeletons, he informed us that we would have to make a donation as he had to kill a native chicken to pray to the Gods for displaying the skeletons.
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| Stsrt of trek to Tam-an Village |
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| Ifugao Native House |
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| Ifugao native mummy-skeleton |
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| Rice at Tam-an Rice Terrace |
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