Hiking the Rice Terraces - Batad, Cambulo and Bangaan

My second day around Batad was spent hiking, walking, trekking, climbing, etc for about 8 hours through some incredible, green scenery varying from sharp mountains to freshly planted rice terraces to wind blown grasslands covering the side of the ridges.

(A view of the lower part of Batad, showing the "trails" along the edges of the terraces. The terrace walls in Batad are held together with rocks, while those in other parts are pure mud.)

(Just after sunrise, I opted for a quick, protein filled breakfast - eggs, tomatoes and onions.)

(Bits of rain and clouds passed by in the afternoon, but just after sunrise, the amphitheater was incredibly beautiful. That's the other half of Batad tucked down in the bottom of the picture.)

(Freshly planted rice. Just add a little adobo and voila - Filipino meal!)

(Batad Part 1 in the valley and Batad Part 2 on top of the hill. Or maybe it's the other way around. Or maybe I just made up those names. Who knows.)

(Part of Batad sitting in the middle of the extensive terraces.)

(Steep stairs and dirt paths lead up and down over the terraces. Many parts are only a few feet from very large drop offs to the river gorge far below.)

(Along the trail from Batad to Cambulo. I was enticed by the prospect of a nice hanging bridge in Cambulo, but it didn't look as nice as the one in Banaue, so I cut off a few steps and turned back just before I got there.)

(Not the aforementioned hanging bridge, but a little bridge around halfway from Batad to Cambulo.)

(On the way back, clouds began coming in, though the rain stayed away until later in the afternoon.)

(The tiny village in the right center is Cambulo. The other stuff is mountains and rice terraces. Fairly simple concept.)

(Hot and sweaty - tropical heat and humidity tends to do that to you when you're hiking up and down steep slopes. Fortunately, the higher elevations here make it a little cooler.)

(Workers planting the rice stalks for the upcoming harvest. Apparently the area is the greenest around May or June. I'll have to take their word for it.)

(Like something straight out of my dreams, this little hut appeared on the top of a steep mountain, with a friendly man and his daughter selling cold water and Gatorade. Apparently they near the town 1.5 hours below, but they found a pretty good spot to sell to hikers. They should really raise their prices, though...I would've paid a whole lot more for that bottle.)

(Huge green mountains along the trail from Batad back to the main road and Banga'an. There's a little village hidden at the base of the mountain.)

(The last few minutes through the rice terraces before arriving at the junction/Banga'an.)

(The tiny village of Banga'an, again hidden in the rice terraces. At this point, I had a group of 5-10 little children following cautiously behind me, wanting to tag along and a few were brave enough to come hold my hand and ask me questions.)

("What's your name?" "Where are you going?" "Where's your mom?" These three guys followed me for about 30 minutes along the dirt road back to town, asking the same few questions over and over again, excited to see where I was going. They happily posed for this picture at one of the huts/lookouts along the road above Banga'an.)

(Tiny Banga'an clustered together in the bottom of the valley.)

(Vegetable curry back in Banaue - surprisingly great - a nice curry with a bit of peanut and maybe coconut. This was one of my best meals of the trip. And yes, there was rice. Presumably from the nearby terraces...)

(Another overnight bus ride took me back to Manila for most of a day before heading to the airport and South to the province of Palawan.)