In the boondocks of Bontoc, Sagada, Banaue

[Tripatini]

After a near panic-attack—or maybe it was claustrophobia, I’m not sure—from being in rooms without windows for six days straight, I get on the bus from Baguio to Sagada resolving to do better.  I even find banana bread.  That’s a good sign.  “You ever have before?” the lady behind the smile asks.  I smile back.  Does a hippie live in the woods?  “I’ve had it all my life.” 

That’s probably the first thing I ever cooked. 

The Philippines really are nice; they just respond better to an old-fashioned approach—wing it.  You’ll pay extra to make reservations, and then they’ll put you in a room with no windows—and those are the nice places!  So I have only one requirement in Sagada: a room with a window.  I don’t care if it’s the ugliest view in the world.  I want to see it.  I don’t need a breakfast buffet, either.  I’m not a lumberjack.  I’m an espresso-sipping intellectual, ready to solve most of the world’s problems while jacked up on caffeine.  Watch me try.  Actually what bothers me most about a windowless room is that the world may have changed around me outside while I was inside plugged in to the intravenous TV drip.

 So the bus on the infamous Halsema Highway to Bontoc comes with a warning on the package: don’t look down.  But actually it’s not so bad, certainly not as bad as the road from La Paz, Bolivia, down to Coroico.  That’ll put the fear of God in you.  This road only really merits some mention when it turns off the main road, and then starts heading up the hill to Sagada itself.  That stretch I might not want to see in the rainy season.  But the scenery all along the route is beautiful, a miniature version of the terraced rice fields I’ll see in Banaue, I suppose...

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