Yesterday I finished a three day trek through the Ifugao rice terraces surrounding the tiny village of Banaue in Northern Luzon. I hiked from village to village in the mountains alongside spectacular terraced rice paddies.
My guide had one rule for the trek: "No viewing while walking. Because if you view while you walk, you will trip and fall." And tripping and falling on this trek meant either falling into the muddy leech-filled rice paddy on one side, or down 3-10m to the rice paddy, stream or who knows what else on the other side of the 30cm wide uneven ledge on which I was walking.
Even with careful concentration I still managed at one point to fall over the ledge and had to grab on to the side to prevent myself from dropping all the way down. In the process of trying to grab me, my guide also fell over the side. It took a few minutes to drag ourselves back up. Luckily I escaped with nothing more than a very large bruise. I spent the rest of the 3 days leaning to one side, away from the dropoff, deciding that if I were to fall again I'd rather it be into the level rice paddy rather than down the dropoff to serious injury.
The hike itself was something of an eye opener regarding rice. I knew that rice was grown in rice paddies and had seen photos of them before, but had never given much thought to where the rice grains themselves come from. If I'd been forced to guess, I would have said that they were part of the root. Turns out that rice plants are much like wheat, and the rice grains are the fruit of the plant, growing out of the shoots.
I finished the trek exhausted, but satisfied. The scenery was spectacular and it was an amazing way of seeing the terraces and visiting smaller villages I likely would not have reached otherwise. Here's a photo of me at the end of the trek waiting for our ride back to Banaue where we started.
Today I journeyed to another mountain town, Sagada where I went caving and saw hanging coffins. More about that soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment