Last few days...

Alright, its going to be tough to fill you in on the last several days without writing a short novel, so I will do my best to summarize.  We made it to Manila and to our hotel without any trouble, but as soon as we woke up and walked outside we knew we wanted to get out of the city.  Luckily it didn’t take long to secure two tickets on a night bus to Banaue, a town famous for 2000 year old rice terraces carved into the mountains.  We arrived at the bus station, which was a few benches under a tin roof next to a single beat up bus.  The estimated travel time was around 9 hours so we were supposed to get to Banaue sometime in the morning.  Little did we know that we would get stuck about half way in a traffic jam.  It took 5 horrible action movies and a total of 15 hours to get us to our final destination, where we got a room with a view and a private bathroom for nearly half the price we paid in Manila. 

The next day we joined Rob, a traveller we got to know on the bus from Manila on an adventure to Batad.  The three of us hopped into a trike (motorcycle with a covered side carriage) and started the 45 minute drive on one of the worst roads imaginable.  Just as we were reaching the last bend up the hill the tire on the carriage blew out, so we ended up hiking to the junction and started up the hill to Batad.  We didn’t know much about the hike but the guide book didn’t seem to mention that it was too difficult so we weren’t worried.  The “not so difficult” hike turned into a solid six hours of stair master but it was totally worth it.  The scenery was absolutely stunning, walking up and down the steep terrain and through the rice terraces finally ending at a massive waterfall which provided a great place to cool off.  It was a bit tough for some as you can see on Megan’s face, but we made it and slept well that night. 

Today we took a Jeepeny to Sagada another town in the Mountains further north, its very peaceful hear and we even got to play some volleyball with the locals just before the sun went down.  We plan on staying here a few days but nothing is really planned…