One of the most memorable trips I have ever been was to Sagada Mt. Province. It was a planned trip with my childhood friends. It took us 6 hours to arrive by bus from Baguio to Sagada town proper.
It was already dark that time when we arrived in Sagada. Luckily we booked our accomodations online and a shuttle bus took us to Rock Inn & Cafe. It was where we stayed for 2days and 3 nights.
Rock Inn & Cafe is actually a good place to stay. It has a homey vibe. It also has an orange orchard where you can pick some oranges when its in season. Although it is far away from Sagada proper, for me, it is still a nice place to stay when you prefer a not so crowded place and a scenery there is very beautiful.
Lumiang Sumaguing Caving
Our journey started around 7am where we headed to Sagada Town Proper. We were lucky to met some good people who let us ride in their van. When we arrived at the town proper, we registered at the Tourist Center and rented a tour guide for our caving trip. Our first stop was in Lumiang Cave where there were lots of coffins and some bones were scattered on the ground. We were not allowed to touch anything there (coffins and bones I mean) and actually I am a little bit scared to see some skulls. Mostly, those buried there were a hundred years old already as per our tour guide.
We took a picture there before we entered the cave.
Lumiang and Sumaguing cave were connected, there we experienced a lot of difficulties- we climb narrow tunnels, we pulled our body over rocks, we slide, pulled ropes. I even got both of my legs cramps! I thought I'm going to die there since I was hanging over the cliff. When I looked down I can't see anything below and I started to panicked. Luckily, both of my friends were nurses and they helped me calmed down. My friend pulled me off the cliff and massaged my cramped legs. I am so thankful to God that nothing serious really happened there. After that incident, I became more focused and more careful. Once we saw those majestic views of Sumaguing's stalagmites and stalactites, I felt so proud of myself that I overcome those difficulties.
Echo Valley and Bokong Falls
After caving, we went trekking on echo valley, it's a long walk where we saw some hanging coffins. Our guide told us an interesting facts about why locals hang coffins, and that is because locals believe that the higher the coffins the closer they are to heaven.
After a long walk, we stop and ate our lunch at the underground river called Lake Danum. We had a very long walk but I didn't feel so tired. After we ate our lunch we started to walk again until we reached Bokong falls. There, my friend tried to dive and he enjoyed it. The water is cold. I just watched some tourist have some fun in the water while taking some pictures. That was last on our list. When we came back to town, we just went to a local canteen and ate some pinikpikan- a native chicken delicacy, we also went to buy some souvenirs. I am so happy that I have visited Sagada. We still have a lot of places we want to go to but we don't have enough time so we promised to come back again next time. We want to explore more caves and more scenic views such as the Marlboro Hill and Bomod-ok falls.
I wish to visit there again when this pandemic ends!