DAY 436: I have been backpacking for quite a while now and each day on the road I've gotten a little more wiser in the game, more so than the average person in the daily routine of sitting in a car and then at a desk and then on a couch in front of the boob tube. My relatives on my father's side of which I was with, were sort of clueless on backpacker travel; the day before, I had to remind my uncle to not only lock his guestroom door, but close his window to keep thieves from entering.

"Ah, you're already used to [this,]" he told me.

That morning we started bright and early at day break for the trek back up the valley from the village of Batad in the middle of the famous rice terraces. I had lugged by big backpack with me along with my daypack as I didn't know what to expect. My uncle thought the pack would be too heavy to go uphill with, and wanted to hire a porter.

"No, it's okay," I told him. "I've gone five days with heavier."

"Okay."

JayPee took my daypack and the four of us trekked back up the way we came, which was understandably a lot harder to do going uphill. We must have stopped six times over the course of an hour. (And why not? It wasn't a race or anything.) Up at the top, my Tito Pepito noticed our jeepney driver waiting. "Look, he's laughing at us."

We trekked on through the morning mist and the coming of the rising sun, until we made it to the jeepney, tired, sweaty, but feeling good.

"Good exercise!" Tito Pepito raved. "Masarap!" ("Refreshing!")

Our jeepney driver drove us, along with the usual stowaways on the roof, down the rocky and dusty mountain road back to Banaue. There was only one thought on my uncle's mind: Saan ng coche? ([Dude,] where's my car?) It was there, just as we left it, only with a lot more dust on it -- so much we could write words. JayPee taught me a new Tagalog one, "Astig!", the latest slang for "cool."

"OKAY, NEXT ADVENTURE," I said. It was only about nine in the morning. Tito Pepito made a reservation for us at the Sanafe Lodge in Banaue that night; in the meantime, it was time to go off on our next excursion, to the town of Sagada, about 2-3 hours away along another dusty mountain road. We couldn't leave right away though, because some sort of a homecoming parade was going on in the main street of Banaue. Beauty queens waved to the crowd from the back of makeshift floats, followed by high school marching bands, one of which played "Do Re Mi" from The Sound of Music. This is not surprising to me at all; The Sound of Music is "industry standard" in many Filipino households (at least in the States it is) as it is a musical beloved by most Filipinos. For me, the most memorable part is when Friedrich sings "Goodbyyyye!" in his high-pitched voice in "So Long, Farewell." Does that kid sing like he had just been kicked in the nuts or what?

The road to Sagada was a dusty one, dustier than before -- so much that my uncle and aunt wore handkerchiefs as dust masks to prevent from inhaling too much. The road was also a hair-raising one for the acrophobic, which JayPee was. Ironically, he was wearing an air-brushed Spider-Man costume t-shirt his brother Joey had made. "I'm Spider-Man, but I'm afraid of heights," he said as the jeepney approached the edge of some really steep cliffs.

SAGADA LIES IN THE CENTER of the Bontoc region, a much higher region where pine trees flourish, where the Bontoc tribe still lives today in co-existence with Episcopalian missionaries and their followers. It was a much smaller town than the already small town of Banaue, and for me, it was like any other little rural town on the backpacker trail. It was weird to see European backpackers in the streets, this time being on "the other side," traveling with local tourists. Funny, I always thought it was weird to see local tourists tour their own developing country, and there I was, a part of it.

We wandered the dusty town center looking for a place to eat and settled down for a bit. "This is my life for the past year," I told my uncle when we finally sat down to a meal in a little restaurant. "I end up in a place like this and try and find a place to stay."

We hired a guide at the town's tour office across the street (the only one in town) and then hopped back in the jeepney to see some sights. Our driver and guide took us to Sumigang Cave, known locally as "the big cave," for its massive interior. Along the way, I anticipated having to leave my bags in the easily-accessible interior of the jeepney, and went through my regular routine of transferring my laptop to my portable safe and chaining all my valuables to a pole in the cab -- all without bringing much attention to myself.

Meanwhile, my aunt pointed out that my uncle's sneaker soles were coming loose. My uncle tried to stick the two pieces together with no luck. "Here, I have duct tape," I said. I wrapped his shoes together, proving once again that duct tape usually saves the day in so many versatile ways. In Zambia, I managed to fix the inner workings of Shelle's digital camera, simply with a paperclip and a piece of duct tape.

"You're like MacGyver," my uncle said.

THE SUMIGANG CAVE WAS NOT ONLY BIG, but dark too, which is why hiring a guide was a good idea. Although I had my headlamp with me, it was nowhere as bright as the hefty oil lamp our guide had with him. It wasn't just the five of us in the cave; as Sagada's main tourist attraction, there were many groups and guides along the interior trails. It was funny to encounter French and Danish backpackers along the way.

What we didn't expect Sumigang Cave to be was an adventure out of Goonies or something. Within the cave was an underground stream, forming pools of water to wade through, and at some deep areas, swim in. The water made every part of the trail more treacherous. "Slippery when wet," JayPee said.

"I thought this was just going to be sightseeing," my uncle said. "But it's an adventure."

Our guide led us around the cavern as it descended deeper and deeper into the earth's crust, deeper and deeper in water levels (picture above). At a halfway point we were instructed to take our shoes off and simply go barefooted -- another surprise for the city slickers. There were many limestone stalactites and stalagmites, and other weird rock formations -- one of which was in the shape of a pregnant woman, so they told us. "They even painted it red," JayPee noticed, motioning to the crotchal region. My uncle leaned over to pose as if he was copping a feel.

As much of a MacGyver I was, I hadn't really anticipated the cave exploration would entail getting chest-deep in cold water. Luckily my uncle and aunt hung back before we got to that section, to hold my valuables and my camera. JayPee and I went ahead into the lower stream areas, where we had to duck and squeeze through narrow passage ways, lit up by the oil lamp. Water flowed around us and it ultimately led us to a big underground swimming hole at the end, where a group was already jumping in doing cannonballs.

"Astig!" raved JayPee.

"Astig!" I seconded.

We swam until enough was enough, then climbed back out via a climbing rope along an inner waterfall. We met the others and hiked up to where our shoes were. It was there I taught them another habit I'd learned on the road: always check your shoes for scorpions before you put them on.

THE OTHER BIG SIGNIFICANCE OF SAGADA is the scattering of tombs around the outskirts of town, established centuries ago by the Bontoc ancestors. Tombs were found under the overhangs of cliffs, and in the middle of jagged rock formations; we saw a couple along the way back into town. From there we changed clothes and then hopped back in the jeepney bound back to Banaue. It was a dustier ride than before; dust penetrated every inch of the jeepney interior and all we could do was grin and bear it.

Two hours later we were back in Banaue, in front of the Sanafe Lodge. We were all completely covered in dust -- our hair even went all gray it seemed. I was wearing my big backpack, also full of dust, and we looked like soldiers coming back home from battle.

"Do you want the dorm?" the manager asked us.

"No, I've been here two times already! We have a reservation," Tito Pepito argued. Suddenly she remembered.

"They don't even recognize us," he told me.

It might not have been the dust that disguised us; perhaps over the course of the day, after hiking and caving and slumming it up in a dusty beat-up jeepney, my city slicker relatives had been transformed so much that they just emitted the backpacker vibe to others. It runs in the family, after all.

SAVE THE DATE; DAY 503 IS COMING. MARCH 5, 2005, NYC.
DETAILS AND TRAILER COMING SOON...

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THE ASIAN TSUNAMI. (Mine went to www.unicef.org)

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