The Cordillera Road Trip: EP04: Banaue Rice Terraces and Banaue Museum (03.24.2013)

It's already late in the afternoon and Sagada is too far away so we looked first for a place to stay for the night. They gave us a map of Banaue which upon inspection and much deliberation, we ended up not getting any of those Hot Springs and Village visitations since it will require at least hours of trek. It will be hard for us to get back.

Banaue Rice Terraces

The nearest we could go to was the View Point. Our map says it's just before the bend where the houses ends so we went there, still by car to save more time.

Other than 2 or 3 foreigners, we are free to gawk at the lovely site. There's a lone souvenir shop up here and I bought a carved small Ifugao house worth 30 pesos.

After the sight seeing we went back to try to look for the Banaue Museum. It took a while for us to see it that we ended up on a dead end. It was a grueling task for my father to drive our car back down because it was really narrow but he managed anyway. Back down we realized that the museum was just near the climb. Seesh.

The Banaue Museum

Was quite scary because a huge dog was guarding the steps up. He's on a cage but he looks like he could snap my neck. Although late, we were accommodated in and was toured somewhat by the curator. She explained to us the things we saw, shared stories and purpose of the artifacts.

One of the sad things that I learned was how this entire collection is a private collection of a foreigner. It's awful that we have to thank a man (or woman) of a different origin to preserve this much culture we ourselves could not do :-(.

Although they've cramped the space with artifacts and the likes, I think a larger space would give everyone, especially for big parties to feel the space. It's like whenever there's a sale it's tad hard to take everything in.


If I could only document each and every piece into memory I would. It's a good material especially for writing something. It still amazes me how a lot of native gods and goddesses have not reached Google yet too! Take this for example. He's my favorite:

One day Pu-Woh. I will write something about you

I know the trip to the museum would not offset our missed trekking. But I surely would recommend, especially to a writer needing an inspiration to visit this place. It's bursting with material!

Entrance fee is 100 php per head. We weren't informed of a time limit but we were lucky to be the only guests so they kept up with us :-D