The Cordillera Road Trip: EP11: First Things First at Sagada

As you can see on the map, from Bontoc, Sagada is quite near already. While we cruised around mountains, cold air hitting our face, we anticipate our very destination. It's unfortunate that we haven't explored Bontoc (they have hotsprings and treks too!) so for now I kept the brochures Bontoc guys gave me. It looks like next time I have to prepare a longer time to stay there too! 

The first thing any tourist should do is visit the community center. It's hard to miss as almost everyone's car is pointed there. There are two things that are I didn't like upon arriving Sagada: the morning sun is just too hot and the traffic nightmare of Vigan looks like this only steeper :-(. 

Tip If you can plan on your trip, plan it before summer. The streets aren't as full, and the weather would be nicer 

When we got there, we learned that each visitor needs to pay (20 per person) for environmental fees. I think they use it to pay up people who cleans the treks. We also want to get the best out of today so we got ourselves a tour guide with a tour especially made for 4 people within the day. It's 500 php for all of us combined. We don't need to add more since we already have a car. 

Tip Always bring your environmental fee receipt wherever you go in case the tourist area coordinator asks so you don't need to pay again

While we're eager to go already, we decided to find our accommodation for today and leave our stuff. Again, from the community center it's quite hard to maneuver a car so it took a little while to get to our inn.