misstinapie

Like I've said, there's a trick to to this Banaue View Points. If I remember correctly there are 4 view points wherein each view can give you a different perspective of the Rice Terraces. I can't help but use tilt shift effect, it's so cute!  If you're blown away by the first one you'd see, imagine your grin when you see the last of the view points. Your old 1000 peso bill and the iconic view is such an amazing experience I don't think that I will stop holding my breath each time I will get a chance to see it.

When we planned our trip I never imagined we would need somewhere to stay in Banaue. I did inquire for Sagada hotels, and this is quite misleading because Banaue is a bit far from Sagada proper so if it's your first time going up to Sagada, make yourself a favor and reserve a room in Banaue if you're going to visit Banaue and vice versa. There's only a handful of inns in Banaue and primarily because tourists are much more concentrated in Sagada. Most of the time, inns here cater to travellers who just needed somewhere to spend for the night. Perhaps one of the rare things you could ever find here up in the mountains is parking. There are few cheaper inns but we chose to stay in Spring Village Inn because they have ample parking that will make us comfortably sleeping in the night :-D The room they gave us have two beds and a hot shower. We even have a balcony that overlooks the Cordilleras. The price of the room (2k) makes up for the earlier inn we went to (pri...

From the Banaue Museum, we asked if there is anywhere we can go that is within range. You see, what most bloggers don't tell you is that Banaue is filled with places to go: hotsprings and treks and old villages that I hate it that I didn't know earlier or we would have set the roadtrip earlier so we would have gone. Anyway, the curator said that Banaue Hotel is just around the corner and we can have our dinner there. So we did and sure enough this is the only hotel in the area that has much space for cars to park, and enough space for more rooms than other inns. The reason why we didn't booked here is well, you guessed it, it's because of the price. It's just too much for a stop over. Before dinner, we went around, which is okay even if you're not a guest and were able to spot their souvenir shop. We didn't get to see their so called village, we only saw one Igorot house and that was it. I was able to buy myself a bag from the shop as souvenir ...

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 t...

More trees. And houses. After 2 hours, my sisters have to do a number 1. We figured it will be another long drive so they went out to the last gas station of the day. I've already spent 1500 earlier and we filled now with 500. We're using diesel so we have a much cheaper option. By 2 pm we reached a cute gas station. You will never miss it as it has a really distinct decor. The Safari Adventure (Gas) Station Kids will surely enjoy this place! It's refreshing to see a quirky station out of all the monotony of the day. And what do you think about that Mr. Bean right there? Kinda cool don't you think? For as long as it's the morning anyway. I would totally freak out seeing that in the middle of the night. Just look at those eyes boring in your brain. Eee!!! Unnamed View Point I might have missed if there were any signs to declare the name of the view point it but we stopped for this special place anyway. It overlooks the turn to Banaue and ...

First pitstop of the day was Kuya Lar's. It's a small airy place for travelers who wanted to grab lunch before a much longer journey. We arrived here almost 12pm exact but not that much customers around. We were seated as soon as we went out of the car.  They serve local food, carinderia style so if you're really picky, you're better of going back and find yourself fastfood or any fancy food you can think of. However, they do have servers and heat your food so that is a plus.  We had fried fish, laing and ginataang langka. We also brought out our adobo. Their food is really carinderia-ish (haha) so don't expect too much. I was a bit disappointed with the langka, the bangus is a huge cut, as for the laing, well, I never touched laing in my life so I've no idea but family said it was perfect.  And oh, before I forget. Out of snacks? Well, grab yours here too: (Sorry if I can't post our total bill because I missed logging i...

This year we planned on going to one of the most sought after vacations in the upper region of Luzon-- Sagada. Officemates planned on Boracay but I'm not really a fan of beaches so I'd rather spend it in the cold mountains, far from the humid salty air of a lower sea level region. Initial IT was Manila-Banaue-Sagada-Banaue-Manila but we ended up doing a Manila-Banaue-Sagada-Bontoc-Baguio-Manila trip. Cool huh? We get to do a round trip around the Cordillera region! March 27 We left Cavite around 4am, arrived at MoA to fetch my sister from work and left around 5am and had a sweet quick ride via NLEX. When I woke up we're already at Cabanatuan (around 9/10 am).  There are 3 of us in the photo. She's also not aware she's on it. Maybe one of the attributes of being there that early is because not everyone is out on the streets yet. So if possible, you find yourself planning for a road trip, be early ahead of everyone going up. It's not...