It’s more fun in Sagada

(Originally published in my sports page column Self-Propelled

in the Feb. 12 to 18, 2012 issue of the Baguio Chronicle

--- a weekly newspaper based in Baguio City, Philippines.)

IT was another exciting week after putting to bed the Baguio Chronicle the other Friday night. Reaching home at around 10 o’clock, nothing compares to the joy of seeing my family waiting in the comfort and privacy of our humble home. The puppies, yes, Timmy and Carmel, competing for attention like we did not see each other for many years.

After settling down, I reached out for my ukulele and tried to belt out some tunes from the past and songs about unfulfilled promises and a love-gone-wrong. But not for long, for fear that tears would betray me, I took a warm bath instead.

But my ukulele, waiting naked on the sofa, is too difficult to resist. And it sounded as sweet, yet melancholic, as the night wore on. I walked towards the fridge for a chilled beer.

It was well past one o’clock in the morning when fellow photographer-writer Harley Palangchao picked me up. With us is another photographer and Baguio Chronicle regular contributor Larry “The Fabulous” Fabian.

Destination: Sagada, Mt. Province and sleepless. I bid my ukulele a sad goodbye.

And what is normally a breathtaking view during daytime deep into what is more known as the Mountain Trails, our night travel proved to be more exciting as nature treated us to a moon-lit panorama as far as the eye can see as the mercury dropped to levels unheard of in Baguio whose trees are fast dwindling because of “progress”. Fifty kilometers into our trip, pass the Highest Point in Sayangan, I brushed aside the visual temptation and plunged into a half-sleep.

I was teasing our driver over breakfast later by saying that I remember hearing maybe just three songs from his car stereo before we reached Sagada, implying that it took him a little more than an hour less from the normal travel time. We were travelling practically at the speed of sound.

Sagada was still asleep when we arrived, enough for us to catch a few minutes of rest at a home-stay accommodation earlier arranged for us by no less than Mayor Eduardo Latawan, Jr.

Breakfast at Alfredo’s was rather anticlimactic when the cultural parade and street dancing started and we scampered to position with our cameras dangling from our necks like a pendulum. The street was overflowing with locals and tourists and photographers, a lot of them foreigners. But it was less chaotic compared to the Baguio Flower Festival where crowd control marshals are nothing but killjoys, foul-mouthed and plainly incompetent S.O.B.s. There are no power-tripping marshals in Sagada. The organizers are more cordial and media-friendly. It was less commercialized and it is not intended to be commercialized.

And what was originally planned as a one-day love affair in Sagada became two days. Photographers do not just abandon a cultural event like the Etag Festival and a town like Sagada. There is still the tribal sports competition and the Sagada Mountain Mayhem all-mountain and downhill challenge the next day. We consolidated with the group who came in from Banaue with Baguio Chronicle’s Ofelia, Northern Dispatch’s Alma, professional photographer EliCon and Ms. Linda Fines of the Dept. of Tourism. We swore to stick it out and go home together as a group.

And so we called it a day. SanMig Lights tasted a lot better in Sagada than in Baguio it seemed and tons upon tons of laughter and fun on the side. Bonding at its finest!

My idiot phone’s alarm woke up four o’clock in the morning and it took me about five seconds to figure out I was in Sagada and I later became the center of poking about it. We drove to a forested barrio hoping to photograph a Sagada sunrise, but thick fogs did not allow us and for one brief moment, we were a bit superstitious about it.

But the photoshoot at a nearby rice terraces later and the Sagada Mountain Mayhem was more than redemption and perhaps photography proselyte Ofelia’s crowning moment.

At the Sagada Mountain Mayhem, adrenalin rush was not only high among the bikers but also among us photographers.

Like infantrymen in a foxhole or trench, we squeezed into an 8-foot deep canal that allowed us a skyward angle and take photos of the bikers while in midair as they jump their two-wheel iron horses across the 8-foot wide canal. It is perhaps the location of the entire 1.5 kilometers stretch of the downhill portion of the two-day sporting event where we spent most of shooting time.

Before I go, I would like to thank Mayor Latawan and Vice Mayor Richard Yodong for the warm accommodation and of course, the unlimited food.

As they say: It’s more fun in Sagada!*