Contributed by digger921

Ride Participants :

1. Randy Silva, randysilva
2. Ehran Morco, ehrbie
3. Roming Padrejas, mang roming
4. Dennis Guerrero, digger921

DAY 1

2 AM … As previously planned, we met at Shell Balintawak, checked our things, gased up, took a light meal, drank coffee and the smokers had a smoke or two … Before taking off, we got pictures of the odometer readings of our bikes, mine was 6564 kms … We geared up and prepared for the “Journey.”

(Snoozer21 signed up for the Sagada Trip, but wasn’t able to join the group because his child fell the night before and broke her hand and had to be rushed to the Orthopedic Hospital. There, they waited for his child to be treated and was released at 9AM)

3 AM … We took off, with lots of enthusiasm on our Sagada trip. We took Macarthur Hiway and passed through several towns of Bulacan, then headed to Pampanga and Tarlac. At around 5:15 AM, we had our first gas stop at Tarlac, Tarlac, approximately 120 kms aways from Manila, and 120 kms on to our journey. We also had our breakfast and had a little rest.

5:45 AM. We geared up and took off from Tarlac. We passed through Pangasinan and our next gas stop was at Rosario, La Union. That was at around 7:45 AM. After several minutes of rest, we took off for our next stop at Baguio City. We took Kennon Road for this is a shorter route than Marcos Hiway. We arrived at Baguio City after an hour and regrouped at the Petron Station. We filled up our gas tanks again and we eagerly took off for Halsema Highway. This highway leads to our destination, Sagada.

9:30 AM .. We took off from Baguio and headed for La Trinidad and after an hour of travel, we got through La Trinidad Benguet and was at the toll gate of the Halsema Highway system. The highway’s distance is approximately 100+ kms but was so notorious, that the travel time through this road takes 6 hours or even more. After several twists and turns (just like Marilaque, but 5 times more, 5 times the excitement), we reached Atok, and took our lunch there (11:15 AM) … We took a fast lunch and took off, very eager to reach our next stop, the Highest Point, (Philippine Pali). We took several group and solo pictures on that famous signboard (most of the forumers’ avatars were taken with the signboard as their background). The next photo stop was the big rock, shaved for highway use. At around 2PM, we arrived at the arc leading to the Mountain Province, with a signboard saying Dantal Junction (the junction leading to Sagada), 43 kms away. We were very excited to know that we are only a couple of kms away from our destination … But our excitement was broken off to see that the arc leads to the beginning of the highway’s unfinished road. We traveled through the rough road, with extreme caution, because the road was covered with a layer of rocks. We finished traversing the Halsema Highway at around 5:00 PM and was at the Dantal Junction. At last were we very near Sagada. But the rough road did not finish there. The sign only shows the number of kms of additional rough road we had to travel again. On that road, we were met by passing rain, we were told that every afternoon, Sagada experiences rains. We had to wear our raingears. But after a while the rain stopped. Rain also means that the dust becomes mud. We had to pass through a stretch of muddy road and we had to get dirty, so does our motorcycles. At one point of the road, the mud was so deep that we were almost stuck. We had to pull our motorcycles and slowly inched our way from the mud. After some minutes, the rough and muddy road ended, and we reached the town road of Sagada. 6PM, at last we made it to Sagada, safely. Thanks.

We went to our inn and unpacked our things and cleaned ourselves - we stayed at Alapo’s Inn and Cafe. We toured ourselves around town and had our dinner. At 8PM, we went back to our room and prepared to rest. Before doing so, we had a couple of laughs, recounting the experiences we had for the day and a had a couple of rounds of drink. Wheew …

End of Day 1.

DAY 2

6:00 AM. Wake up call. We have a very busy day ahead of us. We have to explore the wonders of Sagada. There are so many sites, but we have only a day. We need the help of a guide. We met a tour group, who came one day ahead of us, and a member also was quite a fan of Sagada, who has come back to Sagada thrice already. We joined them in their destination for the day, which was the Big Falls, or Bomod-ok Falls. Call time was 8:00 and we had to hurry our preparation. We ate our breakfast and went to the Municipal Information Center to fetch our guide. We were told that there was a ritual going on at the falls and we cannot visit that site, instead we will go to the small falls only. We were saddened by the turnout of event for we cannot see the big falls, which was a popular tour site in Sagada. Later, a news came that the ritual was already finished and we can now go to the Big Falls. Whew … we thought that we cannot see the view. We waited for a jeep, but we were told that the jeep will still have to be filled before it will leave the terminal. Since we only have limited time, we cannot wait long, so the tour group decided to ride our motorcycles. There were eleven of us, with only four motorcycles, meaning three of us will have two backrides and the fourth, one. We left the town center and headed to the drop-off point for the falls. We parked our motorcycles and secured them before leaving. We started our trek down to the falls. At the beginning, we were very jolly following our tour guide, Kuya Fred. But, after several minutes of walk, we constantly asked the annoying question of Donkey of Shrek, “are we there yet?” We reached the town below and we had ourselves registered. Then we continued our walk to the falls. After more than an hour of walk, we had the glimpse of the very beautiful view of the Big Falls. The awesome picture of Mother Nature, at its best. We hopped through several big rocks before reaching the water. We took several pictures of the falls and enjoyed the awesome view. We took a dip, the water was very cold. Brrrrr. At 10:30 AM, we prepared and started to trek back to the drop off point. If the trek down took us an hour, the trek up an hour and a half. The heat of the sun, and the walk exhausted us. We went back to the center and ate our lunch. After lunch, we went back to our inn and rested for an hour. After the rest, we called our guide and prepared for the next tour, the Sumaging Cave. We met our tour guide and headed for the cave. Before the cave, we passed through the burial site and took pictures of the hanging coffins and the regular small coffins at the Lumiang Burial Site. After that, we went to the Sumaging Cave. Our guide prepared the gas lamp and we started our descent to the cave. We were very excited because we saw several pictures of the cave and we want to experience ourselves spelunking in the cave. The rocks inside are slippery because of the filthy bat feces and we had to take caution in going down. It took us some time before seeing the rock formations inside. Again, we were amazed by the beauty of Mother Nature. Imagine the rocks inside the cave, carved by water flowing through it, crafting every stalactite and stalagmite hanging on the ceiling, wall and ground of the cave. Very awesome view. We took several pictures of the rock formations and we were very satisfied with our day’s tour. We were out of the cave at around 7:30 and started heading home again for a quick shower. We took our dinner and went back to our room. We packed our things and prepared for the day’s rest. We were very tired, and we need to wake up early for the trip home. Whew … more tiring Day 2 …

DAY 3 …
Because of the tiring tour we had on Day 2, the 5:00AM wakeup call became 5:30 and the 5:30 takeoff time became 6:30. We paid our room bill and went the church for a prayer and a visit. We took some pictures of the place and then went out to eat our breakfast. There at the restaurant, the fathers and sons group of offroaders arrived and we were very glad to meet fellow riders. (sir walang_silbi tsuri po ulit) … we were also told that they also have sirs wildman and batam with them … we took some pictures of them and their bikes. We went to the Information Center and requested for a certificate for our Sagada tour. Our guide arrived and signed our certificates, and lo, we are certified Sagada Adventure Survivors! Batam and Wildman arrived and we also took some group pictures. At 9:00AM, we took off and headed home, this time, we took the other route, the Banaue, Nueva Vizcaya route. Again, we passed through kilometers upon kilometers of rough road. And after several hours of travel, the rocky road ended and the pavement in Banaue began. The beginning of civilization awaits us. There we took the picturesque view of the Banaue Rice Terraces and tried riding the wooden bikes. Awesome, native bikes, ran by gravity. At 11:30AM, we took off and headed for Nueva Vizcaya. At Lagawe, we took our late lunch and took some time for rest. At 2:00PM, we took off and had our gas stop at Bagabag, Nueva Vizcaya. Before reaching Sta. Fe, we refilled our gas tanks because there are no gas stations at Sta. Fe - Dalton Pass - San Jose route. Again, we met passing rains and we wore our rain gears. After 30 minutes of rain, it stopped and we took off our rain gears and had a minute rest. From there we headed for San Jose City, but unfortunately, before reaching the city proper, one of us had a flat tire. We tried inflating the tire and ran the motorcycle, a cycle we repeated until we reached the city proper. At 6:00PM, and after several hours of travel, we were exhausted, and had a problems on hand. We tried to look for a vulcanizing shop who is capable of vulcanizing a punctured tubeless motorcycle tire, but several shops were already closed, or they cannot vulcanize this tire type. We looked for tire patch kits and we were fortunate to find a store selling these. We had the tire fixed after two hours, a single puncture, resulting to a travel downtime of two hours. Moral of the story, be prepared. At 8:00 PM, we tookoff San Jose City and continued our trip home. Before reaching Cabanatuan City, the patch came loose and again, the tire deflated. We were forced to use tube for the tire. At 10:30 PM, we reconed at Sta. Rosa, Nueva Ecija and we split ways. Mang Roming invited us earlier to go to Clark’s Fontana to visit her daughter there and have a rest. Ehrbie, Randy and Mang Roming headed to Clark, via Zaragoza and I headed to Manila. I arrived in Manila at 12:30 and was very very tired. They also arrived at Clark the same time I arrived in Manila. Thanks we arrived safe.

End of Day 3.

Day 4

Randy and Ehrbie should have gone to the office, but to the time of this writing, they haven’t gone online. (Randy texted me and informed me that they were not able to head home in the morning and missed office for the day). They should have reached Manila already and probably, Mang Roming is with his daughter still.

More photos can be seen in the ride thread.