I am sitting on the roof of a fully loaded Jeepney which is a locally manufactured transportation device loosely based on actual jeeps which the Americans brought over to the Philippines during the war.
They are built for about 16 passengers including the driver. On an average trip through the mountains of the Cordilleras they usually pack a few more people in and on them. The particular one I am on has 50 people just on the roof alone and that's on top of the luggage, literally.
I am chewing on some beetle nut somebody had offered me. It is a little bitter but not altogether unpleasant. Every 10 minutes or so your mouth fills up to your pallet with warm, acrid fluids. I watched the locals as they nonchalantly spit the juice in a bow over the edge of the jeepney. My attempts at that, ended with my belly including my camera being covered with evil smelling, bright red beetle juice. One guy took pity with me and gave me an empty plastic cup to spit into. He probably just wanted to protect the people sitting below and around me.
Besides not getting drenched in dark red, smelly saliva from above, sitting on the roof of as opposed to inside a jeepney has many advantages. Although you still only have about 10 square inches to sit on and your personal spot might be on top of a living pig, which had been sown into a sack you will at least get a lot of fresh air and pigs are generally quite soft. The most important part is the view though.
Riding on top of a jeepney is the only true way to savor the beauty of the majestic canyons of the Cordilleras with their steep slopes, which are now and then carved into gigantic stairs of rice terraces.
The downside is that you can actually see how far you would fall down if the jeepney would miss a curve on those extremely narrow roads. Riding like that, the road looks like they are barely wide enough for a rickshaw driver on drugs. But somehow the local drivers are not only able to navigate these unpaved dirt roads at high speed they even manage to pass each other nonchalantly without slowing down a lot. I strongly advice to take advantage of mild narcotic effects of chewing beetle nut to suppress any panic which is quite common among non-locals on these kind of rides.

Coming from Tabuk, the capital of Kalinga we are on our way to party in a village called Lubo in the municipality of Tanudan on the eastern side of the Cordilleras. A close friend of ours was born there and she invited us to join a festival so we can experience some of her indigenous culture. The Kalinga are tribal people and proud warriors. Until very recently it was not uncommon to see them going about their business in their traditional loincloth backed up with shield and spear. Nowadays they only wear their traditional woven cloths on special occasions and this festival we are going to being one of those. The Kalinga also have the reputation of being headhunters. They are not anymore, but they used to be. The practice was stopped a few years ago because apparently it had some negative effect on the local tourism industry.

Soon after leaving Tabuk the road snakes through small, grass covered hills, which gradually morph into jungle covered mountains. Rice terraces start to appear along the lower slopes. Part of the attraction of rice terraces is that, although they are man-made they do not only blend beautifully into the landscape, they actually add another dimension to it. Like the lines of a topographical map rice terraces enhance the contours of the mountains they are attached to. And even more marvelous, at this time of the year every step of those giant stairways is covered with a bright green, fluffy carpet of rice plants creating a powerful contrast to the dark green jungle and the roughness of the rock.

After about three hours travelling higher into the mountains the road became extremely washed out and the jeepney started to swerve and tilt dangerously prompting me to use a piece of rope from my camera bag and tie myself to the roof rack. Aside from the beautiful view and the constant fear of ending up at the bottom of a ravine the trip was rather uneventful. Only one pig got squashed because too many people sat on it and we lost a couple of guys from the roof in one particular tilted curve. I guess it's normal in this part of the world. Everybody thought it was extremely funny how those guys were catapulted off the roof and into the ravine. (they were not harmed, saved by some bushes which coincidentally grew in their flight path)

After being cooked in the blazing sun for about 4 hours we reached the end of the road. You could see Lubo from there, nested on a gentle slope like a giant flower with petals made of rice terraces. To get to it was an easy two-hour hike through the jungle and a river to the other side of the valley.

We were enthusiastically greeted by hordes of children of which many had never seen a white person before. And as if they needed to make up on it, they wouldn't let us out of their sight as long as we were in the village including those times when we were sleeping. We were hit by some good news and by some bad. The good news was that there was beer in town and the bad one was that there is no refrigerator. Just kidding. The real bad news was that they had cancelled the festivities because somebody wasn't able to fix the basketball loop in time and apparently it was meant to be a crucial part of the event. At least that's how I understood it.
The tribesmen didn't want to let the day go to waste. They decided to go ahead and butcher a water buffalo anyway and distribute the meat equally among themselves. To compensate for the lacking entertainment they whipped up a generator and showed the "Passion of Christ" at the local Baptist church.

Lubo doesn't have many old Kalinga style houses anymore. But even being surrounded by plywood and corrugated steel houses, and with the moaning sounds of the "Passion of Christ" in the background, we managed to feel pretty indigenous. Getting tired of warm beer we switched to Basi and gin. Basi is some kind of sugarcane liquor, which has a curiously individualistic flavor to it, similar to turpentine with a lemon twist. Luckily for the timid traveller there are alternatives. Like for example a certain drink made by mixing beer, gin and coke. They call it "Beergincoke" for some reason.
We had a couple of terrific days taking pictures of old tattooed warriors and listening to their stories of headhunting and tribal warfare. Although tribal warfare is still very common in Kalinga, there is nothing to worry about. It usually only involves the people of the particular tribes at war aside from the occasional mistaken identity.
After we exhausted the local supply of warm beer it was time to move on. The jeepney ride back to Tabuk was surprisingly smooth and this time around we only lost a couple of elders from the roof but every single chicken and pig made it alive.

There are 3 different routes you can take to and from Kalinga. One, and that is how we came up, is along the eastern provinces of Northern Luzon. Or, you come up in the west and cross the mountains from Abra to Kalinga. It is an amazingly beautiful ride, which we did on a different occasion and that is a different story. This time we decided to go back to Manila through the heart of the Cordilleras and thereby pass by many famous tourist sights. From Tabuk it took us about 3 hours to reach the capital of the Mountain Province, Bontoc and from there another hour to Segada. Segada is world famous for hanging coffins, bizarre rock formations and extensive cave systems. It is also world famous for it's good hashish which is probably mostly responsible for the funny names the locals have assigned to each of those rock formations. Also Segada is good for a few stories just by itself. We spent the evening with a fellow writer friend who lives there and for a change, with cold beer. Leaving from there you can choose to pass either the long route via Baguio to Manila or pass through the Ifugao province. Since we were far from being tired of seeing beautiful mountainscapes, we decided to check out the road to Banaue, the capital of the Ifugao province with it's world heritage, marvel of engineering, 2500 year old mothers of all rice terraces. Banaue and it's surroundings are also worth several stories on it's own, like the one when I had a chance to observe a burial ritual in the nearby village of Batad.
Lunch in Banaue concluded our little excursion through the Cordilleras of the Philippines.
You might think that if you have seen some of those rice terraces, you have seen them all. I have seen thousands of them over the years and I can't wait to get back and marvel at their beauty all over again and maybe suck a little on that bamboo flute full of "Beergincoke"

General Info

The Cordilleras is a mountain range that stretches over the whole center of Northern Luzon. It is sandwiched in between the La Union and Ilocos provinces on the east and Nueva Vizcaya, Isabella and Cagayan de Oro on the west. It is divided into 6 provinces (Apayao, Kalinga, Abra, Mountain Province, Ifugao and Benguet) which are home to many more individual tribes.
There are 3 ways to travel through the Cordilleras of the Philippines and it's famous rice terraces.
Hiking which is the most pleasurable. Bringing your own car is the most comfortable and riding on local transportation the most suicidal. I am just kidding of course although we do loose occasionally a few people from the roofs of Jeepneys. Wild river rafting in Kalinga has become very popular these days too. Get more info on that at: www.kalingadventures.com
Banaue, Batad, Bontoc, and Segada have a wide range of hotels and pension houses to stay. In Tabuk you can check in either at the Davidson Hotel or the Kalinga Hostel. In all other small villages you are most welcome to stay at the mission or at somebody's private house and if you ask nicely they organize some warm beer for you as well.

My version

In Kalinga everybody still knows me as "Chakor Way ...." or "Big White Hairy Ass" until this day that is. Slightly whacked by local intoxication devices, I approached a bunch of teenagers who seemed to be very curious and eager to communicate. I said:" Ask me something, what do you want to know? ask anything" Big mistake. The firts question :"Do you masturbate?" What do you answer to that to a teenager. After all I am the ASSIH the only person outside the porn industry who makes a living of masturbation. I had to answer truthfully," yes off course, every day." The general amusement level rose considerably at this point and I was bestowed a new honorable name" Everyday Susu". I don't think I have to translate that for you.

As published in Lifestyle + Travel Magazine, Sept/Oct 2004 issue.
Well, not exactly "as" published, more as in written by me before it got published.

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