Stone-Walled Rice Terrace of Batad

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The next day, Rahima and I went to the town of Batad. We got a bit of a late start, but we hired a tricycle to take us to the Batad Junction, about an hour away. Tricycles, however, cannot make it up the last segment of the road past the Junction to the Batad Saddle (the way down to the town and terraces) because the road is so bad. Jeepneys can, but you have to rent them for 1500, instead of the 300p for a tricycle. So, we had to start walking.


Luckily we were smart and left our big packs in Banaue. The 45-minute walk to the Saddle was all uphill and at 12noon, I was sweating like you wouldn’t believe. We basically walked up a mountain to the top, where the “saddle” begins, and you walk down the other side of the mountain to reach the town of Batad. Not vehicles can go down the saddle…walking only. After a pit stop at the top, we started the hour walk down to Batad. Still hard,

but downhill is much easier than up!


At last we

reached the town. Wow. The town is on one side of a beautiful stone-walled, amphitheater shaped rice terrace. The views were unbelievable from every

angle! Rejuvenated a bit, we found a guesthouse with a great view and had some lunch. Around 2:30 we decided to hike to the Tappia waterfalls on the other side of the terrace. We took our time heading down, taking pictures and asking the local children which way to go. If we headed down the wrong path they started to shout “No no nooooo!” so it was easy to figure out.


The stone path led across the terrace and past a little house, where the route started back up. We met an older French woman, Francoise, who said we had much further to go and why did we start so late?! Oops. We joked that we’d hurry, and she said she’d send a search party if we weren’t back by seven! We stepped it up a notch and rounded the corner of the terrace, only to find a winding staircase headed down, with no waterfall in sight. Hm. The way down was a little treacherous, with loose rocks on the steep steps. The view of the mountains and the winding river was gorgeous, if one dared to look up!


I began to hear a rumble and sure enough, we finally found the waterfall! The 30m waterfall flowed into a large pool surrounded by green cliffs. I would have like to swim, but it was getting late, and the water was freezing. I was satisfied resting my feet in the water and gazing around for 20 minutes before we decided it was necessary to head back to arrive before it was dark.


Hiking back at a fast pace, we ran into two other travelers, one from Ireland and the other from Atlanta! Oddly enough, he works with my high school boyfriend…talk about small world! We huffed and puffed back to the top, and then shared dinner with our new friends. It was a little spooky to find the way to our guesthouse after the sun had gone down…only a few places had electricity.


Our guesthouse had a nice balcony restaurant and Francoise was having her dinner there. She saw us and said “It’s 8 o’clock! I was so worried!” Whoops. I apologized for worrying her (honestly, I thought it was a joke!) but I guess it’s nice to have someone care where you are! I then took a freezing shower and hit the hay.

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