Cagayan Valley Wara-wara

As mentioned in the previous posts, I spent the Holy Week break in Northeast Luzon with my friends Levicel and Rain. The first stop of the Cagayan Valley trip was in Santiago, Isabela. Armed with a map that Levicel printed from the internet, she thought Santiago would be a good jump-off point for the interesting sights (by and large old churches) in the neighboring towns. Our first day in Santiago was spent mostly at the Balay Santiago, which serves as the town's museum. Frankly, a half-day's stay in a small museum was too much for me, especially because it had nothing very interesting to offer except some unused calesas and a couple of higantes. It's a basic (newly constructed) Spanish-style house with capiz windows and a few exhibits on the second floor. I was quite relieved when Levicel's friend, Marson, picked us up and brought us to Magat dam, a few minutes away from the town center. It was my first time to see a dam and a humungous one at that. Since it is summer, the water level went down considerably, exposing a few islands that used to be hills but are now submerged in water.

The next day, before heading to our next destination, we visited a village that specializes in making patupat, the native delicacy of Santiago. It's a version of puso (rice wrapped in coconut leaves) but is instead made of sticky rice and cooked in boiling sugarcane juice. Each piece is very filling especially because it's super sweet. We did not even bother to eat neither lunch nor dinner the entire day.

Along the way to the next stop, I realized how Isabela (and in fact the entire Cagayan Valley region) is so blessed with such fertile soil perfect for agriculture. Its flat topography and the abundance of water courtesy of the mighty Cagayan River makes it an agricultural powerhouse. It is no wonder that majority of grains in the country is grown in the region. I swear, I have never seen fields of rice and corn as far as the eyes can see.

Our second day continued with a stop over in the Isabela's capital city, Ilagan. We asked around for the caves that we spotted in the map and were directed to a town fifteen minutes away. The caves proved to be disappointing because there were no guides available. So we proceeded to the next town called Tumauin to see the wonderful St. Mathias cathedral, which is like hundreds of years old. It is made of red bricks with an interesting conical bell tower that resembled a wedding cake. I'm really a sucker for old churches and this one did not disappoint me.

We were supposed to visit another old church two towns away but we could not find a van to take us there. In fact there was no van to take us anywhere especially because evening was fast approaching. Our recourse was to take bus back to Ilagan where we found a van that barely had enough space for three more passengers. At eight that evening we reached Tuguegarao City, which is the capital of the province of Cagayan. I particularly loved the towering old church of the city which resembled yet another wedding cake.

The next day, we took a long tricycle ride to Callao Caves. We had to take a small boat across one of the tributaries of the Cagayan River and climbed nearly 200 steps to reach the mouth of the cave. Where I came from we had a lot of caves as well but nothing prepared me for the enormity of those in Callao. Composed of seven main chambers, the height of each chamber probably equals that of a ten-story building. Most of the chambers are capped by huge openings that bring shafts of light into the middle of the cave. The second chamber was converted into a small grotto while the rest remain untouched. Maybe I should take that back because I was disappointed at the irresponsibility of some tourists who defaced the walls of the caves with graffiti. After the caves, our boat brought us up the placid river surrounded by steep limestone cliffs. We had a quick lunch at some rocks that serve as a picnic area (boring...). We immediately went back to Tuguegarao to take another van to the next town to see Calvary Hills. I simply refuse to talk about the kitsch that was Calvary Hills, so let's move on. We were supposed to still visit the renowned church of the Lady of Piat but yet again we did not have time. Instead we found ourselves in a van to Aparri.

Not in my wildest dream did I expect to reach Aparri, which had been made popular by the theme song of Eat Bulaga. It is not yet the northern-most tip of the country but it's definitely way up north. Well there's really nothing much going on there. It's just a small, quaint town hammered by a relentless cold wind. Aparri is not exactly our final destination yet so the next day we traveled further northeast to reach Palaui island, which is already on the fringes of the Babuyan channel. Only Batanes could've been "more north" than Palaui.

The medium-sized island is one of the undiscovered treasures of Cagayan Valley. While not exactly remote (only less than fifteen minutes from the main land) it does not have electricity nor water. Most of it is still covered by thick forest and sparsely populated. After reaching the island at 3pm we immediately headed to Cape Enganio, which we read about in a magazine. All the locals told us to get a guide lest we get lost in the forest, it is a 4.8 kilometer walk afterall. Being hardheaded bitches, Levicel, Rain, and I decided that we can find our way through the trail. We were pretty much saved early into our trek by a boy no less than six years old named Victoriano. At first he only seemed to be walking along with us but in no time he was already acting as our guide. He only spoke Ilocano, a language that none of us understood. Nonetheless, he headed the pack through mangrove, along a coastline, up the hills covered by gnarled branches and roots, down grasslands, and more forests. It was undoubtedly a long, challenging trek until we reached the cape two hours later.

Uninhabited, Cape Enganio is pure heaven with its white sand beach framed by tall mountains. We scaled a hill to reach a centuries-old lighthouse overlooking craggy cliffs and rock formations in the distance. What remained of the lighthouse are its thick walls and pretty much nothing else. It was in fact very eerie but the view is more than spectacular. We camwhored like hell as fast as we could. With the sun setting rapidly, we did not have time to swim in the clear water of the cape (sayang!) but decided to head back to the village instead. Without the adept Victoriano we could've easily lost our way in the darkness. We settled in a beach house that its caretakers allowed us to use for a fee. After a dinner of crackers (yes we did not bring decent food), we went to the shore to build a bonfire using coconut leaves (see previous post for the picture). Back to the house and tired from the long trip, we slept in the glow of candles.

Early the next day, a small boat brought us back to the mainland where we started nearly eighteen hours of land travel back to Manila.

See more pictures here!