Day 5: Discovering Sagada

Dear diary

I woke up earlier than usual to pray and to have a walk around the cottage. I ate my breakfast at St. Joseph Café and had a cheese and herb omelet (Ed: the omelet was definitely to die for, all creamy and gooey inside it was), and surprisingly I chose coffee over tea (normally I am a tea person). I was surprised to find that that I loved drinking the local coffee.

We went to the St. Mary the Virgin Church and joined Aron, Shu Yi, Melissa, and Dr. Yeoh who where there. After church, we were accompanied by Darwin and Dandan (two local boys we met at St. Joseph’s Café, who decided to be our impromptu tour guides) to Echo Valley. We faced muddy lands, slippery rocks, and a steep landscape and arrived at the Hanging Coffin area and took some pictures of the wonder of such a feat.

We continued climbing to the exact place where a French tourist passed away about a month ago. We shouted the names of our loved ones and tried to find a way out with the help of a very friendly dog. This dog came out of nowhere to help us when our previous guides, Darwin and Dandan went home.
(Ed: Maya started calling the dog, Foot-long and the name kinda stuck whenever we saw Foot-long around Sagada)

After stopping at Sagada Weaving to shop for the some gifts to bring home, the next hot spot we went to was a small waterfall, where we passed by Mary Carling’s (the great lady who helped coordinate our visits to local NGOs from the Philippine end) house on the way there. We faced a pretty tough landscape getting to the waterfall but survived! The water was freezing but we didn’t care. We started taking off our shoes and walked across the small pond with our bare feet. We splashed water on each other and took some pictures. Pooi Yarn even dared me to put my hands into the water as long as possible.


After leaving the waterfall, we went back to St. Joseph’s Café to have lunch. After I ordered a dish of boneless Bangus (fish), I realized that one of my fingers was bleeding (it must have bled while I held the rough grass when climbing up the hill). So while the others waited for their food, I went to my cottage and put a plaster on the bleeding finger.

After lunch, we went back to the cottage to get ready for dinner with the priest from St. Mary’s, Father Jerry. We ended up at having dinner at Masferres, a small restaurant with him.

Back at the cottage, 9 of us girls living together found out that nobody had the key to our cottage. We had accidentally locked ourselves out while making the assumption that someone had the key. I tried to open the door with a hair pin but failed. Finally one of the workers at the guest house came with screwdriver and opened the door with it since they could not find the spare key.

We all went into the attic in the cottage and celebrated the birthdays of the December girls with a pie. We all wish you a wonderful year, girls. :-P

By Dyah