The Panorama Series – Banaue Rice Terraces, Banaue, Philippines

I’ve been posting the last few days some pictures from the Banaue Rice Terraces in the northern Philippines. This panorama hopefully gives you a feel in regards to the expansive rice terraces, and by scrolling around, zooming in and out you might get a feel for the enormity of this impressive landscape. When I took this panorama our group was just coming to the end of our hike, but we still had to cross this chasm of terraces. We had hiked for a number of hours already and were a bit undecided which way to go. We started at the village on the opposite end from where this picture was taken, took the top way around these terraces, wrapped around the mountainside behind us, and continued on to another village. We also hiked to a beautiful summit view and all of this had pretty much worn us out at this point. We decided to split up here; Femke and I would walk straight down in and among the terraces, through the village in the middle of the panorama near the base of the terraces, and then hike back up again to the village located at the top of the hill on the other side. Ron and Alex would take the easier route around the top edge of the terraces.

I won’t say the route Femke and I took wasn’t tiring. It was. But the views were energizing and we were both glad we chose to go this route. This was our last day here, so after our hike we had to hurry and take showers, change, and strap on our gear for the next hike up from the village to the only road back to civilization which was about two miles away. We made it, but my legs were jelly at the end, especially after the final grueling steps up to the main road – about 200 of them – with my backpack getting heavier by the step.

What I haven’t mentioned either until now is that the day we arrived at this village another backpacker had drowned in the river at the base of one of the waterfalls. The waterfalls were a very popular spot to hike to, and a few days before when our bus pulled up to the end of the road the first backpackers in that group coming back to the road had just arrived. The drowning had just occurred and reports were being made. Police streamed in the next couple of days to search for the missing person, carrying their survival and rescue gear from the road down to the village and the waterfall further on. When we left a few days later they were still searching for the missing body. It was a tragic event, and one that as a backpacker keeps you aware and on your toes. Tragedy can happen to anyone, anywhere, and at anytime. The backpacker had admitted to his group that he couldn’t swim, but the water beneath the falls was only knee deep. I’m imagining that this person was lulled into a false sense of security seeing the other tourists in the water and felt it was safe enough. Nobody knows what happened. The other people say they saw this person in the water but when it was time to get out this person was nowhere to be found. A fast current, slipping on a rock, anything can quickly change a calm moment into a frantic one. I never found out if they found the missing body.