The last leg of the sagada trip

UGGGGHHHH It's been 2 weeks again since my last update, and trust me, I did try to write a few times, but a few words in and I just kept falling asleep. I hate it and I hate how tiring work has been getting, esppecially since it's supposeed to be the lax season again (cuz of the rain). Unfortunately, our international clientelle had other plans so it seems we'll be busy the whole year round this year.
Anyways, this was the last leg of my sagada tripping. The latter half of my second day up there, and I might also add up until we went home because the last day was pretty much uneventful.

So here we go!

Based on the last thing I wrote, I stopped after the church visit. And after that, we went on to see the cemetery.
Weird for a travel tour to include a cemetery vist, yes. But what's special about this place is the burial type they had.

So on the entrance, and at surface level, it basically looked just like a regular cemetery here. But what's strange here was that there were some tombs that have empty slots next to them. The guide explained to us that those were reserved for their spouses. When a married person dies, the spouse is expected to be buried right next to them so that even in death, they could be together. It's also rare for the people there to be buried in the ground, in the case that they do, it's a really shallow one. This was attributed to the fact that they would like to be protected by the light even when they die.
What I thought was sad were the graves with only one person buried in them. It made me question if they died as a child, or if they died single and never got to experience love. Now that would really be sad.

Now this cemetery was on a top of yet another mountain with steps that are so dang uneven that I had to be extra careful with each step I took. While on the way down, to where our real destination was, our tour explained that we were already in echo valley. That's where they shout their wishes and grievance for their departed loved ones, and only locals are allowed to shout and hear the echoes becuase they believe it's an echo of their ancestors' voices too. It was a very pretty valley, but what freaked me out was that each opening from the caves could hide a body since burial land is free there and the citizens, especially the elders, choose the most natural way to go, if that were possible.
Come the bottom of the valleys, and you find yourself face to face with one of the uniques burial methods of Sagada, by hanging coffins.

I forgot what year the oldest coffin was hung there, but the most recent one that got hanged there was from 2012. If I recall, to be allowed up there, they have a criteria to uphold

One was that they are a true citizen of sagada and have already established a few generations in the small city, so they need children and grandchildren a t least, to be honored up there
Next is that they need to have died of natural causes like old age. Now this was a tricky requirement because a lot of people there die from diseases all the time, and the cool thing is that the city itself has specific sites for different causes of death, like if you died of childbirth or pregnancy complications, I'm told you get buried in lumiang cave. I didn't get a better answer as to why they did this, it's just said to keep things segragated despite the burial rituals being one and the same.
What stuck the most to me was that they will always seek protection of the light. And they don't claim it as something related to heaven, it was just a very pagan belief of the sun being the protector.
Another grueling history lesson on my side, I know, but that didn't end there.
After a crazy hike back up those insanely uneven steps, we made our way to the bomod-ok waterfalls trail. It was an estimated 1.5 hour hike down then the hike up... well, that depended on how fast your group could hike XD What our group did though, was cheat the first leg by riding on a jeepney. Not in it, but on it.

Look at the happy children, not aware of what we had to go through to get to the falls XD
To be fair, it was already starting to rain when we rode that jeep and we spent the entire waterfall hike in the rain. It was extremely refreshing, yes, but also very very cold

I'm giving my sister an F for taking such bad photos of me during our hike, but at least I have photos, right?
Look at this soaked kid. We had to traverse through steps nad steps of paddy fields just to get a glimpse of the waterfalls. Crazy because rice paddies do not do a good job as wind blockers so throughout the entire hike, me and my sister huddled close while shivering too much. Took so long before our body could acclimize with the weather.
So after an hour of hiking down, I saw one of the biggest waterfalls I have ever laid eyes on... and swam in, of course XD
Since I am known for waterfall chasing.

Like... It was just beautiful. And if it weren't raining, we probably would have soaked in the water a while longer because that spring water was just soooo refreshing, but soooo cold!
I wouldn't mind hiking through the rain again though if it lead to a waterfalls, it was extremely fun! And I actually can't imagine traversing through those fields on a hot day, I feel like I'd get a heat stroke or something so we were still somewhat lucky to have the experience we did.
After that, we went back up and ate at one of the really good eateries there. And my sister was so happy to experience her first boodle fight!

Here we are, all changed out of wet clothes and into very comfy dry clothes XD
I forgot what food they served, but it was mostly vegetable and native chicken meat and I really liked that because the whole meal just felt so organic.
After that, we all decided to skip the city tour and just go back to the accomodation for some well deserved rest. And rest we did because almost everyone woke up at like 8 or something, and it was nice because we all had dinner together and settled around the bonfire for the night.

An experience we probably won't get in the city again.
I believe we all went to bed a little late, but no complains because we kind of slept in the next day.
So at 8am, we were all packing up, we had breakfast and by 9, we were off and headed back to the city. We passed a few cities on the way down and the whole trip back basically got us home at around 8pm? we just ate out then by the time we got home, we just unpacked a bit aand knocked out.
That ends my sagada travels UwU hopefully soon, I can show what else is keeping me busy aside from work.
Thank you for reading!