A little help goes a long way

Librada De Castro Acuzar is not one to take things for granted.

A teacher at the Ambulong Elementary School (ES) in Batangas City, Teacher “Ada”, as she is more popularly known, has worked hard for every break that has come her way.

Life was not easy growing up for the second of 11 siblings. “My father was a farmer, and my mother did not have a job,” she said. They ate off the land and from the proceeds of whatever produce he was able to sell, she added.

Braving Sumaguing Cave

I’d seen pictures and read accounts of experiences at the Sumaguing Cave in Sagada. After a severe muscle cramp made walking torture at the Batad Rice Terraces and made itself felt the day before when we went up and down a hillside to view the hanging coffins, I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to go to Sumaguing Cave.

But I was the “promotor (promoter)”, a label my husband and sister-in-law had given me for getting them to walk kilometers up and down mountain trails to and from the Batad Rice Terraces. I was invincible. I had grit, adventure and spirit – which was slowly sinking at the thought of maneuvering over rocks in the dark, getting wet and rappelling up and down inside the cave.

Sagada, here we come

Noooooo. I did not go to Sagada because of that Tagalog movie called “That Thing Called Tadhana”. Please. Sagada isn’t about a movie. It’s about slowing down to the pace of a simple town, discovering practices and traditions, exploring caves and other natural attractions, enjoying gustatory delights in the cold mountain air, and finding out things about oneself and one’s family that you would otherwise miss in the hectic pace of urban Manila.

It took us almost three hours to drive some 66 kilometers from Banaue to Sagada using this route:

Nature's Mist in Banaue to Masferre Country Inn in Sagada

Our muscles still aching from the walk to and from Batad Rice Terraces the day before, I was rather dismayed yet amused to find that the initial part of the drive to Sagada was dotted with view decks for tadadah … the Banaue rice terraces.