A little late for the 3rd instllment of my little mountain adventure. I owe that to my suddenly inflating workload XD 10,000 samples for peroxide fusion came in and I started today by doing 400 of them since that's what the sample preparation could endorse to the lab right now.
Going back to my adventure... Well, day 2 was literally nothing but hiking, hiking, and more hiking!
The coordinator woke us up at an ungodly 3am of the following day. with that wake up call, she told us we only had 40 minutes to get ready, get dressed and get to the lobby because we were to go hiking!
4 am....
By 4am, we were already at the foot of the trail. From there, a row vendors were already trying to lure people to buy their products which was mostly foord and a walking stick. We already had walking sticks before leaving the hotel though, the coordinator said the hotel really lends those sticks to their guests for the duration of their stay, and they can even buy them as a little memorabilla. I wanted to keep mine but my mom said no so sadly, I had to settle for pretty rocks I found along the wayt o the peak.
The hike up the first peak took about an hour and a half because there was a bit of people congstion while going up. Apparently, tourists have already started swarming in, plus! Marlboro hills really is a good way to start off your sagada trip. Because when we got to the first peak... It was just wow!
The sun rise was just to die for! You could really see the fog, the clouds, everything. It was just unreal, like the scenes you get in movies. Like.. wow. REally big wow.
That first peak had a few vendors stationed up there too, and I don't even want to imagine how they brought food up there, but there was food. And over food, I asked our mountain guide why it was named Marlboro Hills.
What's funny was he answered that the hills looked like that really old mrlboro commercial. And I have no idea if I'm just too young to even know that marlboro commercial but I'll just take their word for it. The actual name of the hills though was Racuh A Payaman And I didn't get what that meant, but that's basically what we talked about over a light breakfast.
After that meal we continued to another peak, then another and another
Here's a few shots of me amidst all the things I saw in those hills
I also saw this cool lake in one of the stops they put for people to rest in. I nearly jumped into the lake because of how sticky I was getting from the hike but the guide said the water goes into the caves... and that's a big nope for me XD I don't want another spelunking adventure that soon.
I almost forgot! The mountain guide brought his dog with him and he was the handsomest tour dog ever!!
So hiking. There was quite a lot of mushrooms in those hills, and crazy was that the guide told us that if we came back to sagada, he'd teach us how to forage mushrooms. That was a tempting offer tbh. I also notices so much limestones up there. And when you say limestone, you think of the sea. So it's living proof that even a high place such as sagada used to be part of the sea. It' terrifying, yes, but also fascinating.
By the end of our trail, our guides lead us to the blue soil UwU
One look at these hills and I was sure that it was soooo heavy with copper sulfate that it should be an off-limit zone. Most high copper fields are usually off limits because it can be pretty toxic to people and with the animals around the area, but they turned it into a tourist spot and... I snuch a bit of the soil into my bag as a trophy UwU
I did not spend 4 hours hiking those hills just to go home empty handed, no sir! I wanted some of that copper sulfate even if they scold me UmU (Luckily they didn't)
Another strange thing was that the exit of those hills was just a few meters away from the hotel we stayed at XD so it made me question why we couldn't just have gone from there. But it was done and over with and everyone literally just knocked out as soon as we got to the accomodation.
We were only woken up around lunch time and like... 30 minutes after that, we were on our way out again.
First stop after lunch was the first church ever established in the small city, the episcopal church
I loved the stained glass on the front of it so I snuck upstairs just for a photo and to get a better view of the church XD
originally this church was made of wood and was only rebuilt a few decades back. most of them get their christened english names here because igorots usually have 2 names. An igorot name and an english name, and I also find that fascinating.
Unfortunately, this is as far as my brain cells can take me so I'll write about the hanging coffins and Bomod-ok falls tomorrow UwU Bye byeeee