I’ve only been to Bokong Falls (Small Falls as people refer to it in relation to the much bigger Bomod-ok Falls) and the one time that I went there, it happened to be raining.

So not surprisingly, the water was brownish from the soil that was washed away from the mountains and rice terraces.

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Two years ago, I went to Sagada with some of my college friends. It was a very fun and memorable trip.

How happy were we? I guess you can tell with our smiles.

It’s me with Andrea and Biela and it was taken beside the St. Mary’s Church.

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It has been raining for the past couple of days. I’m not sure if there’s a storm approaching, but it sure feels like it. I’ve just closed the windows because the strong winds are bringing in some rain water inside the house.

Whenever it rains, I always wonder if it’s also raining at that moment in Sagada. I’ve been there a couple of times during the wet season and did enjoy my stay even if I couldn’t go out much because of the too much rain. I was even there during a severe thunderstorm back in 2006.

It had been raining the previous night when we decided to leave Sagada. During our trip from Sagada to Baguio, we ran into at least five landslides. There was even this one time when rocks and soil were rolling down to the road right in front of us. We stopped for half an hour before the bus driver and the conductor decided it was safe to move on.

Then the last landslide we encountered was also the worst. It completely covered the whole road so we were stranded for more than five hours! My friend went out and took some shots. Here’s one of her photos of the landslide:

It took two bulldozers about two hours to clear the road. We were able to reach Baguio safely and thanked the heavens that we had a safe, albeit a quite frightening trip.

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Sometime in the middle of 2006, I sent out a message to my former college classmates if they would like to go to Sagada. With the help of my best bud, Biela, three joined: Tere, Roselle and Andrea. Another one, Jowee (Biela’s friend and officemate) enlisted.

Unfortunately, only Tere weren’t able to go because nobody was going to look after her baby (my godson).

On our first day, I took them to Sumaguing Cave. Everybody was so excited and enamored of the scenic beauty of Sagada that we took every chance we could get to snap photos. This caused the 30-minute walk from the town proper to the cave’s entrance last almost an hour.

We were all clean, dry and fresh when we posed before the cave’s entrance…

…but just an hour later, we were dirty, wet and dead-tired hungry.

The next day, I planned to take them to Bomod-ok Falls (Big Falls) but we were told it was off-limits because the locals were holding a ritual there. So as a second option, we hired a guide that would take us to the underground river and the Bokong Falls (Small Falls) instead.

As always, every five or ten minutes we would stop walking, find a good spot, pose and have our photos taken.

After a great stay in Sagada, we rode a bus to Baguio City. What would have been an equally beautiful scenic trip resulted to an experience we didn’t dare imagine.

On the road along Halsema Highway (the highest highway in the country) we got caught in the middle of a super typhoon. We encountered three landslides. The first two we actually saw rocks rolling down the mountainside and onto the front of our bus. The last one was the worst. The landslide covered the whole road that we got stranded for five hours. We had to wait for bulldozers to clear the road.

When we finally reached Baguio City, Biela and Jowee separated from us and boarded a bus to La Union where Biela’s boyfriend lived.

Roselle, Andrea and I then went straight to the Victory Liner terminal for our Manila return trip.

In recollection, although every Sagada trip I made was memorable, this one would be on top of my list because it was the first time I ever encountered actual danger on the road.

So lesson learned for me was to be extra wary of weather forecasts and don’t push through if the weather is really bad.

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