A Rapturous SAGADA EXPERIENCE

BAGUIO TO SAGADA and back – is that one road trip no one can afford to sleep over. There’s just too much to see. It is an absolutely gorgeous visual experience. “Communing with nature” is a weak way to describe the road to Sagada. There’s too much thrill in the experience.
It is a long, 6-hour drive but totally not boring rather an ecstatic ride full of high points, literally and figuratively. It is like watching a very long movie, say Forrest Gump or Three Idiots, and yet there’s not a dragging moment. Every scene is so captivating and worth playing back. When you reach the highest highway points of the Mountain Provinces leading to Sagada, it would just feel like heaven. Your sight will be filled with a stunning view of clouds touching the mountains, the famed rice terraces, and the beautiful mix of verdant lush forests and vast brown land. The great heights you will pass by might shake your guts but you will love the view from up there. I felt like a kid again having my first ride at the Ferris Wheel or Roller Coaster. I got scared of the thought that I could easily fall from such incredible height if the driver makes a slight wrong maneuver. I thought of how crushing a fall would be from such a peak many, many stories higher than the Empire State Building. Looking down from up there was hair-raising but at the same time so enthralling.
 “It’s like a gigantic cooking pot, a beautiful cooking pot,” my fiancée said when she looked down and saw bodies of clouds looking like big smokes spreading and whirling amidst the mountains, the forests, and the paved roads—all of which looking like they are contained and being cooked together in a deep, large pot. I told myself, “What a brilliant cook God is!” Seeing such a brilliant natural landscape stirred in me a feeling of gratefulness to Him for serving such a visual “relief” in an unexpected way. 
Travelling the long and breath-taking route to Sagada would remind you of great places you have previously met. I remembered the picture-perfect view of the Taal Lake in Tagaytay (a personal favorite), the phantasmagoric Hundred Islands, the colossal, perfect stance of the Mayon Volcano, and Puerto Princesa’s fascinating Underground River. Sagada brings to mind all sorts of beautiful places and makes you stop and think…it is one of the best, if not the best, places you have and might ever see. I have seen great sights from an airplane, but that experience pales in comparison to this. I don’t think the Sagada route can be enjoyed so much when you view it from an airplane. Driving to its circling, zigzagging route rather than flying over it, makes you relish the sights better and longer.
 The fare for the Baguio – Sagada route as far as I can remember is around P230-250. I would have still paid if it was a few pesos more. This is such a super special road show one can ever see!