Bontoc

In the suffocating yellow pickup truck, Piotrek and I climbed the unpaved mountain road. We passed over a saddle and below us was probably the widest, flattest valley in the Cordilleras. A few rice terraces on the hills flattened out into actual fields at the bottom. Like a vein of quartz pancaked between limestone and granite, a strong river cut through the valley. Rice fields pressed on one side, the dominant walls and bridges of the city of Bontoc holding ground on the other.

We arrived in Bontoc late in the afternoon, and I knew it would be difficult to find a place to sleep because the city was so big and the mountains were so steep. We asked a few locals where we might camp for the night. They all said we could camp on the riverbanks. We had seen all sorts of people down by the river a few too many for our taste. Some of them were “bachelor men” sitting in the characteristic evening men’s drinking circle.  We asked our informants and even a few police which side of the river was safer and got the same answer. We went to long, cement bridge to scope it out, and on the way, a boy started talking with us.

“Where are you going?” is one of the most common greetings here, inevitably followed by “Where are you from?” Turns out he likes to chat with foreigners. You know, practicing English, seeing the world through the stories of someone who lived or traveled there. We asked him his advice on sleeping by the river, and he repeated the advice we had heard before. Like asking directions, getting any information here requires you to ask at least 5 different people before you really get what you’re looking for. It doesn’t matter if you speak all of the local dialects fluently and live just one town over, it’s the same as if you were from Iceland.  Pleased we were making progress, we ask our new friend how to get to the market. “I’m headed that way myself. Let’s walk.”

View from the island of the valley beyond...
Our pony friend hides behind a rock on the left.

We walk towards the central market and he explains that he’s a student at one of the two universities in Bontoc. He wants to be a high school teacher. We met him on the way to playing badminton in the plaza. Sometime in the last decade, badminton has become as popular as billiards, chess, basketball, and all of the country’s most popular games. We thought he had friends he was meeting there, but I guess the way to do it is bring your badminton set and new and old friends find you.  We followed. I like badminton and ping-pong, so played a few rounds with him. There’s never a net, you just play catch with the birdie on a grass lawn. People quickly came to join the fun – people he knew and people he didn’t and from ages 8 to 48. We talked with all of them. When my round was over, I went to the market to get vegetables and fruits. By the time I returned, they had finally coaxed Piotr into trying.

When the sun was going down, I told our friends we needed to get down to the river to set up camp. When they all realized we planned to sleep by the river, many of them decided to join us. So, with 3-4 people in front, and 3-4 people in back, Piotr and I followed through an alley to the river wall and walked along it away from the bridge for ten minutes until we reached steps going down. True to the land of the rice terraces, the steps are just rocks that jut out from the wall. Nothing but air on one side, and only wide enough for a thin, agile Filipino.

Dinner and a guitar

We were headed for an island in the river, where the main body of the river went around to one side, and a stream brushed by the other side. We hopped rocks over the stream and looked for firewood while two of our friends volunteered to find a good place to set up camp. A perfect patch of flat grass was close. We get the fire and dinner going and filled up our water bottles at a fresh spring around the corner of the island. Several of the friends who had been with us at the park joined us later with a guitar and water in 2-liter bottles. We made as much food as we could and were sad we couldn’t offer more than just a few bites to everyone, but most claimed to have eaten already. They enjoyed the songs I played, but probably not as much as I enjoyed the environmental and folk songs from the guy who brought the guitar.  Most of what he sung was specific to singers and places within a 20-km radius in the mountains around us. Fantastic songs in English, Tagalog, Ilocano, and even indigenous dialects.

Some of them left early because they had school early in the morning, and some stayed even though they had school or work the next day. We all put food and our bags where we thought rats and ants wouldn’t get to them and we slept on the grass or on a mat. Piotr and I slept long and hard, still tired from our climb.

Air pockets in the rock blow chunks of rock off when the fire gets really hot

I was extremely groggy in the morning even though I slept all the night long, and I didn’t feel well. We woke up to ants. But, these were not ordinary ants. They were bigger than your small house ants, with fattish heads, sort of a reddish light brown and long, translucent legs. A few had bitten me in the night, but not too many. No, they were after the food. Some of the food was triple-bagged, and some of the bags were very strong. Their jaws cut large holes in everything. The sheer numbers were astounding and they had infested the deepest corners of all of our backpacks. These ants are venomous! Their bites are terrible, and their stings are like bee stings. They move at a steady medium pace, and I noticed that unlike most ants, they don’t scatter or get angry/aggressive if their food or numbers are in danger; instead, they just go on about their business, every ant for itself. They were in everything, so we had to empty everything, and because the ants wouldn’t scatter, we had to find each and every one and pick them out. My hands were definitely sore afterwards. We were annoyed but equally astounded at the hardiness of those ants.

Lunch after my nap

Piotr was energetic and anxious to move on, but by the time we had our things relatively ant-free and re-packed, I knew there was something wrong with me. My grogginess was much worse than simple exhaustion of body or spirit. My body was fighting something off. I was so. Numbingly. Tired. I could barely stand or keep my eyes open. I explained how I felt to Piotr, and since he had some things he wanted to do on the internet, he pitched his one-person tent for me and our things while he went to town to take care of things on the interwebs. I slept so hard. I had slept for 11 hours the night before, and I slept hard for another 3 hours. I was awake enough then to feel what was going on, and it felt like stomach gas that just wouldn’t go anywhere. It began to grow extremely painful. We packed up and tried to get a move on, but I could hardly walk because of the pain and discomfort. 

I made it over the rocks, up the steps and back to the bridge, but the walk from the bridge back to the plaza took forever. We were heading for the Bontoc Museum, which was supposed to be incredible according to the Lonely Planet guide and several travelers I had talked to in previous months. The museum was just past the plaza, and by the time we entered the museum, I was falling apart. I spent more than an hour on the throne trying to get the gas to move. Unsuccessful, I joined Piotr and an older woman named Evelyn who was explaining each and every artifact in the museum’s many rooms. She grew up as an Igorot native and was part of the generational shift that Westernized the Cordilleras. Evelyn was born and raised in the native life but was now well-educated and had earned herself some money to live a comfortable Western life. Her English and descriptions were amazing, and I tried my very best to hang onto every word, understand the nuances of the culture the way a mere artifact could never tell them, but I didn’t have the energy or freedom of mind to listen for more than ten minutes. I lay down where our packs were stashed, everything a blurr except my gripping intestines. Evelyn's sympathy led to one thing, led to another, and before I knew it, I was sleeping in an Igorot hut in a small village set up by the museum. Evelyn locked up the museum and left at sundown, but returned an hour later with hot rice pudding and bananas, a spoon, and filtered water. Her mother’s recipe for gas and diarrhea. I cried I was so thankful for her care. I felt fever-like chills for 2 hours, but I know my body very well, and it was no fever; simply my body’s way of saying, “I’m trying my very best, but I’m just too tired.”

After another long, hard night of sleep broken up by periodic attempts to clear gas and pain, I felt hardly any better. But at least I had a theory. ***Medical diagnosis alert*** I knew it wasn’t a fever or disease, and since Piotr felt fine and we ate and drank the same foods and water, it wasn’t an ingested bacteria or anything. But I had inhaled a hell of a lot of fumes from the yellow pickup we had ridden in. Probably more than Piotr because I was trapped in the back and he was up by the window. My sinuses were open and clearing from the exercise and pressure changes of the mountain, and while we slept on the island, the smog my sinuses collected drained into my stomach. Combine that with the spicy sili nabuyo and sour kalamansi at dinner, and my gut couldn’t handle it all. Anything I ate caused unbearable pain for the next week and a half. Piotr took care of me the entire way, and I was extremely thankful to have a friend with me while I felt so broken.  ***Medical diagnosis completed***

As the morning progressed, I felt a little better. But I hadn’t eaten anything that day.  Piotrek’s girlfriend from Poland, Donika, was his travelmate for many months before we met. They had traveled east from Europe, through parts of China, and flew to the Philippines from Hong Kong. They had spent the last two weeks or so traveling separately because they needed a break. We were headed up into the mountains from the Bontoc Valley to meet her in Guina’ang where she had put down a few roots and was working with children. We bought some food for the week and treats for the person we expected to host us in Guina’ang. We banana bread and dreak (brewed!) coffee, called baraka at a bakery owned by the woman who cared for me. Then we jumped on the roof of a jeepney and headed for Guina’ang. I was still in pain, but things were less blurry and at least I could walk. I was excited to see what was going on with Doninika, completely without a plan as to what I would do there or after, and hoping for a place to rest and heal my fragile digestive system.