Kalinga: Dreamy. Isolated. Wild.

Where can I start about Kalinga? Dominika, Piotrek, and I finally left Russell and Sabangan behind us and journeyed north. The plan was to make it up to the northern tip of Luzon in a few days and make it back down to Aringay in time for Christmas. We set off and caught a jeep up to Bontoc, where we stayed only long enough to get some produce and leave. We waited on the edge of town and hitched a few kilometers north on a dump truck. Then we set to walking. Most people don't realize that hitchhiking in most areas of the world involves a hell of a lot of walking. That goes for pretty much everywhere except freeways in North America, where you're not allowed to walk, and where even the most petit, female hitchhiker with a genuine smile is thought more likely an axe murderer than not. In the mountains, people are always in need of a ride since a passing vehicle of any kind is scarce. The more isolated the province, the more catching a ride (or giving one for free) is part of life.

We walked for several hours, enjoying the scenery, and hoping for another ride. When we were tired and hot, we stopped in some shade just outside a very small village, less than a handful of buildings near the road, a bus whizzed by before we even had the chance to turn. It was packed full, but followed by a small car, which stopped and picked us up. The driver told us of the village several kilometers off the main road he was anxious to get to before dark, to avoid getting lost. The last stage of his journey was a long walk. So he raced against the sun with us huddled throughout the car, Piotr not realizing that unimportant pestering questions weren't the antidote to a stressful time crunch for a man with all of our lives in his hands. So we listened to hard rock and he slipped into a comfortable zone whenever conversation was quiet. He told us along the line his destination was home to a famous tattoo artist and a tribe of ex-headhunters. There were anthropologists with the tribe, and many a celebrity had gone to her to receive authentic, native tattoos from this woman. She must be many times more wealthy than me at this point, judging from the prices he listed off.

Just up the road from his turn-off was a battered old hut, with a flat path out along a steep ridgeline covered only in grasses. We walked the length of it, about 200m, and set up camp at the end. We cooked our veggies and rice, pigged out, and enjoyed the silence and the breeze. Down in the valley opposite us was a village, charming in the limited number of lights that turned passageways and open spaces into barely discernible ghosts. Piotrek noticed flashlights crossing a bridge from the village down in the valley. It was after dark by the time we had finished cooking, and the fire blazed a while longer as we get ready to turn in. Just before we were all asleep, we were awoken by those same flashlights, aggressive questions and stern commands all in a dialect that was obviously not Filipino, Tagalog, or any other Philippine dialect I'd heard thusfar.

They stormed our little camp, and after half a minute of yelling, the first man into our camp shouted back,"Tourists". I saw rifles pointed at us, guns at the ready. I glanced down at the knife lashed to my belt and without a second thought, subtly unsheathed and stashed it under my sleeping mat as I stood up, deliberately awkwardly, feigning grogginess, senses actually at full alert. The kind of moment when I thrive...

Flashlights blinding the eyes, three seconds to sort priorities, make plans and act. Disarm hostility, respond with subordinate posture and reassurance to my friends in response to hostility, and tell them to roll down the hillside with me if it came to guns. More loud indiscernible chattering and then the youngest of them all approached us with purpose. In slow, measured English, he started and stumbled over himself, asking me, "Who are, oowhere are u...?" Before he could finish, two new guys flashed their lights in our eyes, yelling, "What you doing!? Who are u!?"  It was obvious we were a couple of tourists, but everybody was caught up in the adrenaline and trying to do their jobs, impress their leader, their families down in the valley, etc... Testosterone spraying the mountaintop. Calming overtense law enforcers is slowly becoming a specialty. Wish I was as good at arousing women as calming egotistical men. With a smile on my face and open body language, palms out, open, relaxed stance, hiding my tip-toe readiness, I said slowly, "Maggandang gabi, ako si David." (Good evening, my name is David). Attention fully drawn away from my startled companions crawling from their tents, one asked me, "You speak Tagalog?" "Conti lang, po." (Only a little bit sir.)

I apologized profusely with lots of smiles and laughs like we were all old pals, "We only sleep here tonight. Didn't mean to scare the village... How long did it take you to get up here?" I had directed my attention only to the young English-miming ambassador, the only calm one among them. He always returned my smiles. He said something that got passed back along the growing line of men who lowered their weapons one by one. My friend said, "We saw a fire from the village. Thought it was NPA." National People's Army is known to hide high in the hills and come down to steal necessities or money from villages to fund their armed Communist insurgency (resistance really) against a corrupt, rightist central government. Usually wearing only slightly more weathered camoflauge clothes than these Philippine National Pulis, they've never once in their 40-year history harmed a tourist. A man from the back, obviously the oldest and a privileged leader, clambered up through the ranks along the small path. I had counted at least 15 flashlights. Not good odds, but the leader came up and looked into my cautiously smiling face and asked with slightly better English, "Who are you? Where are you from?"

Back to those original questions eh? Someone needs to make a T-shirt asking the same basic questions all Filipinos ask to start a conversation, and have the answers on their backs so they can just turn around. But that would take the fun of conversation away from them, or the fun of flirting. Who are you? Where are you from? Where are you going? Do you have children? Are you married? How young are you? What do you do? Where in your country are you from? How do you like the Philippines?

"My name is David. This is Piotrek and Dominika." As I said their names, I actually thought, better to start with the man, lest their attentions get uncomfortably twisted into reversing patriarchy. Also better to keep thoughts off the woman, just in case. "I am from California, they are from Po-land." Enunciation in the right accent is the key to making English, their umpteenth language learned, a little easier to understand. "Where in California?" Here we go... I gave the short versions of our stories, and by the time I had the leader laughing in a friendly way, the others had lowered their weapons to their least threatening positions. My eyes looked at the leader, but I watched all the others more closely. Eventually we got to the point.

"Is it okay for us to sleep here tonight?" I knew exactly the thoughts in his head as he hesitated. You could, but just to make sure they know I'm doing my job, when we get so little action here, I'll bring you into town. "No, it's not safe here. There are NPA around. It's better if you follow us." More chattering, the leader disappeared, my young friend translating, "We take you down to Barangay." The men didn't wait for us to pack up, they picked up the loose pieces of our camp faster than I could scramble to get them packed up in our packs. Four different men held some small piece of our camp. I watched them all closely to make sure I didn't somehow "forget" anything.

As we walked, the honesty, simplicity, and strength of the men became more and more apparent. Igorot are truly strong people. On the road up to Sagada, I had passed a very official and clean sign that read, "-Caution- Strong Igorot at Work." I laughed out loud at the simple truth of it. I had seen Igorot children lift and carry heavier loads than I myself could carry at peak strength. Physical and cultural strength is written into their genes. Men behind, men in front, constantly shifting positions surrounding us, but my young friend never leaving my side. We chatted amiably. Through my nerves and attention, I humored him in his English practice, and marvelled at how good he was, even growing up out here as he had, I learned.

I knew they were going to take us to the Barangay Captain or the mayor first, to show how well they had performed their task. They deserved their keep. I assured them throughout that "You boys do a really great job here. Your village must feel very lucky and safe to have guardians like you." I know for a fact that every PNP soldier has a tattoo on the right shoulder of a triangle of smaller words encircling the word, "Guardians". Turns out there was no mayor, only a Barangay Captain. Groggy eyes, a puzzling look, the Barangay Captain exchanged unintelligible words with our leader, a friendly handshake, and gave a firm pat on the Guardians tattoo hidden beneath a "camouflaged" shell. Job well done. We checked that we had all of out things, bid farewell to our overanxious, thankfully not trigger-happy, neighborhood watch, and we filed into his home. He asked us the same barrage of usual questions. We recited our answers. He re-explained the situation we already understood. He offered us water when we were already loaded full. We laid out our mats and slept on the tile floor of his home, happy it was over but unable to get a full night's sleep no matter what we did.

In the morning, the captain's helpers served us a vegetable-rice breakfast and baraka coffee (boiling water poured over coffee grounds in a cup). We marveled at the view and precarious placement of this building handing over a cliff, said goodbye, and were happy to walk out of town. An hour later we were picked up by a small truck headed a few kilometers north, from where we walked and then waited again for several hours in the shade. The next car to pass was a brand new Nissan pickup truck. The driver hardly talked, his English was very poor, but when we said we were headed to Balbalan, he pointed to an ID card hanging from his rear-view mirror. Office of the Mayor, Balbalasan. We knew Balbalasan was the town at the fork to the road we were aiming for, and we couldn't believe our luck. It took longer to get to where we headed than we expected. We could see the sizeable town of Balbalasan in the distance paling in comparison to the mountains around it. Late afternoon sunlight shone through clouds, the shadows revealing the shapes of the hills. It was by far the most awe-inspiring and beautiful sight I had ever seen. Wished I had a camera for a second, but was soon glad I didn't have a dead, poor image to diffuse my lively memory of the vastness of it.

Later, we passed the turnoff to the road, and we asked to go back but the driver insisted we speak to the mayor. Only fair, I thought. We did ride in his truck all this way. Least we could do is say hi. It took a while to get to the mayor himself. When the staff realized the situation, who we were, where we were headed, and how we'd gotten there, we were shuffled inside. There was a celebration for a staff member who had married the day before. We we the first to partake of pancit, pink coconut-agar-agar jello, and a local sticky rice dessert with Muscobado crusted around the edges. We ate heartily and thankfully, and eventually got to talk to the mayor. We told him our story, where we were going and where we were from. He heard my surname and said immediately, "We're cousins." "Really???" "You're related to Victorino in Tabuk right?" His English was better than any I had heard in Manila or almost anywhere else. "Yes! I was sorry I couldn't try to find him!" "Well, he's my fourth cousin, but we know each other like brothers." "Wow! You're kidding me!" "Nope. You must be related to that Cacanindin who married an American right?" "A Canadian, actually, but yeah!" "So what do you do?" That launched us into all the specifics of our relations, my work, my family's work. I gave him my father's card because he was curious. I learned all about how he had come to this office, by default, and how he didn't like it as much as working with his hands in poor neighborhoods in the area. He thought I was lying, getting two bachelor's degrees at the same time. Doesn't happen and doesn't sound possible according to educational rules here. I'm sure someone's done it though. After a rapid discussion of mutual histories, he said, "You better hurry, there's a group of guys waiting for you downstairs. They're going night fishing for catfish and crayfish, and they're following the road you're following." I wolfed down a bite that was too big to allow a quick answer. "Wow. Really? Okay." I told my companions who were keeping the new bride company about our ride. I briefly remembered a workmate from Tajikistan who took the job we did just to get better at English. He would make fun of American English by saying 'wow', 'really', and 'okay' in overabundance and with exaggerated tones. Miss that kid. Smart as could be and at times a real riot.

We gulped the last of our food, gave our thanks and farewells, and rushed down to the waiting men. We jumped in the back of the pickup and went along for the ride. The sun was setting on the reason for our journey here: the Kalinga-Abra road. A rugged connection between the west coast province of Abra and Kalinga in the mountains. It was famed for its impassibility and beauty. Waterfalls, mist, green, moss, and rocks were around every corner. The setting sun made it all the more beautiful. Our butts hurt after five minutes on the rough road and were well bruised after two hours. We arrived at the governor's pleasure house, a fine wood cabin by the river's edge where the men would fish, and where we would sleep. Turned out the Vice Governor of Kalinga province was the mayor's brother; and thus, also my cousin. Only a caretaker that night though, a special Christmas party in Baguio had drawn the governor out from his secluded Kalinga den. We slept on the wood floor, timing our sleep for we knew the next day was going to be a long and rough one on the road we had come for.