Philippines: Northern Luzon, Banaue, Batad, Sagada and Vigan

1. Day 1: Arrive in Manila

   Ninoy Aquino International Airport to your hotel near Intramuros, then the walled city

   • Welcome dinner
   • Stay in Manila
   Day 1 details

   Fly into Ninoy Aquino International Airport (MNL), where a driver meets you in arrivals for the drive to your hotel near Intramuros. Manila traffic is slow, so allow an hour or more. If you land by early afternoon, rest, then join your See Sight Tours guide for a late-afternoon walk in Intramuros, the walled city the Spanish began in the late 16th century. We walk a stretch of the old walls, pass Manila Cathedral, step into San Agustin Church, the oldest stone church in the country and one of the four Baroque churches on the UNESCO list, and end in Fort Santiago as the heat goes out of the day. You will see two more of those four churches later in the week, in the north. In the evening a short briefing covers the road ahead, the mountain lodges and what to pack for Batad, then we sit down to a welcome dinner of Filipino dishes.

   Included

   • Pick-up at Ninoy Aquino International Airport (MNL)
   • Late-afternoon walk in Intramuros with your guide: the walls, Manila Cathedral, San Agustin Church and Fort Santiago
   • Welcome briefing and welcome dinner

   Easier option: If you land late, skip the walk and meet the group at the briefing and dinner.

   Free time: Free until the late-afternoon walk

   Activity: Land by about 2 pm to join the Intramuros walk. The latest arrival time is confirmed with your final itinerary.

2. Day 2: North to Baguio

   Manila to Baguio by the expressways, with lunch on the way

   • Drive about 4.5 h
   • Breakfast and lunch
   • Stay in Baguio
   Day 2 details

   We leave after breakfast, at about 8 am, once the worst of Manila's morning traffic has eased, and head north on the expressways across the flat rice bowl of central Luzon. The drive is about 250 km and four and a half hours, right at our daily limit, and it is the price of breaking the long road to Banaue into two days instead of one nine-hour run. We stop for coffee after the first hour and a half and sit down to lunch about halfway, then climb the last stretch up the mountain road to Baguio, at about 1,500 m. The air is suddenly cool and smells of pine. In the mid-afternoon your guide walks the group down Session Road to Burnham Park and through the public market, where the highland farms send their strawberries, vegetables and coffee. The evening is free; Baguio has good small restaurants within walking distance of the hotel.

   Included

   • Drive from Manila to Baguio with your guide, with a coffee stop
   • Sit-down lunch on the way
   • Orientation walk in Baguio: Session Road, Burnham Park and the public market

   Easier option: Skip the walk and rest at the hotel; the market is a few minutes away if you want it later.

   Free time: Evening free in Baguio

   Activity: About four and a half hours of driving in three legs. The walk is about an hour and a half, on pavements with some slopes.

3. Day 3: Over the mountains to Banaue

   Baguio to Balete Pass and Bayombong, then Lagawe and Banaue

   • Drive about 6 h
   • Breakfast and lunch
   • Stay in Banaue
   Day 3 details

   This is the longest drive of the trip, about 240 km and six hours on the road, because no regular flight links Baguio and Banaue, and of the two mountain roads the Nueva Vizcaya route is the safer, smoother one; the Halsema Highway through Bontoc is slower. We leave at 8 am and cut it into three legs. The first stop is Balete Pass, the high saddle where one of the hardest battles of the Second World War on Luzon was fought in 1945, now a quiet memorial with a view down two valleys. Lunch is a sit-down meal in Bayombong, the provincial capital. The last leg climbs into Ifugao province through Lagawe, and the first terraces appear on the slopes above the road. We reach Banaue in the late afternoon, in time to look out over the terraces below the town as the light goes, and you stay two nights. Dinner is your choice; try pinikpikan, the local chicken broth.

   Included

   • Drive from Baguio to Banaue with your guide
   • Stop at the Balete Pass memorial
   • Sit-down lunch in Bayombong
   • First look at the terraces from Banaue town

   Free time: Evening free in Banaue

   Activity: About six hours of driving in three legs of about two hours or less each, on winding mountain roads for the last part. Bring motion-sickness tablets if you need them.

   

4. Day 4: The Batad amphitheatre on foot

   Banaue to the Batad Saddle, then on foot to Batad village and back

   • Drive about 1.5 h
   • Breakfast and lunch
   • Stay in Banaue
   Day 4 details

   An early start, at about 7:30 am, so we walk down before the day-trip vans and the midday heat. Our van, or a local jeepney if the road is rough, takes us about 45 minutes to the Batad Saddle, where a local Ifugao guide joins us. The trail drops steeply through forest for about 45 minutes, then opens onto the view people come for: a bowl of stone-walled terraces climbing the whole valley like the seats of a theatre, part of the rice terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras listed by UNESCO. We walk along the terrace walls into the village, where the guide explains how the water is shared from terrace to terrace and how the work follows the rice year. Lunch is in a village restaurant looking across the amphitheatre. The climb back to the Saddle comes in the cooler afternoon, at your own pace, and we are back in Banaue by late afternoon.

   Included

   • Transfer to the Batad Saddle and back
   • Guided walk down to Batad village and through the terraces with a local Ifugao guide
   • Batad environmental and guide fees
   • Lunch in Batad village

   Easier option: Stay at the Saddle viewpoints with a coffee, or walk only the first part of the trail to the first view of the amphitheatre and back.

   More active option: Continue from the village down to Tappiyah Falls and swim in its cold pool: about an hour each way on steep steps, adding two to three hours.

   Free time: Evening free in Banaue: a walk through the town or back to the terrace viewpoint above it for the last light

   Activity: About 3 hours of walking in all, steep down and up, with stone steps and narrow terrace walls. Porters can carry a daypack for a small tip.

5. Day 5: Bontoc, then Sagada's hanging coffins

   Banaue to the Banaue viewpoint, Bontoc, then Sagada and Echo Valley

   • Drive about 3 h
   • Breakfast and lunch
   • Stay in Sagada
   Day 5 details

   After a slower breakfast we leave Banaue at 8:30 am and stop first at the viewpoint on the road north, where the terraces drop away in tiers below the road. The road to Bontoc climbs over a high pass in cloud forest, about two hours. In Bontoc, once the capital of the old Mountain Province, we visit the Bontoc Museum, a small collection of tools, textiles and old photographs of the Bontoc, Ifugao and Kalinga peoples, then sit down to lunch in town. It is under an hour on to Sagada, a quiet town of pine woods and limestone. After checking in, and registering with the tourism office, we walk with a Sagada guide through the churchyard and down into Echo Valley, where coffins have been hung on the cliff face by the Igorot people for centuries. The late-afternoon light is softer then, and the day groups have mostly gone. The evening is free.

   Included

   • Banaue viewpoint
   • Bontoc Museum
   • Sit-down lunch in Bontoc
   • Sagada registration and environmental fee
   • Echo Valley and the hanging coffins with a Sagada guide

   Easier option: See the coffins from the upper viewpoint in Echo Valley without the steep path down.

   Free time: Evening free in Sagada

   Activity: About three hours of driving in two legs. The Echo Valley walk is about an hour and a half on a rocky path with some steep steps. The burial sites are sacred: no touching, no climbing, and photos only where the guide says. Bontoc Museum opening days are confirmed at booking; if it is closed, we swap it for a walk through Bontoc town.

   

6. Day 6: Sumaguing Cave and a free Sagada afternoon

   Sagada to Sumaguing Cave and back to town

   • Drive about 30 min
   • Breakfast and lunch
   • Stay in Sagada
   Day 6 details

   We go to Sumaguing Cave first thing, at about 7:45 am, before the queue builds at the guides' office and while the cave is quiet. With a local cave guide and his lantern we climb down into the largest cave in Sagada, over smooth, polished limestone into chambers of flowstone and cold, clear pools. Shoes come off for the lower part; the rock grips well barefoot. We are out by late morning and walk back to town for lunch together. The afternoon is free. Sagada is good for slow time: sit in one of the cafes over a cup of Sagada coffee and lemon pie, visit the weaving workshop or the pottery at the edge of town, walk out to the rice fields, or book a massage. As evening falls, the town is quiet and the air cold, so bring a warm layer for dinner.

   Included

   • Sumaguing Cave with a local cave guide and lantern
   • Lunch in Sagada

   Optional experiences

   • Lumiang to Sumaguing cave connection instead of Sumaguing alone, about 4 hours (price shown at booking)
   • Bomod-ok Falls walk through the rice fields in the afternoon (price shown at booking)
   • Massage in Sagada (price shown at booking)

   Easier option: Visit only the upper chamber of Sumaguing, or the entrance of Lumiang Cave with its stacked coffins, and skip the scramble.

   More active option: Take the cave connection from Lumiang to Sumaguing, a longer underground route with ropes and squeezes.

   Free time: Afternoon and evening free in Sagada

   Activity: About two hours in the cave, scrambling over wet and slippery rock, partly barefoot, with some wading to the knees. Not for anyone uneasy in tight or dark spaces; the easy option stays near the entrance.

   

7. Day 7: Down to the coast and Vigan

   Sagada to Cervantes and the Ilocos coast, Santa Maria Church, then Vigan

   • Drive about 5.5 h
   • Breakfast and lunch
   • Stay in Vigan
   Day 7 details

   Today's drive is about 200 km and five and a half hours, the second of the two long days, because the only road from the highlands to Vigan winds down through Cervantes to the coast. We leave at 8 am and break it up. The first leg runs through pine forest and over the ridge to Cervantes, where we stop for coffee. The road then drops to the sea at Tagudin and turns north along the Ilocos coast. Lunch is a sit-down meal near Santa Maria, then we climb the stone stairway to Santa Maria Church, a brick church set on a hill like a fortress, one of the Baroque churches on the UNESCO list. We reach Vigan in the late afternoon and check in for two nights. At dusk your guide walks the group along Calle Crisologo, the cobbled street of Spanish-era houses with capiz-shell windows, after the day buses leave and the lamps come on, and on to Plaza Salcedo.

   Included

   • Drive from Sagada to Vigan with your guide, with a coffee stop in Cervantes
   • Sit-down lunch near Santa Maria
   • Santa Maria Church
   • Evening walk on Calle Crisologo and Plaza Salcedo

   Optional experiences

   • Vigan dancing fountain show at Plaza Salcedo (free to watch; times confirmed locally)

   Easier option: Skip the stairway at Santa Maria and see the church from below; skip the evening walk and rest.

   Free time: Dinner free in Vigan

   Activity: About five and a half hours of driving in three legs, winding for the first half. The stairway at Santa Maria has about 80 steps.

   

8. Day 8: Vigan by calesa and pottery wheel

   Vigan heritage district, Bantay and the Pagburnayan pottery yards

   • Breakfast, lunch and dinner
   • Stay in Vigan
   Day 8 details

   Vigan is one of the best-preserved Spanish colonial towns in Asia and is listed by UNESCO, and the mornings here are cooler, so we start at 8:30 am. A calesa, the horse-drawn carriage still used in town, takes us through the grid of old streets: the ancestral houses of the merchant families, with stone ground floors and wooden upper storeys, Syquia Mansion, St Paul's Cathedral, and out to the bell tower of Bantay Church on its hill above the town. Then we walk to the Pagburnayan yards, where potters still turn the earthen burnay jars on kick wheels and fire them in long brick kilns, and you try the wheel yourself. Lunch is Vigan food: empanada fried to order and Vigan longganisa sausage. The afternoon is free for the museums, the weaving shops selling abel cloth, or a rest out of the heat. In the evening the group shares a farewell dinner.

   Included

   • Calesa ride through the Vigan heritage district with your guide
   • Syquia Mansion
   • Bantay Church bell tower
   • Pagburnayan pottery yard with a turn on the wheel
   • Lunch of Vigan dishes
   • Farewell dinner in Vigan

   Easier option: Stay on the calesa for the whole morning loop and skip the climb up the Bantay bell tower.

   More active option: Hire a bicycle in the free afternoon and ride out to the river and the villages around the town.

   Free time: Afternoon free in Vigan

   Activity: An easy morning, mostly seated in the calesa, with about an hour of walking on flat streets.

9. Day 9: Paoay Church and the flight to Manila

   Vigan to Paoay, then Laoag airport and Manila by air

   • Drive about 2 h
   • Breakfast
   Day 9 details

   After breakfast, at about 8:30 am, we drive north along the Ilocos coast for about an hour and a half to Paoay. Its church of San Agustin, built of coral stone and brick in the 18th century, is held up by enormous buttresses against earthquakes and is the third of the UNESCO-listed Baroque churches on this route, after San Agustin in Manila and Santa Maria. We spend time there before the short drive to Laoag International Airport, where your guide sees you through check-in for the included flight of about an hour and ten minutes to Manila. The flight time is set by the airline, so the Paoay stop flexes around it. The group lands at Ninoy Aquino International Airport (MNL), where you connect to your flight home or stay on in Manila. Manila's terminals are not linked inside, so allow time, and book an international flight leaving after about 6 pm.

   Included

   • Paoay Church
   • Transfer to Laoag International Airport (LAO)
   • Flight from Laoag to Manila (MNL)

   Activity: Book your flight home from Manila after about 6 pm; the Laoag flight time is confirmed with your final itinerary.

Wildlife and weather: December to May is the dry season in northern Luzon. December to February is the coolest time in the highlands, with clear days and cold nights near 10 C in Sagada and Banaue; March to May is warmer, and the lowlands around Manila and Vigan are hot. The terraces change colour through the year: bright green while the rice grows, golden near harvest, and brown or flooded mirrors at planting. From June to November rain and typhoons bring landslides to the mountain roads, so we do not run then.

• Manila1 night
• Baguio1 night
• Banaue2 nights
• Sagada2 nights
• Vigan2 nights