Thatched roofs of Ifugao huts

Night trek

Finally, the last wave of our party arrived. The Light help us. It was already getting dark when we left Batad. A village boy accompanied us crossing the rice terraces up to the main trail. Only Grace and I had flashlights to light our path. Ariel acted as our Warder and stayed in front. I took the sweep.

Stuart, our gleeman for this trip, started telling stories and later on singing songs to while away our trek in the dark. Grace and I couldn't help but chime in. We must have sung all the songs we knew because later, for lack of songs to sing, Stuart started singing commercial jingles!

It's Christmas in the mountains. Several times we saw trees illumminated in the dark by fireflies. We couldn't stop though to admire the trees. Besides, we had to concentrate on our footing. There were a couple of ravines on our left side to watch out for. The promise of a hot bath, delicious meal and warm bed in Bangaan kept us going.

At the first house we saw, we asked the owner if he could spare us a torch. He readily made one out of a gin bottle with kerosene. He said it would still take us an hour's trek to Bangaan.

The party is complete