It was around 11:30 AM when we left the Kalinga Welcome Arch. We just continued the road trip, driving with no particular destination in mind except our home which then was still around 12 hours away. The plan was rather straightforward: just traverse through the mountain roads of the Cordilleras on our way home.

As we travelled through the roads of Kalinga, it was not hard to see why there should be a strong compelling force to drive people to work towards the preservation of the natural features around us.

The expression being one with nature is not something new to the ear, especially recently when we seem to be rushing to resuscitate a planet that we have been killing ourselves. Most of our travels revolve around the theme of nature preservation: from the rivers of Bohol, every mountain we’ve been to, the land and sea of Palaui to most recently, the forests of Apayao. The mantra seems to thread along the lines of the more virginal a place is, the better.

That, however, is not always the case. The people of the Cordilleras have found means since antiquity by which they could coexist with nature, reaping and maximizing life’s bounty without so much sacrifice on the part of the environment: the renowned rice terraces.

Midday came, and we caught a glimpse of that ingenuity as we traverse the roads of Kalinga and got a preview of what more to expect as we move deeper to the heart of the Cordillera. We were not able to help ourselves but to get off the car and take a photo, as that was the first glimpse we had of a rice terrace since we started our Kalinga journey.

The view was just stunning.

It was already a little past midday hence we continued on our road trip, which by then we haven’t realized yet that it would be an epic one. The views just keep on getting our attention.

Tirik na ang araw subalit hindi namin nararamdaman ang init nito. We were indeed on higher ground as the climate was relatively cool given the time of day. We continued driving, braving single lane mountain roads, occasionally with ravines that had no barriers at all.

As we continued on our journey, we could only imagine the surprises that awaits us further. The only thing we knew about the road we were taking was that it was long and that it cuts through the Cordillera mountain range. Armed with only that knowledge and intermittent reliability of online maps, we pressed on with our exploration further and deeper into the heart of the Cordilleras where nature and human ingenuity harmoniously coexists.