I was confident that as far as mainland Luzon is concerned, I have already marked all the provinces. All the while, I thought that Abra was the last piece of the puzzle. It was late when I realized that I was mistaken. I had an unfinished business in Northern Luzon.

I was confused if not totally dumbfounded when I realized that Ifugao should have been unmarked because I haven’t actually been there! I went into deep thought why I believed otherwise, and the only explanation I could find was probably, my mind got mixed-up when Ran and I went road tripping the Cordilleras. From Apayao, we went down to Kalinga, then the Mountain Province and Benguet, all the way back to Bulacan. Along the way, we traversed through mountain roads and stopped at lots of rice terraces. That was probably what confused my mind which back then was not particularly active in tracking the places as we went along—that compulsive behavior came a little later. As the province of Ifugao is famous for its heritage rice terraces, and since we saw a lot of such farming marvels, then I must have thought that we already travelled across the Cordilleran province.

Completionist as I am, the mistake has to be rectified.

It would be such a pity to miss Ifugao which is arguably the most popular of the Cordilleran provinces. It is home to the world-renowned Ifugao Rice Terraces that spans multiple mountains across multiple towns in the province, and such a wonder is unofficially dubbed as the Eighth Wonder of the World. Moreover, it is a culturally preserved haven where customs, beliefs and ways of life remain alive and unfazed by the passage of time. Without skipping a beat, I made up my mind: we will conquer Ifugao.

Very much like our Abra trip, our journey to Ifugao would not be a Renegade Duo trip. We were accompanied by my mother, my brother and my niece. We left Malolos City at 08:00 PM, overestimating the travel time by a lot. I pegged the journey at nine hours, accounting for stops since we will be travelling in the middle of the night and rest would be necessary at some point. As the drive was particularly fast though, I realized that no matter how much stops I make, we will arrive at our first stop in Ifugao still way earlier as expected. True enough, we reached the town of Kiangan in Ifugao at around 04:00 AM.

The good thing with arriving early at dawn in Kiangan was that the surroundings were pitch-black. With no light pollution altering the sky, heaven was extra vibrant. I grabbed the opportunity to put to the test the astrophoto feature of my camera. The raw file did not disappoint.

The cosmos in all of its magnificence as seen from Kiangan.

Taking photos of the dawn sky was done just in the nick of time. It did not take long for the sun to finally show up, providing light for us to see the wonder that we were actually surrounded with.

With the morning light breaking dawn, the time has come to settle my score with my unfinished business. It was time to conquer Ifugao. It was time to finish mainland Luzon once and for all.

Another Renegade Junctures adventure awaits. As it goes in our every travel: tara, samahan ninyo kami.