This Renegade Junctures entry will come off as a public service announcement.

When travelling to Banaue, make sure that you will not miss buying from the Banaue Public Market. The produce of the terraces are sold in the market for prices that are incredibly low. Vegetables, even those that one from the Metro will consider as either rare or expensive, may be common in Banaue for prices way cheaper than one is accustomed to. I could only suspect that the low price of such products is owing to direct access—from the farmers directly to the vendors without having to go through middlemen. Apart from low prices, the products are more importantly fresh. Imagine that: plucked from the ground of the terrace then in the marketplace in just a matter of minutes, hours at most. It cannot get any fresher than that.

The freshest produce at the most affordable of prices.

Another piece of advice: if you have a typical Filipino mom, just like mine, who will go extra miles at being a cheapskate, then consider adding them to the equation. That would make everything insanely affordable.

My mom, doing her bidding.

Vegetables are not the only ones that caught our attention—well, Mama’s attention. After we have bought vegetables—and yes we bought plenty of them—we followed Mama’s lead and we ended up to the dry goods section of the market where surplus shirts were being sold. With a knack for everything cheap but with high quality, one could not go wrong with Mama when in the market.

The dry section of the Banaue Public Market.

We spent around an hour in the market before finally deciding to take the last stretch of our journey back home. The market would be our last stop in Ifugao, the final glimpse at an adventure that started three days earlier. It is such a pity that experiences that bring about awe and that strengthens human bonds, not only among one another but especially to history, tradition and culture, have to come to an end. They have to, though. Only through the conclusion of an experience can the door towards another be opened.

We did not only gathered fresh produce from the terraced earth of Ifugao. We did not only see its natural and manmade monuments to greatness etched since antiquity. We experienced Ifugao—a fruitful experience of tradition, culture and history, shared among family and friends. It was an adventure not only we would always remember. We would, for sure, look back to it with so much fondness.