I’m not good at estimating lengths and heights, but let me describe it this way— when I bent my neck to see it, my head and my neck formed a right angle—and still I could not see where the massive waterfall was coming from.

I heard Lee’s voice again, asking me to get back inside the car. With deep awe, I looked at the waterfall once more before I walked away.

We were driving on mountaintops and we saw a lot of rainbows. I think I have actually passed through rainbows. Let me explain why I think this way.  While Lee was driving, I could clearly see the colorful rainbows ahead of us. The end would be on the right side of the road but the other end would be somewhere on the left side of the road. Every time I thought we would get near the rainbow and drive through it, the rainbow would disappear and appear somewhere again, somewhere we had been.  

It has to be noted that Haselma Highway, the highway we were traversing, cuts through the Caraballo and Cordillera mountains, the massive mountain ranges in the island of Luzon. This explains the altitude, the clouds, and the rainbows. I can’t count how many rainbows we drove through. I was too astonished to count. Besides, we were always changing directions and angles so I was not sure if the rainbow I saw in front of me was the same rainbow I saw on the right side earlier.

We just drove on and on and on amid the seemingly endless blue-green mountain ranges teeming with wild flowers and massive trees, decorated by rainbows. All I could manage to say was, “Look! How lovely!” Lee would continue driving. “Beth, how can I see it? I am driving!” I did not mind his snap; the scenery was just too entertaining to mind a snap. Besides, I did not expect him to look at the things I was pointing at. My comment was just just an interjection. Again, the views were too beautiful and too serene to be ruined by an argument. I was feeling particularly close to nature.

We saw a very big waterfall—and I really mean a huge and high waterfall. I’m not good at estimating lengths and heights, but let me describe it this way— when I bent my neck backward to see it, my head and my neck formed a right angle—and still I could not see where the massive waterfall was coming from. Yeah, I know it was coming from the top of the mountain—LOL—but I mean, I could not see its source. It was drizzling—not really a drizzle—we were among the clouds so it felt as though it was drizzling, that’s why in the picture, I was holding an umbrella. The water that we see in the picture is just the—can I say fringes of the waterfall? The camera could not capture the whole waterfall. If you notice in the picture, Lee was in the car, on the driver’s seat, when he took the picture.

I wanted to enjoy the waterfall more. I actually wanted to wait for someone familiar with the area and ask him/her where we were. I wanted to ask someone who could tell me the name of the waterfall, but Lee said we had to go.

By the way, the waterfall is not scenic compared to the waterfalls that are the main attractions in Sagada. The beauty of that waterfall lies on its formidable apperance–so high that one can’t see where it was falling from–so determined that it just goes on cascading and cascading, on the big mountain rocks.

I heard Lee’s voice again, asking me to get back inside the car. With deep awe, I looked at the waterfall once more before I walked away.

After more and more hours, we finally passed by traditional houses on mountains slopes, along the road. Yeah, we were still up there in the middle of nowhere, and so the houses were of course on the slopes, and the road we were trekking passed right at the middle of their village.  Ah, we were nearing civilization. It was lovely to see old men sitting relaxingly in the front yards while the old women swept the ground. Some old women were gathering vegetables from their yards, and some children were holding water containers and collecting water either from a nearby well or from a brook while the littler children would simply run and skip about with their dogs. Some were feeding chickens.

The colorful flowers cultivated by the locals  in their  front yards, all in different shapes and sizes, were such a beautiful decoration against the misty slopes of the Cordillera and Caraballo mountains.  During those moments that we doubted Waze, we would stop and ask a local to confirm whether or not we were heading to our destination. The locals would speak in Filipino, the country’s national language, in an accent that made me miss my parents. They would tell us bonus information—they would give us landmarks, (the landmarks are mountain shapes and trees, isn’t this cute? ^_^), and they would tell us how many hours more we would have to drive. We’d thank them very politely and sincerely after that.

We reached a fork and there was no Waze signal. We did not know which way to go so we parked on the roadside and waited for further instructions from Waze. Finally, Waze pointed to the road on the left side. There were no cars going to that direction and the road looked less traversed, it was muddy, and we felt eerie. Common sense would dictate that if a place is a tourist destination, then the road leading to it should not be looking deserted and desolated. Lee got down and approached a local. The friendly man pointed to the road going to the right.

We crossed a bridge and finally, the houses that looked very, very tiny when we were on top of the mountains were already there, right on our right side. It was a small village and the women were collecting water from the river that was flowing right in front of their humble abodes. When we had crossed the bridge, we saw the same armored truck that were right ahead of us back in Gibraltar Road Baguio. It was the same armored truck that was ahead of us, sometimes behind us, all the way from Baguio up to that place. We thought this was funny and the way Lee and I laughed would have made anyone think that our sanity had snapped.

After more and more hours of driving through fogs and rainbows, the atmosphere—the terrain– became beautifully strange. I did not understand it at first so I concluded that it was due to the adrenaline rush—and my heart started thumping. It was 3 in the afternoon and the rays of the afternoon sun were between the majestic trees. I noticed that the trees were not like the ones I saw before. Lee told me that they were pine trees. Pine trees were everywhere I looked. Along the road were wild white lilies and wild sunflowers. The wild sunflowers, with their long, graceful stalks were swaying in the afternoon breeze, seemingly looking up, bragging their beauty to the blue December sky.

All around Lee and me were different shades of greens, some streaks of white clouds on the blue sky, the early afternoon sun and the rainbows. A piece of paradise in the middle of nowhere.

Lee made a dramatic announcement. “Beth, this is Sagada. I told you before, I wanted to come here with you. Look at the pine trees. Those trees are also in my home, in Korea.”