New day, new hike.

We left Cambulo in the morning, to make our way to Batad, the next village down the river – and when it comes to rice terraces, probably the most famous one – and of UNESCO world heritage fame.

Unfortunately a landslide, triggered by a taifun during the summer months, had destroyed a portion of the trail to Batad. We therefore had to make our way back up to the unfinished road, backtrack for about 1.5km, to then turn into a small trail at the side and make our way down again to the good part of the trail.

Weather conditions today were not too good, it had rained heavily earlier on and still was drizzling every now and then – – the ground therefore was wet and slippery, making the steep path down to the trail difficult to navigate. At stages it was closer to a mud slide than an actual path.

Well – we eventually made it and arrived a the actual trail, with a drinks and snack vendor waiting for us. We used the opportunity for a quick break, before continuing – now on the real trail – our trek to Batad.

It took us another hour until we turned around a corner and suddenly found ourselves at a viewpoint overlooking Batad and its amphitheater of rice terraces – fully unexpected at that point in time and simply mind-blowing. I certainly had not expected this grandeur … the sheer size of it the whole setup (especially with the village right in the middle – also a good measure for comparison) just left most speechless.

We spent some time here – enjoying the view, some snacks and a fresh coconut. We now had to enter and cross through the rice terraces, to get to our guesthouse on the other side of town. We carefully crossed through (carefully being key here: wrong step on one side → wet feet, wrong step on the other side → drop of a couple of meters and more than wet feet) and made it to our guesthouse just in time for a late lunch and just before it started raining (heavily and for the rest of the day) – – so plenty of time, to sit back, relax and just take it easy, have a massage and wait for the ginger to properly infuse the gin 😉