Escape Manila’s heat for northern Luzon’s pine-scented hills, hanging coffins and other hidden wonders
They may not make for a typical Philippine holiday, but the highlands of northern Luzon are a world apart from Manila and the tropical lowlands, finds Thomas Bird
Travellers rolling north through Metro Manila along the Skyway are treated to an elevated perspective of the Philippine capital. The land is pancake flat but the buildings – from bric-a-brac slums to gilded high-rises – reach for the heavens.
My partner and I, too, are headed higher. Our aim is simple – to escape the city heat and exchange the pervasive congestion for nights that aren’t polluted by light, and days by smog. The most obvious solution would be to take a ferry to some exotic isle – after all, the Philippines has 7,000 of them – but we’ve resolved to head in the opposite direction to the Boracay-bound sun-seekers, to the pine-scented hills of Luzon.
The first quarter of the day is spent on a Victory Liner coach, staring at an undulating sea of rice, with only the volcanic profile of Mount Arayat suggesting there may be mountains ahead.
Once we pass the city of Tarlac, lowland farms begin to submit to hill country, as the coach lurches from a cane-straight highway to a winding road that traces the contours of the land. The temperature cools with the altitude and the natural world evolves in tandem. Brilliant wildflowers line the passage north and menacing raptors circle overhead.