Sagada
A pine-and-limestone mountain town in the Cordillera at around fifteen hundred metres, Sagada is the cool, quiet north-Luzon counterpoint to the rice-terrace circuit. The marquee is the Echo Valley hanging coffins — weathered wooden boxes lashed to vertical limestone cliffs by the indigenous Igorot, an active burial tradition rather than a museum piece — reached by a thirty-minute walk past the Episcopal cemetery. Pre-dawn vans climb the switchback to Kiltepan viewpoint for the famous “sea of clouds” sunrise, and a guided crawl through Sumaguing Cave fills the afternoon. From Banaue it’s a slow but scenic four-hour jeepney over the Halsema Highway, the country’s highest road.
