Halsema Highway

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Baguio

   Baguio is the city that the Philippines built to escape itself. At about 1,500 metres in the Cordillera, with pine trees, mist and an average temperature that would feel mild in Europe, it became the summer capital soon after the Americans arrived in 1900s, and the layout of the original city was drawn up by the planner Daniel Burnham. Today around 270,000 people live here, the traffic is a constant argument, and the cool air is still the main attraction for people from the lowlands.

   Read the complete Baguio write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Baguio is where the day begins. Next is Atok.

2. 2. Atok

   A sign beside the road at Atok declares that this is the highest point on the Philippine highway system, and the air agrees. At about 2,250 metres the Halsema Highway is cold and often shrouded in cloud, a surprise to anyone who flew in from the sweating lowlands, and the vegetable terraces that cover the slopes here look more like Switzerland than South-East Asia. Cabbages, carrots, potatoes, flowers and strawberries grow on slopes that appear almost vertical, and farmers carry loads up and down on their backs. Atok is a small municipality, with Baguio far to the south and Abatan and Sagada to the north.

   Read the complete Atok write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Atok comes up about 43 km into the recorded legs. Next is Highest Point.

3. 3. Highest Point

   Halsema Highway does not shout about its summit. There is a sign, a small pull-off and a few stalls selling strawberries, fresh vegetables and woolly hats, and that is the highest point on the whole Philippine highway network, around 2,255 metres above the sea. It sits close to Atok, in Benguet, and the road goes on north toward Bontoc and Sagada as if nothing special had happened. For a country associated with beaches, a pine-scented ridge where you need a jacket is a pleasant shock.

   Read the complete Highest Point write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 113 km into the recorded legs you reach Highest Point. Nothing on this route is higher. Next is Bontoc, mostly downhill.

4. 4. Bontoc

   Bontoc looks like exactly what it is, the administrative heart of a mountain province, with a busy market, jeepneys parked nose to tail and a river, the Chico, curling through the middle of everything. About ten thousand people live here, hemmed in by the steep green flanks of the Cordillera, and the town has long been the main trading point for the Igorot villages scattered through these hills. For a long time, Bontoc was associated with headhunting in the foreign imagination, an image the locals have grown tired of, and a visit to the small museum on the hill gives a more honest picture of the culture, with its stone houses, tattoos, weaving and rice rituals.

   Read the complete Bontoc write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Bontoc, late in the day. Next is Sagada.

5. 5. Sagada

   Sagada is a village in the mountains where the dead are literally placed above the living. In the limestone cliffs around the valley, the Igorot Kankanaey people have for centuries laid their dead in wooden coffins, which they hang from the rock face or wedge into crevices, in the belief that it brings them closer to the ancestors. Some of the coffins are very old, and the tradition is still practised by a few families. The best-known are at Echo Valley, reached by a short walk through the cemetery.

   Read the complete Sagada write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Finish at Sagada. That is the ride.