So far, Donsol had been a bit of a bust. It had been a mission to get there, and thus far the fireflies and whale sharks had been a disappointment. But we had one more creature left on our list to see — manta rays. We had arrived in the middle of peak season for the…

We had come to Donsol for one reason: to see the locally named butanding in the proudly named Whale Shark Capital of the World. Long before my plane first landed in the Philippines, when my trip was just daydreams and scrawled notes in the margins of a guidebook, this moment was what I looked forward to the…

I drifted into consciousness to the familiar hum of a plane preparing for descent. Heather and I were in the midst of a twenty-seven hour transit marathon from Sagada that would involve a bus, another bus, a cab, a flight, a trike, a minibus, and another final trike ride. This flight, which turned a twelve-hour bus…

I could feel it spreading through me like a heat rash — my stomach twisted, my throat tightened, and my pulse quickened. I tried my usual coping mechanisms of deep breaths, visualization, and repeated mantras. I was in a battle with my own mind — logic was trying to prevail, but panic was winning by a…

I left Banaue and Batad feeling physically exhausted after three days of intense trekking through the Cordillera rice terraces. But as I boarded the public Jeepney that would take me three hours to Bontoc where I would transfer for another three-hour public Jeepney to Sagada, all for less than five dollars, I was filled with excitement…

On the morning of my third day in the Cordilleras, I jolted awake and rolled over to look out the window. Had I dreamed how beautiful it was? The view that answered me back assured me it was very much reality. Despite, or perhaps even partly because of, the total isolation from the outside world, I…