I have a hard time sorting through the superstition here. Locals cite mysterious happenings that range from bizarre to outright miraculous. I can’t tell sometimes if they’re just fables, or if there’s something really valid behind their tales.

About an hour’s hike from here, there’s a waterfall called Chapa falls. Adam saw the waterfall a few months ago and decided to find it himself. I hiked with him there a few weeks ago with a neighbor, Raul. It was a cool day, but after ascending numerous staircases and wandering through the terraces, the sun broke through the clouds and we heated up. The waterfall, while not commanding, is beautiful. Tucked high up in the terraces, the site offers a great view of the terraces and the landscape around the falls is lush and green.

Chapa Falls

But then we heard about another destination, even higher up that Chapa. They call the site Holy Water. On our way back from Chapa Falls, we asked a few people where it was. “Hichi,” many said: far away. They’d wave their hands towards Chapa Falls and that was the end of it. Finally we met a familiar woman sitting on the steps of a long staircase up to the marketplace.

“Chana chi Holy Water?” we asked. “Do you know?” We crouched down to her as she sat folding a betel nut into its leaf. She raised her eyebrows and smiled. She waved her hand in the direction of Chapa Falls and told Adam some vague directions.

“Is it far?” We asked. She nodded. “Can you swim there?” we asked.

She shook her head. “There is a pipe and the water comes out of it. You can bathe under that. Every Friday some locals go to the Holy Water and say prayers and bathe in it.”

It sounded intriguing. We decided to find it.

Weeks later I found myself straining up the hillside as we climbed five or six hundred feet straight up the mountainside. We passed through small citeos, little villages, where families had their clothes hung out to dry in the hot sunshine. We climbed up cement staircases, passed native huts where chickens clucked at us and numerous hungry dogs either barked or lay listless in the dirt, staring at us with defeated eyes. Older men and women sat crouched under the shade, sorting through rice, cleaning clothes, or playing with their grandchildren. Many of them smiled at us, their betel nut teeth red and decayed, as we told them where we were headed.

View of Banaue town--you can see the development along one road (the line of gray)

The sun struck down. The view expanded below us. My legs strained, which embarrassed me as I’ve spent months hiking up mountains in the past. I just arrived from Manila a few days before and hadn’t made up for the sleepless night on the bus. Mart, the 13 year old from next door, bounded up the steps as Adam and I huffed along after him. We stopped numerous times to ask directions. Mart was too embarrassed to associate himself with us—we think he might have been worried people would think he was a tour guide as many youth his age often are. For the most part, Adam ended up asking where Holy Water was in his limited Ifugao. I just trailed along behind, catching my breath.

Another young man joined us along the way, someone who knew for sure where the terraces were. He walked behind us as we reached a small bowl in the mountain where a group of people worked on their terraces. The view behind us was spectacular, but mostly we were struck by the sound of birds and the relative silence. No chainsaws, nor jeepneys or tricycles driving by, no children shouting. There was still the clink of metal on wood or the occasional conversation or laughter, but there was something unusually peaceful and silent about this place perched six or seven hundred feet above the town below.

View from rice terraces near Holy Water site

“Chana chi Holy Water?” We asked again. The people pointed to a white pagoda sitting on a terrace.

“That can’t be it? Right?” Adam said to me. I shrugged my shoulders. After two hours of hiking, I was exhausted from the sun and stair climbing and wanted to rest.

Mart waiting impatiently for us. Part of the white pagoda is in the upper right corner.

We hiked along the terrace walls and walked up to the pagoda. Inside a Virgin Mary statue held her hands in prayer. Above her, a sign read, "The Lord says: Ask and you will be given, seek and you will, knock and it will be open to you." Beneath her a small pipe leaked out water into a shallow pool below. I walked in and sat on a bench, grateful for the shade. Adam stood at the entrance, skeptical.

Inside the Holy Water Pagoda

“I refuse to accept that this is Holy Water,” he said. I laughed at first, then looked at the two locals with us.

“Careful,” I said. “I think this is it. The woman we asked the other day said the water came out of a pipe.”

“Yeah, but, you can’t swim or bathe in this. I thought this would upstage Chapa Falls,” he said. “I’m going to look around some more.”

I didn’t care what the place looked like. The hike was nice, and I was just happy to stop and drink some water. I pulled the plastic bottles I’d carried up the mountain and handed them to Mart. “You want to fill these up for Lola?” He raised his eyebrows, took them from me and filled up the bottles. Then he walked back over and took a sip.

Mart and me

“You can drink it?” I asked. He nodded. I realized it was a spring—a lot of the water in Banaue is. I walked over and took some as well. We sat there in the shade for awhile, drinking water and eating a bit of bread.

After awhile an older woman joined us. Physically worn from a life in the fields, her toes and fingers were dark and stubbed and she had few teeth left from years of betel nut chewing. Her eyes, however, glowed.

“Did you remember to pray before you drank the water?” she asked us. I looked over at Mart who tried to hide a guilty smile.

“Um, no,” I finally said. “We haven’t yet.”

She nodded. “You must pray before you drink the water so the Good Lord will bless you and heal you. Many people come here to receive the water’s blessing. That is why they call it the Holy Water.” She gestured emphatically with her hands as she spoke.

Feeling guilty, I bowed my head for a moment and then walked over and took more water from the pipe.

“We didn’t pray before we drank the water,” I told Adam later, as we wandered back down the mountain. “Now our water’s not going to work for Lola.”

Adam and Mart

“I still can’t accept that this was it,” he said. “What a let down. But man, I love it up here. It’s totally beautiful—you can actually hear the birds. I’d love to explore this place more.”

Later that evening, Lola talked to us about Holy Water. She told us that a few years back a woman from a local barangay had a spiritual vision about water pooling out from a rock. She heard a voice that told her the water could heal people. She came to Banaue and asked around and the people told her there was a place like that in a terrace up the mountain, but that someone owned the land. The woman didn’t know the owner of the terrace and so she went back home.

“Soon after, she had another vision,” Lola told us, “The Lord said, ‘I gave you a vision about water that can heal people and you have done nothing about it?’ The woman said, ‘But I don’t know the owner of the terrace!’ And the Good Lord said, ‘You should try again! This water can heal people.’”

The woman came back and talked to the owner of the terrace. They saw where the water bubbled out and they pulled a large rock out and it began to flow freely. Lola told us that the woman had some kind of skin ailment, but when she put the water on it, the ailment went away.

“The water is miraculous,” she said, “I know a man who had knee problems. He got some water from Chapa Falls and drank it and bathed and it. Now he doesn’t have knee problems anymore. They get swollen sometimes, but not like before.”

Lola went on to tell us about another woman with an infected wound on her belly. She poured the water on her belly and the infection healed. She also had several children with boils on their backs that couldn’t go to school. They drank and bathed in the water and were healed. Lola cited how she drank the water to help with her coughs and to help her stay healthy.

“If people have faith,” she said, “The Good Lord will heal them. That’s why you must pray before you drink the water and that is why it is holy and miraculous.”

I sat there with Lola, not sure how to take in the story. I have heard many stories around here about voodoo-like curses on statues that cause people to get strange ailments, and other stories as well. I was skeptical, but then I questioned my skepticism. Could these miracles have really happened? Did Adam’s and my expectations and skepticism stop us from experiencing them?

And a larger question stuck with me: what was the greater miracle in this scenario? Was it the great beauty of the terraces, unfolding at our feet? Was it the woman’s vision that led to a series of unexplained events? Or was it the locals’ faith that this particular spring water could heal them? Maybe something miraculous lay there for all of us—depending on whatever we opened ourselves up to.

View from the terraces on our way down