James takes on the world!

Having conquered the Batad rice terraces Oliver and I decided that we would try and make our way to the Julia Campbell Agroforest Memorial Park which is a 48-hectare organic coffee plantation.

The reason this plantation is so famous is because the coffee is derived from the excrement of the coffee-bean-eating Civet (a cat/fox like creature with a pointed nose). The civet is left to roam the forests freely where they naturally eat the very best and ripest shade grown coffee. The Civet is unable to digest the bean in the centre and it then excretes this. The plantation workers then collect the excreted bean. This coffee sells at £50 per shot in the UK, we were able to buy a large pack at the plantation for 50p.

We made the 2 ½ hour journey to the plantation by Jeepney where we were able to sit on the roof along with various parcels of food, drink, rice and live chickens. The Filipinos looked at us like we were crazy but when we arrived at the plantation and found out that they had only ever had 15 visitors since they opened we realised it was just because they were not used to seeing tourists.

When we arrived we were taken for a trek in the dense, jurassic-like forest by the owners son. He cut down a few banana trees on the way and we helped ourselves to Philippines style bananas which are a more square and shorter version of the bananas that we know in the UK. We finished the hike by finding a viewpoint that looked across the untouched mountains, rice terraces and forests. It was stunningly beautiful. It is seeing sights like this which make me question why so many travelers miss out the Philippines.

The children in the neighboring village found it hilarious having a picture taken and then being able to to see themselves on screen.

I was very tempted to stay on the plantation overnight which is free if you help out during the day, however, we had to get back in time for our bus to Manila ready for my flight to Palawan. We had spent more time than we should have on the plantation and found that we had missed the final Jeepney back to Banaue where our bus departed from and our bags were. We therefore had to get 4 motorbikes and 1 tricycle back only to find that we had missed the bus by 30 minutes. We stayed yet another night in Banaue and Oliver had to leave at 6am this morning in order to get to his flight and I am leaving at 8:30 this evening (hence why I am updating you all again so soon after my last post).

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