Northeastern Luzon

Day 1: One hour flight in a 5 seater plane --- Cauayan to Palanan.
Arrive in Palanan, which is a lovely little rural village without a single paved road.Everyone gets around by walking, tricycles (motorcycles with a little cart attached for passengers), or bicycles. We arrived at where we would be based for the week - Father Sam's convent. Father Sam is a friend of Lily's who provides social services to the Agta (the population of negritos we worked with). The convent, which was actually an abbey, was so nice to stay at. There we met our 2 porters who were so great...they cooked, cleaned, carried most of our gear, and were so sweet. On the back porch of the convent you can see the range of the Sierra Madre mountains.

Day 2: After spending the night at the convent, we woke up early (like every day) and headed to the river where we would take a motorboat to the first Agta settlement. This one wasn't very far, just a couple hours down the river. We arrived and hiked up to the population.
The first thing we do when we arrive is introduce ourselves and then have one of the settlement's elders take us up to a part of the forest where they would hunt and gather. Then, we slodge through the forest, setting up a string track of about 500m. - 1km. Then, we come back to the settlement and bring the people up to the track. The people wear a small strap around their chest which measures body movement and get thermographic photos taken of them before and after completing the track. Then, we go back to the village and take height and weight measurements and collect saliva for DNA. Then, we use the ultrasound to get various measurements for the musculature of the lower leg. This settlement (called Dibunko) was probably my favorite out of all that we have worked with. The children were absolutely adorable and fun to play with. Go back to Father Sam's. Eat fish. Eat rice. Drink beer. Shower. Bed.

Day 3:
Take a motorboat down the river for 1 hour. Take it into the Pacific for 3 hours.
Arrive at the Agta settlement of Kanaipang. This is the most beautiful of all the settlements. Beautiful coral beach meets beautiful (albeit secondary) rainforest. Spent the night at the settlement. I hung my hammock overlooking the sea, but it got too cold and misty (first time in this entire trip) so I moved into the hut that Lily was sleeping in.

Day 4: Boiled banana and boiled eggs with rice for breakfast. Instant coffee. Nate does the transect with lidar...start hiking to our motorboat (40 minute hike along the beach)


So, after leaving Kanaipang, long story short - the motor went out in our boat out in the Pacific with 11 people in it (including a family of Agta who we offered a ride back to their settlement) and tons of high-tech equipment...we ended up paddling (with two wooden planks, one bamboo stick, and flipflops) to the nearest beach (about 2 km away). It took a loooong time. So we get to the beach, our porters magically whip up lunch in 30 minutes, and there is a fresh spring for drinking water right near the salt water. There happened to be a very tiny Agta settlement right there just barely uphill so we interacted with them for a while. They had a pet baby macaque monkey in this settlement...this happens because these people will kill a monkey (to eat) and it turns out that it was a mother with an infant. The people often feel empathy so a lactating woman will breastfeed the monkey, but the infant dies due to the fact that human milk is simply not rich enough in fats and other nutrients.
So we eat fish for dinner...along with cassava and of course rice, and then go to sleep realllllllllllllllllly early. Not a bad place to be stranded, eh?

Day 5: Wake up super early and head out (in our new motorboat that our porters swam to get) to another settlement that was closer to Father Sam's. This settlement was called Diago. We ate native lobster, ran subjects and got our data...I did Lidar (nightmare! torture device!)...


...then we headed back to Father Sam's.

Day 6: Return to Cauayan in the little plane, spend the night there and then fly back to Manila. Nate leaves the next day in the morning and so do I (for Davao)