I took advantage of Hawaiian Airlines' May inaugural flight linking Honolulu and Manila to do a little exploring in the Philippines, discovering a memorable destination.

My weeklong visit was to northern Luzon's high country. Called the Cordillera, its several thousand square miles of layered mountains and clustered peaks are an alternative to the Philippines of palm-lined beaches and tropic seas, and the heat and urban intensity of Manila.

The Cordillera appealed to my sense of discovery, luring me with the promise of cultural diversity and scenic impact, and also the promise of cooler weather at its heights of more than 6,000 feet.

It's not just geography that defines the Cordillera. These mountains come with a rich cultural legacy. In a landscape of isolated, steep-walled valleys, that means a diversity of languages and traditions specific to tribes like the Kankany, Ifugao and Ibaloi, peoples with long-ago origins in Japan, the Malay Peninsula, China and Taiwan.

A first step was hiring a car and driver, which quickly proved to be a wise decision. Manila has notoriously bad traffic and a spider's web of streets, lacking signs to guide you from one part of this sprawling city to another.

There were other alternatives for traveling outside of Manila — 10-hour bus rides and hourlong flights into Baguio (bag-e-o), my first Cordillera destination — but neither suited my travel style: A car and driver opened the door to the unexpected, offering freedom to move at a pace determined by my photographer's eye.

Finding the car and driver at what seemed an affordable price took some doing. The arrangement I finally negotiated through the recommendation of a Filipino friend priced out at about $120 per day for the two of us, with meals (uniformly good) that averaged $3 to $6 and accommodations (for two) priced at $5 to $20 per night.

There are pricier options in Baguio and Banaue (see accompanying If You Go box), but we chose the basics, clean and comfortable, but with hot water and functional flush toilets not necessarily part of the bargain.

I set out for Baguio not knowing what to expect.

When I'd first looked at a map and discovered that it was only 170 miles from Manila, I discounted talk of an eight- to 10-hour drive identified by the guidebook and friends.

I was initially reassured by our rapid progress on the multi-lane toll road heading north, freeing us of the city's congested streets. Giant billboards loomed over the highway, taking aim at the Philippines' emerging middle class, 10-story celebrities selling youth, freedom, the good life and creams to whiten dark skin.

We were barely 15 miles outside of Manila when my driver, Rosario, headed for an exit. Something told me this was not good.

"What's the road like from here on?" I asked with what proved appropriate foreboding. "Much slower," Rosario answered with no further elaboration.

I would have hours to learn just what that meant.

Cars, buses, trucks, jeepneys (packed-to-bursting mini-buses), and tricycles (motorcycles with sidecars attached) clogged the road, in effect an arterial town defined by tire repair shops and small truck-stop eateries, pawn shops, transmission repair shops and stores hung floor-to-ceiling with rattan furniture.

Here, the signs were much smaller. Hand-crafted, they extolled the virtues of a drug-free life and of reverence due a loving God.

Sprouting from former rice fields were gated communities, idyllic suburbs in the making with names totally unrelated to reality — like DaVinci Woods, with nary a tree and not a hint of medieval Italy to be found. Just outside the gates, vendors hawked local specialties — watermelon outside DaVinci Woods, live giant prawns outside Tivoli Meadows.

Now and again the countryside would break through, rice paddies and conical volcanoes in a scene made timeless by a water buffalo and farmer reduced to miniature silhouettes while plowing a distant field. On this road to Baguio, however, mundane roadside clutter mostly displaced the sublime.

With only one stop for a fast-food lunch, it took every bit of nine hours to reach Baguio. Rosario drove with a saint-like patience, navigating his way through every obstacle, slowing to a crawl and awaiting an opportunity to pass — a risky proposition with one lane of heavy traffic in each direction all the way from the expressway exit to Baguio.

FINALLY, BAGUIO

Baguio, at the southern entry to the mountains, is at 5,000 feet elevation. It is capital of Benguet, one of six provinces that share the Cordillera. I'd be visiting three: Benguet, Mountain and Ifugao.

Baguio clings to the Cordillera's steep hillsides beneath tall, fragrant trees that define Baguio as the City of Pines.

Once a rustic mountainside village hosting American military and administrators escaping the lowland heat during the years (1898-1946) when the Philippines was a U.S. Commonwealth, Baguio today plays host primarily to Filipinos seeking its cool climate and scenic vistas. It is also a university town, with thousands of students adding to a surprisingly cosmopolitan mix.

To some degree, popularity has proven Baguio's undoing, urbanization bringing development and traffic. The calm of the mountains has been replaced by the human energy of a bustling town, hillside pines replaced by vertical neighborhoods, the central market a maze of vendors and jostling, bargain-priced commerce.

A hint of Baguio's quieter past and the still-beautiful mountain setting can be found at the grounds of Wright Park, adjacent to Camp John Hay, developed by the U.S. military in the first decades of the 20th century as a "summer capital" for U.S. personnel stationed in the Philippines. Today, Wright Park provides Baguio with a second forested preserve that looks out toward the wild, layered mountains of the Cordillera.

The Manor, facing just such a view, offers the best hotel to be found in the Cordillera. It's part of a resort with golf, horseback riding, hiking trails and a butterfly park as options. Cordillera prices are very cheap by U.S. standards, with the four-star Manor offered at two-star prices. In town, the relative quiet of Burnham Park offers a number of less expensive bed-and-breakfast options.

Night came to Baguio with a full moon, mountain-clear white light bathing city and mountains, the crisp night air carrying the piney fragrance of distant forests. I slept well that night, awakened early by a sliver of sunlight breaking through the pines outside my window.

THE ROAD TO SAGADA

We were heading to Sagada, a mountain town renowned for its isolated beauty, miles-long caves, and for coffins hung from cliffside ledges in a mix of Christian and pre-Christian traditions.

Chastened by word of the 10-hour trip north to Sagada, I tried for a quick morning departure, only to find us lost in a maze of unmarked streets that took us on a circuitous, traffic-clogged route out of town.

White clouds passed overhead, heading toward a blue-sky horizon, replaced as the day wore on by a white summer haze that by noon was already draining the color and detail of the distant hills.

Within an hour, the fine paved road that made its way out of Baguio shrank to a single lane before ending with a miles-long stretch that was, on occasion, rutted and rock-strewn. Carved into the mountainside, it made precarious headway, providing a cliff's-edge perspective of steep mountains, serpentine valleys and terraced field that compensated for the rigors of the road.

SAGADA, AN OLD BAGUIO

"Sagada is what Baguio was 50 years ago," a newfound friend, born, bred and well traveled in these mountains, told me. In Sagada the quiet remained, village life making only modest concessions to the pace of modern times. Roosters still announce the pending dawn, and the echo of barking dogs heralds the start of night.

It was nearly 5 p.m. on a gray-sky afternoon when we finally reached Sagada. A last patch of blue was surrendering to the dark clouds of a gathering storm, the sweltering midday heat converted into tropic torrents of rain.

By the time we found a room, the worst of it was over, the storm clouds breaking up, ominous greys replaced by rich pastels, with misty rays of sunlight filtering through the baptized forest.

Such storms proved a daily event, the midday heat building to a point of climatic release, with each stormy afternoon offering a different finale. The pastels of the first afternoon were followed by a sunset of vibrant oranges and reds on the second, and on one evening we saw a rainbow, its rounded arch linking a sky still engulfed in storm clouds to a sky bathed in late-afternoon sunlight from a sun already beyond the valley's western ridgeline.

The days were equally special. Booking a registered guide at the tourism office in the center of town, I spent time in caves carved in porous rock by streams that made their way underground — home to bats, silicate rock formations, waterfalls and pools perfect for a cold-water swim. It was an opportunity I could not resist, my shadow cast in grand scale on a cave wall as I floated by, 300 feet beneath a pine forest that clings to the mountainside.

Tours can be customized to include the famed hanging coffins of Sagada, followed by a hike in the rice fields to one of the few remaining native homes. Half-day and full-day itineraries can be booked with English-speaking guides, starting at $10 for up to four people.

MUSEUM IN BONTOC

We departed Sagada early the next morning to allow for some time at a museum en route to Banaue.

The rich greens of Sagada's lush valley lay hidden beneath low-lying clouds, soft swirls of white contained by the sharp-edged summits of valley walls.

The first stop was Bontoc, a crossroads town that's also the capital of Mountain Province. The town's museum provided a cultural context. It contained fascinating archival photography depicting the Cordillera at a time of headhunters and missionaries. Many photos were taken as recently as the 1930s, revealing the traditional lifestyle of the Cordillera's tribal peoples.

Isolated, its people violently in opposition to outsiders, the Cordillera remained largely uncolonized during the Spanish centuries of colonization, slowly changing as missionaries converted the mountain tribes to Christianity in the first decades of the 20th century.

From Bontoc to Banaue, alternating sections of paved and unpaved road wind in ever-ascending switchbacks toward the highest peaks of the Cordillera. It's a serpentine climb to more than 6,000 feet, where lush cloud forest and chill winds prevail. From that high point, the road winds downhill for about an hour, past ferns and flowering trees, before reaching Banaue at about 3,500 feet.

BANAUE'S RICE TERRACES

I'd read of Banaue's rice terraces when they were named a United Nations World Heritage site, an honor bestowed in recognition of their great age and grand scale. I'd seen pictures of the staircased terraces that made arable land of this otherwise vertical landscape, the oldest going back 2,000 years.

The storm pattern that started in Sagada continued in Banaue, the weather adding a moody perspective to the setting, rain transformed into countless waterfalls as it flowed from terrace to terrace. Mornings were generally clear, presenting Banaue's recently planted rice terraces in a rich array of new-growth greens. A series of hillside lookouts provided varied panoramic perspectives, adjoining souvenir shops and strategically seated tribal elders dressed in colorful native garb, their faces etched by years of outdoor living.

As with Sagada, Banaue refers to not only the village, but also to other terraced communities in the vicinity, with Banaue's fabled beauty matched by the countryside that surrounds it. Most famous is Batad, about 45 minutes away by jeepney (we didn't have four-wheel drive and Rosario didn't want to risk it), followed by an hourlong hike down a steeply terraced amphitheater valley to the tiny village in the heart of the fields.

The next day, I came upon a valley that impressed me even more.

I'd set out that morning to visit a country inn I'd heard about but could not find. "Let's see where that road leads," I said to Rosario as we drove back to town, pointing to a road sign that read Hapao. Within an unpaved mile, I knew I'd found someplace special.

A dense jungle quiet hung over the landscape, triumphant nature dwarfing the occasional home that staked a claim to nearly vertical hillsides. Getting out of the car to walk, deep-breathing the oxygen-rich mountain air, I relished my discovery of an unknown place. Walking toward a bend in the road that hinted of a panoramic view, I came upon a sign for the Native Village Inn, which I'd been searching for earlier in the day. Opening the gate, I waved Rosario up a steep driveway that crested to views of the Cordillera.

Not just views, but iconic, mystic, sweeping views seen through a sparkling mist that was Hapao's version of an afternoon storm. I'd been welcomed by owner Graham Taylor, a British expat who, along with his Filipina wife, Monina, runs the Native Village Inn. The setting explains the motivation behind Taylor's fantasy hotel, where "cabins" are native in style (with modern bedding and full bathrooms), the food superb and the setting magical.

I was seated in a small gazebo, the spicy fragrance of curry a prelude to the late lunch to come. From the gazebo, the hillside plunged hundreds of feet below, ending in an irregular patchwork of green terraced fields and more distant blue-green mountains. A meandering stream curved its way through the valley leading to a roadside hot springs. The misty rain fell like a sparkling veil, raindrops momentarily aglitter as they freefall hundreds of feet to the valley floor below. Taylor talked story while we sipped tea, describing the circuitous route to the hilltop Eden he shares with visitors. Skies began to clear as we said our farewells, hinting of the brilliant colors of a sunny day.

I woke up before dawn the next morning, my last in the Cordillera, heading to the lanai overlooking the valley and town. Clouds hung heavy in the sky, largely hiding the famed terraced fields. In front of me, faint streamers of sunlight were visible through breaks in the clouds, proof of the reborn day. The scene radiated film-noir beauty.

I listened as Banaue came slowly to life, starting with the lyric call of some unseen birds. It was one of those sublime moments that makes addicts of travelers, and made acceptable the long trip back to Manila that would soon be under way.