Birkenstocks in the Cordillera: A Journey Home Through the Philippines’ Northern Highlands (Travel Memoir of Shared Discoveries)
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Regular price $21.99
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Birkenstocks in the Cordillera: A Journey Home Through the Philippines’ Northern Highlands (Travel Memoir of Shared Discoveries)
Sale price
$17.99
Regular price $21.99
Three weeks after returning from Portugal, LJ Baqutoy and her partner Claus boarded a plane from New York to Manila. Their destination: the Cordillera mountains of Northern Luzon, where LJ had grown up in the town of Sagada before spending three decades in New York City. What followed was a month-long journey that took them from the sacred slopes of Mount Pulag to the ghost towns of the northern coast and into the heart of what it means to bring the person you love into the landscape that made you.
Birkenstocks in the Cordillera is a contemplative travel memoir that tells of the story of that journey. Claus, a German man in his eighties who wore his Birkenstocks everywhere, despised American beer, and took quiet pride in defying every expectation about age, had visited Sagada once before and fallen in love with it. Now, returning with LJ, he chopped firewood in his sandals, played Chinese checkers by the fireplace, drank Red Horse beer, and swam in the South China Sea just weeks after swimming in the Mediterranean.
Together with LJ’s siblings and their indispensable driver-guide Ben, they climbed a mountain where indigenous peoples believe the souls of the dead reside. They lit saeng, sacred pitchwood, at family graves on All Souls’ Eve. They drove the treacherous Halsema Highway through an earthquake, ate empanadas at the northern tip of Luzon Island, and stood before a lighthouse whose caretaker had given it a voice and a poem. Along the way, they encountered the beauty and complexity of the Ilocos coast, its colonial churches, its windmill farms, its political mansions, and its pandemic-ravaged beach towns, discovering that not every destination delivers what it promises, but the road always gives you something worth keeping.
Written in the same contemplative, intimate voice as Saudade, Porto, this second volume in the Travel Memoir of Shared Discoveries series is a love letter to the Philippines, to the Cordillera mountains, and to the man who found a home there, not by birth but by choice, not through grand gestures but through the simple acts of splitting wood, tending a fire, and standing beside the woman he loved at the graves of her ancestors.
This book is for readers of travel memoirs, Filipino diaspora literature, and anyone who has ever brought a loved one home and watched them fall in love with the place that made you.
Inside this transformative journey, you’ll discover:
Your life is not fixed. Your story is still unfolding, waiting for you to step into it with intention, curiosity, and courage.
If you’re ready to move beyond feeling stuck and into a life of deeper connection and discovery, this book is your invitation.
Take the first step, and walk with purpose into your next chapter.
Birkenstocks in the Cordillera is a contemplative travel memoir that tells of the story of that journey. Claus, a German man in his eighties who wore his Birkenstocks everywhere, despised American beer, and took quiet pride in defying every expectation about age, had visited Sagada once before and fallen in love with it. Now, returning with LJ, he chopped firewood in his sandals, played Chinese checkers by the fireplace, drank Red Horse beer, and swam in the South China Sea just weeks after swimming in the Mediterranean.
Together with LJ’s siblings and their indispensable driver-guide Ben, they climbed a mountain where indigenous peoples believe the souls of the dead reside. They lit saeng, sacred pitchwood, at family graves on All Souls’ Eve. They drove the treacherous Halsema Highway through an earthquake, ate empanadas at the northern tip of Luzon Island, and stood before a lighthouse whose caretaker had given it a voice and a poem. Along the way, they encountered the beauty and complexity of the Ilocos coast, its colonial churches, its windmill farms, its political mansions, and its pandemic-ravaged beach towns, discovering that not every destination delivers what it promises, but the road always gives you something worth keeping.
Written in the same contemplative, intimate voice as Saudade, Porto, this second volume in the Travel Memoir of Shared Discoveries series is a love letter to the Philippines, to the Cordillera mountains, and to the man who found a home there, not by birth but by choice, not through grand gestures but through the simple acts of splitting wood, tending a fire, and standing beside the woman he loved at the graves of her ancestors.
This book is for readers of travel memoirs, Filipino diaspora literature, and anyone who has ever brought a loved one home and watched them fall in love with the place that made you.
Inside this transformative journey, you’ll discover:
- How immersive travel can awaken a sense of purpose and reconnect you with what truly matters
- The power of returning “home” and how it can reveal parts of yourself long forgotten
- What it means to travel as a pilgrim, not just a tourist, and why that shift changes everything
- How shared journeys can deepen relationships, offering new ways to see each other and yourself
- The courage to face your past and transform it into a source of strength and meaning
- A renewed appreciation for simplicity, nature, and the wisdom of indigenous landscapes
- How stepping into discomfort can expand your world in ways comfort never could
- Permission to rewrite your story, no matter where you are in life
Your life is not fixed. Your story is still unfolding, waiting for you to step into it with intention, curiosity, and courage.
If you’re ready to move beyond feeling stuck and into a life of deeper connection and discovery, this book is your invitation.
Take the first step, and walk with purpose into your next chapter.