The Banaue Rice Terraces are stairways of stone and earth carved into the steep mountainsides above Banaue town, some climbing more than 1,500 metres above sea level. Built about two thousand years ago by the ancestors of the Ifugao people and still farmed today, they are part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site that covers five separate terrace clusters across the Cordillera. End to end the walls would stretch halfway around the globe — though that line is travel-brochure talk, the scale really is extraordinary.
The terraces around Banaue town itself are visible from the road and from several roadside viewpoints, but they have been damaged in places by tin-roofed houses and concrete reinforcements. For the cleanest, most photogenic terraces, head to Batad or Bangaan. Planting and harvest seasons — February to March and June to July — give the brightest green; the terraces in the dry winter months are brown and less photogenic. Local guides can take you onto the terraces themselves and explain the irrigation system, which is fed by springs in the forest above and managed by village water-keepers under a system that predates Spanish contact.