Camp John Hay + Mines View Park Day Tour — Baguio

Camp John Hay is a relic of American empire at its most aesthetically pleasant — 247 hectares of manicured grounds, golf fairways, and colonial-era buildings perched on a pine-forested ridge above Baguio city. Built in 1903 as an R&R facility for American military personnel (generals MacArthur and Eisenhower both stayed here), it's now a leisure complex open to the public, and its forest trails and Heritage Trail are among the most pleasant walks in the Philippines.

The tour explores the Heritage Trail past the log cabin where US presidents once vacationed, the Cemetery of Negativism (a whimsically named garden of humorous grave-markers), and the Bell House where the formal American military withdrawal from the Philippines was signed in 1991. The pine forest itself is striking — these are Benguet pines, indigenous to the Cordillera, and the air beneath them has a resinous clarity that makes every breath feel medicinal.

From Camp John Hay, the tour moves to Mines View Park, 6 km away, where the ridge drops sharply into the Itogon valley — a lunar landscape of old gold and copper tailings softened by terraced vegetable gardens and reforestation. The panoramic platform is famous for the traditional Igorot costume photo op, the craft market behind it is the most concentrated source of quality Cordillera silver and weaving in Baguio, and on clear days you can see all the way to the lowland provinces below the mountains.