I love to travel, and if I have all the luxury in the world, that’s one thing that I would always do.
Here in the Philippines, there are a lot of beautiful places to choose from. We are so blessed with “Natural” resources and beautiful places which eventually became tourist attractions/destinations to us locals and foreigners.
Last July, I had the privilege to go to Sagada, Mountain Province with my fellow bloggers and be able to explore the beauty of Sumaguing Cave.
I experienced my first spelunking(caving) during my college days when we had an educational tour at Biak-na-Bato Cave in Bulacan but I clearly remember that it was easy. Well not Sumaguing Cave!. I am in for these kind of nature adventure but of course not with heights hahahha! because I’m really scared of heights, REEEEAAALLLLY SCARED. But of course I have to conquer it for me to be able to finish the Sumaguing Cave Course.
First, our tour guide oriented us on what to do and what to expect inside the cave. Almost all of us are first-timers so we need to take extra precaution.
And the adventure begin…
As we go treck inside the dark cave (Yes, it is really dark inside!), with only the lamp of the our tour guides as source of light, the feeling of thrill is rising.
As we went down, we start to hear bat sounds (there’s a lot of bats inside the cave roaming and hanging around the ceiling of the cave(So don’t look up with your mouth open if you don’t want to catch bat’s pee and poop inside your mouth!…just a reminder). The rocks around us are the only thing that we can grip to for support while going down and most of these rocks has Bat’s poop(Guano) and pee, so if you’re the kind of person who does not want to touch these things then better wear gloves!.
See the picture above? the one with the rope on the side? this is one of the hardest part of the trekking adventure in Sumaguing Cave because in order to get through you really have to cross this path.
You have to grip to the rope, pull and balance yourself until you reach the other side because if you fall, you will land in a very deep water pit (it is more than 6 feet)
When we reached this part of the cave we were asked to remove our footwear to prevent leaving marks on the rocks. These rocks has a very rough texture similar to sand paper. In this part of the cave the temperature starts to drop and everyone starts to breathe out smoke(vapor).
As you can see, the water is flowing inside the cave and as I said earlier, the temperature inside is cold so as the water(it is FREEZING cold!) just imagine a glass of water with lots of ice, that is how cold the water is.
That’s me as I go down in one of the trekking path.
Also in this part of the cave, there’s flowing water everywhere.
Look how wet we are! Freezing!
Group Picture
and another group picture
and another group picture
and another group picture… hahhaah! Actually there’s a lot more group photo ops that happened that is why it took us 4-5 hours to finish trekking the Sumaguing Cave instead of the normal 2-3 hours.
Since we are both first-timers, my fiance, Rey of http://lifestylebucket.com took a chance to take photos of ouselves(picture picture pag may time!)
Of course if we went down to go inside the cave then we have to go up to get out of the cave. That’s me climbing up 🙂
There’s also a path there that you will climb on a row of tires used as a ladder. I was in great agony there because it was really high (fear of heights!!!) and the tires are not that stable but then again I was able to finish this one heck of a nature adventure. Thanks for the support of our tour guide and encouragement from ATI family, blogger friends and my fiance Rey.
Here are some of the amazing Rock formation inside Sumaguing Cave:
Amazing Rock Formations right? There’s a lot more inside the cave, but of course we have to protect our gadgets so we cannot take photos all the time.
It was a definitely daring and rewarding experience for me to try the biggest cave and favorite spelunking destination for tourists, foreign and locals.
Visit Sagada’s Sumaguing Cave and experience the breath-taking view and thrill that you will never forget.
Caving RATES
(Sumaguing Cave, view of Lumiang Cave entrance, and view of the Sugong Coffins)
1-4 persons : P500 (1 guide)
5 persons : P500 (1 guide)
6-9 persons : P800 (2 guides)
10 persons : P900 (2 guides)
11-14 persons : P1,200 (3 guides)
15 persons : P1,350
16 and above : P100/head
Thank you so much Sir Dennis, ATI, Alex and Enzo for the photos. 🙂
