The Philippine Adventure Continues – Snakes Alive!

Three to a motorcycle, thank goodness we didn’t have to go too far, although, I wore my helmet just in case.  The only problem the driver had was when we were going up a big hill, then we all had to scrunch towards the front of th bike.

Last time I was here, after the bikes dropped us off, we had to walk quite a way before taking a track down into the valley. This time, we were dropped off closer to the cave, so we only had a half hour walk (or so) before we got to the lookout.  Apparently, the Government wants to make this cave a tourist attraction, hence the road (suitable for a bus or van), all they have to do now is put in the track to the lookout.

At the lookout, it’s quite old infrastructure, I’m guessing for tourists they’ll have to make it more tourist friendly (LOL). The cave in the distance, still a ways for us to walk, maybe 20minutes.

We had lunch on a level clearing above the cave and Joni gave everyone the pre-cave talk about how the trip would go ahead. Then we were off down the old tourist track.

On the track, still quite a lot of infrastructure here and I was interested to see many “track markers” in place through the cave, apparently put in by the village so that locals can go into the cave and find their way out. I was surprised as the track markers are metal “poles” cemented into the floor of the cave, or onto rocks.

Looking back to the entrance.

The first really good formation we came across.

And then the next one which I recognised, we were now a mere 50m from our campsite for the night. Note in the bottom rh corner the track markers that I mentioned before and all the other track markers at the base of the formation – a bit over the top. I love this formation, it would benefit from some nice discrete track markers.

Making our way to the campsite. We are now in a seriously muddy zone, not pleasant walking at all.

The swimming hole. It’s at this moment that I realised that the last time we were here, it was in the rainy season and there was twice as much water in the pool. And, there was much more mud you had to negotiate to get into the pool (lol).

Dodgy photo, but gives a better idea of the size of the pool. Water temperature was beautiful.

The boys setting up camp, while we chilled out. This time Joni bought tents for us, apparently one of his other clients wanted tents. Have to admit that having tents stopped the cave crickets that bit us the last time, and, as you will see, next day, I was really happy to have a tent to get into.

Great shot of our campsite, so that we didn’t have to wear our helmets and cave torches all night, they put small candles around the camp which burned all night.

Before long we were at the “pitch”. Here’s Anna going down, we each had a harness and the belay rope was attached to our harness, then we down-climbed the pitch until we were beyond the vertical section.

Me on the way down, checking the route down.

The terrain after the down-climb.

Down in the streamway now, and lots of formations.

Nice formation.

We didn’t go this way last time as the water was too high, so being able to walk through these formations was great (Joni called them “giant chandeliers”).

Before long we were at one of the daylight holes, much quicker than it was the last time.  Even though this was a streamway passage, the sand/mud was easy to walk on (last time we would have been walking in water),

The daylight hole.

Approaching the exit, after we’d walked through ankle deep guano from the huge bat colony which inhabits the cave. Later on, at dusk we would lay and look at the massive number of bats exiting the cave looking for food (was a magical experience).

Ankle deep guano, very hard to walk through, you sure didn’t want to fall over. Also in the guano were thousands of cockroaches!

There was much “up and down” to get to the campsite, last time, this whole area was under water and it was difficult to negotiate the pools, other than floating across them, mid you we didn’t have our gear dry-bagged, so was even more difficult.

The exit from our campsite.

Setting up the camp. As I mentioned, last time we were here, there was much more water (being the rainy season), in fact there was ankle to knee deep water across the area where we camped.

Our banner! we could use this banner as a privacy screen for those needing to use the “toilet facilities”. This was too close to the camp and tents for me, so I wandered around the base of the hill.

The proters setting up camp and organising lunch.

Delicious local dessert, coconut and possibly sago, made in a dry coconut shell.

The first snake, reported to be 3m and as thick as a man’s wrist.

The second snake, again, bloody big! In all seven – yep that’s 7, snakes came out of no-where, I didn’t get out to look at them, and in that instance decided that I wouldn’t be doing down into the streamway. I’d be staying in the safety of my tent. And, really? I’d been down there before, no need to go back!

The start of the walk out.  I’d forgotten about this walk out, remembered the first part, but the rest was a dim memory.

It wasn’t long before we were traversing the side of a hill.  And this traversing would continue for most of the morning, I’d forgotten about this part.  Fortunately, we could take our time, and have plenty of rest stops.

And then, around about 11am, I recognised previously travelled terrain, and I knew we were close to the village that we would end our walk in, and where we’d be able to wash the sticky mud off our clothes, shoes and bodies.