adventure, part 1

February 22, 2007

As promised, I've uploaded more pictures from the Cagayan Valley/Kalinga Trip. Yay.

These are from the first day of the trip. We arrived at Tuguegarao City at past 6 in the morning. After settling down, eating a good brekkie (with really delicious tsokolate) and changing into tougher clothes, we headed off to Peñablanca, the next town from Tuguegarao. Apparently, Cagayan Valley is the province with the most number of caves in the whole of the Philippines. There are over 300 caves there, less than half of which are explored. With such an abundance of caves, it made perfect sense that our first activity would be spelunking in Peñablanca.

We went to two caves: Callao Cave and Sierra Cave. As our guide Argel pointed out, there's a big difference between the two–the former is a dead cave, while the latter is still alive. "Dead" means that stalactite, stalagmite, and other mineral formations no longer occur in the cave. I guess Callao Cave died pretty much because it was over-visited To prevent that from happening to Sierra Cave, the local government put a gate and a lock at the cave mouth (which is pretty small and hidden on the side of a mountain) and they only allow groups accompanied by registered and trained guides to enter. It's really easy to kill a cave, they say. Because stalactites grow a measly 1cm every 15 years, just one careless touch from a tourist can set back and damage the cave's development. Anyway, enough of the blabbing; here are some of the photos:

  

Callao Cave, with Resa, Anj, and Joe

  

Heading into the bowels of Sierra Cave. It was the first time I'd ever experienced real pitch darkness.

Crawling out of Celica's Passage, a tiny tunnel within Sierra Cave formed by water. I felt like a mole (the animal, not the skin pigmentation).

The state of our feet after Sierra Cave. The mud extended all the way up to our chests.

 

After a really delicious lunch of inihaw, pakbet, and mangoes and bananas, we started learning how to paddle, get on, fall out of, and get back on to a kayak. 

  

I was doing okay learning to paddle. After that part, we proceeded to learn how to properly fall out of a kayak, and get back onto it. We went into the water one-by-one and got into the kayak. Once in the kayak, Argel would tip us unceremoniously into the water. The proper way to fall out–with your arms stretched out to the direction of your fall. 

While in the water, you have to maneuver yourself to your capsized kayak and use your body weight to flip it back over again. Once it's right side up, you're supposed to push yourself back onto it. It seemed easy when the boys did it. Even Angela and Resa got through it fine.

When it was my turn, it was a different story. The look in my eyes in the next picture says it all. The current kept taking me towards the banca that you see in the background, away from the kayak. Yarghh. (And the water in the river was so darn cold, my legs started cramping up!) 

 

I never realized how small I actually am until that day. Claire and I were the two smallest in the group, and we kept being pulled around by the darn current.  Seeing how lampa I was and how tiny Claire was (she's 4'1"), Argel decided that Claire and I should go with him the the inflatable canoe:

There should be a label under my face in this picture that says "resentment." Whehehe. The resentment didn't last too long, though. Adrenaline always wins over it.

See, here I'm already smiling.

Click here for more pictures!