One of the famous if not the most famous attraction in Sagada is the Cave Connection. The almost 4 hours tour starts by entering in the Lumiang cave and exit at the Sumaging cave. From the Tourist Center we hired a jeepney until the jump off point. Here, our guides filled up our lamps with gas and gave us some pointers before we started our hike down the Lumiang cave entrance.
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| Lumiang Cave entrance |
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| photo credit: Laarni Tolentino |
At Lumiang Cave entrance are wooden coffins stacked one over the other on one side of the cave's wall. Here, tourists can go as close to the coffins as they want. For tourists availing the basic cave tour, they can only go down as far as here then they will proceed to the Sumaging Cave entrance chamber.
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| hangging coffins at the Lumiang Cave entrance |
From here, our guides begun lighting our lamps. It was total darkness below save for the lamps of the other groups and occasional flashes of cameras. Sometimes our guides would put off one of our lamps to save for gas, they said that one gas lamp is good for 4 hours only. Not that we will stay longer than four hours but sometimes there are unforeseen events like accidents and it gets crowded , its like there's a traffic inside the cave especially on the narrow passages that only one person can pass at a time.
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| our source of light for the entire spelunking |
It has already been said many times that the cave connection is not for the faint of heart or have fear of darkness and heights. It requires you to go up and down through giant rocks without any harnesses.It is not also advisable for claustrophobic because of the narrow passages and dark environment. Be ready also to get wet and dirty also.For our group consists of ten(10) first time spelunkers we only had three gas powered lights that were carried by our three local guides. There were some parts were you have to slide down using your butt. May I say that this tour made me appreciate my butt even more. It was my best "harness" while traversing from one boulder of rock to another especially on the vertical paths. Most of the time we had to carry our foot wears because to avoid slipping.
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| our three guides |
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| i got sandwich between the rocksphoto (courtesy of Laarni Tolentino) |
At first it was scary but as the tour progresses my nervousness slowly faded away.We were already enjoying the dangerous tour we got ourselves to. At some points, we had to stop to take a break and of course took pictures of the beautiful rock formations among these are the cauliflower-like rock, giant frog shape and the big mama aka buttocks.
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| photo credit: Laarni Tolentino |
There are actually two routes to traverse the caves, one is to wade through the underground river and the other is rock climbing. The guides will let you choose among the two, for our group we chose rock climbing. This one is not easy though because it requires rappelling on a straight vertical rock. But thanks to our guides who were so good in coaching us on which foot and hand to move first and on where and how to step and hold on the rocks. They even let us stepped on their shoulders on some areas that were hard to reach.
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| photo credit: Laarni Tolentino |
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| photo credit: Laarni Tolentino |
After going so many ups and downs, we finally reached the "The Mall". Nope this is not a shopping mall but the SUmaging cave first chamber. According to our guides, they called this "The Mall" because of the big number of tourists that were there plus all the noises and gas lamps scattered everywhere. This is also were all the tourists who availed basic cave tour goes. From our location, we had a vantage view of what was happening below us.
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| the Sumaging chamber entrance as seen from the top |
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| this way lead to the Sumaging Cave |
Of all the tours we had in Sagada, Cave connection is my favorite.Some say that it is like a life- threatening-tour but just follow your guide's instructions and everything would be fine.Yes, it was a bit scary but I had also lots of fun.
Read my other stories on Sagada:
1.
Sagada Fellowship
2.
Sagada Tours and Fees
3.
Where to Eat in Sagada
4.
Where to stay in Sagada: Gecko Inn
5.
Sagada's Hanging Coffins
6.
Echo Valley Tour| Sagada
7.
Chasing Waterfalls in Sagada: Bomod-ok and Bokong Falls
This is the right website for everyone who wants to find out about this topic.
ReplyDeleteYou know so much its almost tough to argue with you (not that I
personally will need to…HaHa). You certainly put a fresh spin on a topic which has been written about for ages.
Wonderful stuff, just great!