March 26, 2014

SAGADA CAVE CONNECTION| CONQUERING MY FEARS

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.
Lumiang Cave entrance
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. 
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. 
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.  
our three guides
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. 
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.
photo credit: Laarni Tolentino
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. 
the Sumaging chamber entrance as seen from the top 
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











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