Sumaguing Cave - Sagada, Mountain Province

A day of being a speleologist.. 

Spelunking is the exploration of caves for recreational purposes or just for fun. Spelunkers do not collect scientific data. Spelunkers are not trained in advanced cave exploration techniques. People who enter caves with the bare minimum of equipment are said to be spelunking. Spelunkers do not venture to depths beyond a 300 meters, or lengths beyond 2 kilometers. Once a spelunker gains some experience and training, he is said to be a "caver." And once a caver begins contributing to the cave science community by publishing articles, he is said to be a "speleologist.

Ingredients:

A few LONG walks and couple of LONG bus rides


Cooking Time:

From Manila take a bus going to Baguio - travel time 6 hours

From Baguio take a bus going to Sagada - another 6 hours

Nutritional  Facts:

There are two ways to get to Sagada from Manila: either you ride a bus going to Baguio or a bus going to Banaue.If you are coming from Baguio, the expected travel time is about 6 hours however, to set the proper expectation there are instances that your travel time may take longer  than 6 hours - like what happened to us.  We thought that it would only take 6 hours but it lasted for 10 hours. We had 2 stop overs but our bus had to take a different route as there were several rock slides at the time we visited Sagada. 


You may also take a Manila to Sagada route which will take about 9 hours which is faster compared to taking a Manila to Baguio then Baguio to Sagada route.  


We suggest that you take the early morning trips to Sagada since there's nothing much to see at night time as you will pass over not so well lit-landscapes.  

We had an overnight stay in 1 of the hotels in Baguio.  The next day, we went to Baguio's Dangwa bus terminal, took a local bus and left for Sagada (after lunch time).  Our travel time took longer than expected due to the weather condition which caused several rock slides along the way.  We enjoyed that 10-hour ride with Benguet's locals, their goats and chickens on board.. hehe  

We arrived in Sagada night time - past 7pm.  And looked for a place to have dinner and a place to stay and prep up for next day's spelunking.  We settled for Sagada's Igorot Inn for there was hardly any rooms available in all other accomodations.

We have been to Baguio several times already, but back in 2008 our main reason for visiting Baguio was to connect the trip to Sagada and the main reason why we were gunning for Sagada was to visit the that speacial place called "Sumaguing Cave."

"You eat big?"  A question answered by a question. That was the answer that we got when we asked the staff at Yoghurt House as to how big the serving is  per order.  Perhaps we got used to the servings of pasta in Manila - it's like mas kaunti mas sosyal ang dating ng presentation then they'll put basil leaf on top and will charge you over 100 bucks.

So, we decided to order 1 pasta and sandwich each.. and to our surprise, each plate had this huge serving of pasta, not to mention the sandwich stacked high with slices of bacon, lettuce, tomato, cheese and chicken (the one in the picture is the triple decker by the way - they have different triple decker sandwiches, you can have it toasted, you can have tuna, chicken, ham, etc.)

IT'S SPELUNKING TIME!!


Sagada has local tour guides and you need to pay Php10.00 (as of 2008) per tourist at the municipal hall and will issue you a permit to visit Sumaguing.  They will ask you if you want a tour guide and have you choose from several Cave connection tour packages.  Sumaguing is just 1 of the connecting caves in Sagada.  If you pick the cave connection tour, Sumaguing will be the last cave in the list and will serve as the exit.  Since it was our first time, we asked for a local tour guide and we just made a simple choice of just visiting Sumaguing cave. It was making the choice that was simple but getting to Sumaguing and spelunking the cave was not as simple as making the choice - and Sumaguing cave is not just a choice, Sumaguing is THE choice. 

From the town proper, we hiked for about 45 minutes.  Yup 45! There are more than 60 caves underneath Sagada and Sumaguing cave is the largest chamber of all connecting caves.  While you hike your way to Sumaguing you'll see the hanging coffins of Sagada.  The ancestors in Sagada believed that the higher the coffin is placed, the closer the souls of the departed are to 'heaven'.  But locals don't treat the hanging coffins as a tourist attraction as they feel that their ancestors deserve more respect than that. 


When we were at the entrance we saw a foreign couple who changed their minds and left the cave early complaining that they can't do the spelunking as they're afraid of bats, shallow depths, don't like guano, it's too slippery and that it's too dark inside - I know, I was thinking of asking them as well "So, what in the world are you doing here then?"  Which of course gave us second thoughts of pushing through with our plan. After hearing the couple blurt out, our tour guide Kuya Joey asked us , "Ano, tutuloy pa ba kyo? *evil smile*.   


We thought, well...we came all the way from Manila, took a 6-hour bus ride to get to Baguio and another 10-hour bus ride to Sagada.  So we replied to Kuya Joey, "Game!" sabay sign of the cross... 

We... walked, jumped, crawled, crouched, climbed, rappelled and swam.

We didn't have the perfect picture in mind of what we're getting into when we decided to go for some spelunking in Sumaguing. You can see us wearing the wrong clothes and footwear - mag jeans and flip flops daw ba sa Sumaguing...?  No head gear, no pads, no nothing.. It was the strong drive to see what's inside that helped us pull this one off - oh and a pair of levis and havainas slippers that helped us make it through the wet and slippery walks along guano (bat feces).  And yes, you have to pass under a cluster of bats nesting on top of the cave to get to the wonderful stalagmites and stalactites formations.

You will walk along bat feces and hold on to anything that you can hold on to even those rocks that have guano on it. We did that with no gloves on.

Prior to visiting Sumaguing, we were no spelunkers really.  Sumaguing is actually the 1st ever cave that we have visited and it wasn't that easy but thank God it was all worth it.

 We swam waist-deep water, and used ropes to make our way through certain parts of the cave.  When we reached the lower parts of the cave we finally witnessed the jaw dropping stalagtites and stalagmites of Sumaguing.  There's flowing cold water in the lower parts of the cave.  We are impressed with how locals look after Sumaguing.  And yes, bawal magkalat sa Sumaguing. 

piling ng saging formation, thus the name - Sumaguing cave.

It was our tour guide, Kuya Joey who took all these photos.  We gave him a tip of course, if it wasn't for him we could have fallen into the Black Hole of Death.

We finished spelunking at around 5pm and headed back to Igorot Inn.  It was a rewarding experience and proud of ourselves for we didn't chicken out.  On our way back, Kuya Joey aksed us if we would want to drop by the Sugong coffins the place where we can see the ancestors' coffins closer.  Apprehensive as it was almost night time and we have to take the long stairs down to the sugong coffins  with tall trees surrounding the place and no other light but Kuya Joey's lamp.  Besides, we were already tired coming from almost a 5-hour spelunking in Sumaguing. And so we replied, "Game!".. hehe


When we were about to leave the Sugong coffins, Kuya Joey said a prayer and offered his lit cigarrete as a thank you to the ancestors for allowing us to visit them.  We decided not to upload any photos of the hanging coffins or sugong coffins to pay respect to the locals, the ancestors and Sagada.