Our leaving for Cagayan was not well
organized. Ideal time should be in the early evening so you just sleep
off the long bus ride & wake up in Tuguegarao in the morning. Make
your reservations ahead of time -- there's a lot of people traveling to
the province or you might end up as a chance-passenger like we did. A lot of
commuters we exchanged pleasantries with recommended Florida Busline
rather than Victory, some for better & newer buses while others for
the timetable -- the price difference aren't that big anyway as they
still range between a-little-over PhP500 to just-under PhP600. If you do
take a Victory bus (and if you consider the
chance-passenger approach), choose a bus that's new, otherwise you'll
literally have a hot & noisy 13hour trip next to the engine at the
back of the bus.
You can take a trip to Tuguegarao unplanned & unannounced without worrying about a place to stay. From
the Victory Liner bus depot alone there are half-a-dozen lodging
options that are easy on the pocket. No need to take a tricycle,
especially with one who is the most useless/unhelpful local you will meet
like the driver we had on the night we got off the bus after that loooooong
bus ride. He had no answer for any of the questions we asked &
agreed on all the insights the guards & elderly residents we asked
on our way in search for a place to stay, then had the audacity to ask
us PhP250 for the joyride. Tip to travelers: non-special trips are
PhP10/head during the day. If they answer "kayo na pong bahala" at night when asked how much the fare is, give them PhP50 -- I hate that price fare by the way: "kayo na pong bahala"
is not listed in the tariff card! No worries, we didn't pay the
PhP250. We haggled it down to PhP80 for the 3 of us, which I'm convinced
is till too expensive but left us unable to back out because we gave in
to the "kayo na pong bahala" fare. Haist!
Our
day 1 of 5 in this holiday was wasted on traveling so we tried to make
up for lost time on day 2. We got our 2-liter water bottles refilled at a
water-station for PhP10 and rented a tricycle for PhP500 (discount of
PhP50) to Peñablanca from the Don Domingo depot. You do have an option
to take a non-special trip (one-way) for a much lesser price and just
take another tricycle back to Taguegarao from the Callao Cave exit, but
this is not advisable if you're going to wait for the bats in the
evening.
The tricycle will take you to
Pinacanauan River where you can get the "ticket" for the cave entrance,
which like all public parks, only cost PhP20 for adults (I didn't quite
see the price difference for foreign tourists though). I recommend you try the
halo-halo topped with caramel before taking a boat to get you across to
Callao Cave entrance (that's also PhP20/head for 2-way) -- absolutely
delicious!
Traveling
in college, my goal was to try all the local street halo-halo in every
destination I go to. That's how I learned that every province have their
own way of serving my favorite summer treat: macaroni pasta begin to
manifest in the ingredients the higher you go up in Luzon (it is present
in Pagudpod and Sagada). Caramel topping and purple galapong (mistaken
for ube) is something new to me in my list of halo-halo specials.
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| your first view of Pinacanauan River -- across that is Callao Cave already |
The concept of Callao Cave is not much
different from Malaysia's Batu Cave, less the fascinating Thaipusam festival. You climb a long set of stairs --184 steps in this case-- and enter a Christian chapel (instead of a Hindu shrine dedicated to
Lord Murugan) when you get there. Our young guide said there was even a recent wedding held there. Since I was in the company of a Wedding Planner, it tickled both our imagination.
If you're the kind who likes to profess your love in 100 different ways LITERALLY: underwater, mid-air or while you bungee jump, in the nude, as a clown or on a garbage dump, consider this as an option. Couples have had Disneyworld weddings or at a Zoo. Why not in Callao Cave? And affirm the marriage every year in the most unlikely places -- above the Grand Canyon, at the top of Niagara Falls, or at the edge of a live volcano in Hawaii. Then have your 50th anniversary wedding in a historical building, like the tower of London or the Statue of Liberty. Heck, why not on top of Mount Everest even!?
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| praises for Callao Cave's simple beauty |
There are 7 child-friendly chambers --by that I mean you can take any walking child in the cave without difficulty-- you can "explore" with your local guide who will greet you upon disembarking from your boat. The actual "exploration" is short so please follow the park's simple rule: DO. NOT. TAKE. ANY. FOOD. INSIDE. THE. CAVE. I don't know why tourists find it so difficult to do this -- you can find left overs the hard-headed-hungry failed to take back with them, not to mention wrapper litters! If you don't know, this might attract insects (natural in the cave or otherwise). I have once gone caving in Montalban and found myself walking on a chamber crawling with cockroaches. IMAGINE THAT!
Some of those 7 chambers are already dead. Dead from all the constant touching of the limestones and vandals on the walls along with other natural causes. That means that the rocks had stopped forming, beginning to grow moss and will eventually turn gray.
That skylight actually reminded me of that movie Sanctum. Remember that part where they found that one chamber with the skylight they couldn't reach? Escape was so close and yet so impossible. I can imagine the desperation.
The best part of this trip for me is waiting for the bats to come out at dusk.
We spent most of the afternoon swimming in Pinacanauan River, which misleading was explained to us by our local guide as the longest river in the Philippines. What he actually meant was, it's one of the largest tributaries of Cagayan River, which is THE longest river in Luzon and the widest and most powerful in the Philippines, originating from Nueva Vizcaya and leading out to Babuyan Channel.
Beyond that, it's one of the clearest rivers I've enjoyed swimming at.
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| gaga over a favorite pastime |
We waited for other interested tourists who might see the bats at dusk so we can share the boat fee of PhP600 between it's 15-pax capacity. But given that we were there on a Monday, no one else was around and we ended up shouldering the cost of the boat and another guide fee (this is voluntary by the way, so you can go as low as PhP50, while foreigners have occasionally given PhP1,500 -- or what I imagined the value of dollar at the time for the exchange rate equivalent to that).
Swimming at the foot of the steps on Callao Cave's side was nothing compared to the interior of the river from the side where you wait for the bats. The way is so clear, its depth is deceiving. The setting was fantabulous! Complete with wild ducks flying over our heads. (You can hold your reception here for the wedding mentioned above). Too bad my phone-slash-camera have ran out of battery so the scene was immortalized only in memory. CLICK! CLICK! CLICK! You can camp here, so if you have the gear, I highly recommend it.
The bats came out, not as expected --a dark cloud crossing the horizon-- but spread out in all direction, keeping close to the white walls and over the canopies of trees. Yet it's one of the MOMENT of the trip that was better than the whole day's events stringed together.
Read the Roadtrip sa Norte series of entries:
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