Adventure in the Philippines
A paddling trip into an underground river.
Palawan stretches its long, elegant finger some 650 kilometres southwest down the South China Sea — or the West Philippine Sea, depending on whose map you’re reading. With over 1770 islands, the archipelago is the largest province in the Philippines, and yet it flies under most publicity radars.
“We killed our first tourist,” Filipinos sometimes joke uneasily, referring to pioneer Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan, who was slain in battle near Cebu in 1521. The remnants of his fleet retreated south to Palawan, where they found supplies in such quantity that the voyage chronicler, Antonio Pigafetta named it “the Land of Promise”.
The province’s namesake and largest island, Palawan, sits to the south of a long stream of smaller islets. Some 450 kilometres long and just 50 kilometres wide, it is home to the modest capital, Puerto Princesa, facing the Sulu Sea. We start our trip here with a day of tropical island hopping on its broad Honda Bay, snorkelling on palm-sheltered Pandan Island and then picnicking mightily at Cowrie Island on oysters, grilled mantis shrimp and grouper.
Back onshore, that night we head to the Iwahig River where we hop into canoes to paddle — well, to be paddled by boatmen — up the silent river. It’s a moonless night, but vivid with fireflies that flare by the thousands along the mangrove shoreline. Their fleeting, glittering bioluminescent finds a visual echo in the star-strewn sky above. As we glide between these constellations it might be a time for wordless contemplation but our guide’s recitation of firefly factoids is unrelenting. About a kilometre up the river, we turn about when he explains that, “Past here is a prison and we can’t go too close.” The downstream drift is as a magical as the upstream journey.
Puerto Princesa’s unique Iwahig Penal Farm that we almost paddled into is a sprawling, rehabilitation jail where model prisoners tend crops and fishponds, and live with their families. They’re free to do almost anything but walk out the front gate. Meanwhile, visitors are welcome to walk in. So next day I do just that.
This penitentiary-in-the-forest has gardens, a village, church and scattered accommodation. There’s even a gift store where the prisoners sell souvenirs they’ve made.
I buy a toy, a distinctly non-Filipino reindeer, carved by a polite young man who tells me he’s doing a long stretch for robbing a store. “Why so many years?” I ask. As though adding an overlooked footnote to the event, he admits, “Unfortunately, there was also a homicide part of the robbery.”
The Land of Promise is of course big on seafood. We dine very well at Puerto Princesa’s Kalui restaurant where the promise is delivered deliciously – kinilaw marinated raw fish, sinigang sour fish soup and grilled lapu-lapu fish with
BEST ISLAND IN
THE WORLD Conde Nast magazine last year named Palawan as No.1 on its reader-voted list of the top 30 islands, citing the underground river as a major reason for its popularity.
calamansi lemon sauce. Add a few local cocktails atop all that, plus our busy day, and sleep comes easily.
Palawan Island’s most popular attraction is its spectacular St Paul Underground River – also known as Puerto Princesa Subterranean River – that runs through a deep limestone cavern for eight kilometres before flowing into the South China – or West Philippine – Sea.
To reach it the next day we drive 80 kilometres north to Sabang on the edge of World Heritage-listed St Paul National Park and then take a short trip aboard a motorised banca boat along the park’s dense jungle shore.
At the mouth of the river cave, park guides direct us to an outrigger canoe that’s equipped with a powerful spotlight. A boatman, sitting astern, paddles us through a gap in the limestone karst wall and soon we are gliding into the stygian darkness of one of the longest underground rivers in the world. (This was thought to be the longest until another was discovered in 2007 in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula.)
The spotlight soon picks out surreal, calcite blooms and frozen marble cascades that burst from the ceiling. Tiny bats swirl past, or sleep, shrouded in their wings, to the walls. Stalactites drip their millennial extensions towards stone molars and eye-tooth stalagmites. Swiftlets skitter by, charging the air with their rapid clicking sounds until it seems we are in a cave filled with Geiger counters.
The river is navigable for some four kilometres inland, although we travel only about one-third of that. Our boatman points out
the giant flowstones of yellow marble that festoon the cave roof and walls.
We drift on through this empire of shadows and shapes, and eventually, 45 minutes later, back into daylight. Beyond the words and interpretative fantasies, Palawan’s cave of dreams remains a wonder and, fittingly, is now listed as one of our planet’s New Seven Wonders of Nature. Air Niugini flies from Port Moresby to Manila or Cebu six days a week. Passengers can journey onward to Palawan with low-cost local flights that take about 65 minutes. See airniugini.com.pg.