Spelunking? What an odd-sounding word, I thought! Half-way on our way to visit one of the New 7 Wonders of Nature, Palawan's famous Subterranean Underground River, we made a side stop to Ugong Rock for spelunking.It is only then that I learned that there is a recreational sport for exploring caves and this is called spelunking, or rather, more commonly known nowadays as caving.
The experience here is quite interesting as you climb up the cave through a maze of tight passages, crawling through the small holes between the rocks, squeezing ourselves through tight spaces, climbing up steep rocks such as the one in the photo, and identifying the various natural sculptures around. The journey was around 30-40 minutes and for us beginners, it was tiring!
As we reached the top of the cave, we were presented with great views of the green terrain below. But not just that! We were also presented with an important decision: to get down in 21 seconds via a zip line or go back through the cave's maze and rapel down the steep rocks which we earlier climbed up on. Either way, the downhill journey didn't really excite me as I had a bit of fear of heights. So, it was a battle between a few seconds of fear while getting on the zip line or longer duration of fear through the several steep descends inside the cave, haha!
I chose to zip line & never regretted it!
Ugong Rock is located in Tagabinet, Puerto Princesa in Palawan - about an hour's plane ride from Metro Manila.
Related Highlight: St. Paul Subterranean Underground River
Note: This highlight also appears in AFAR Website
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