Sabang & The Underground River

The Monkey Trail, Sabang


The Jungle


The Little Bugger Who Stole our Cookies!


Exiting the Underground River


May 18-19, 2009
On Monday, a friend and I rented a motorcycle and rode off in the rain from Puerto to Sabang. The road to Sabang is gorgeous—imagine El Nido, but with fog –covered limestone karsts jetting out of rice fields instead of out of water. Mayor Hagedorn has built lookout posts where you can catch impressive views of the islands surrounded by blue green waters. We reached Sabang just in time to jump into the water and catch a rainbow forming in the sunset. On Tuesday we hiked the beautiful monkey trail and visited the famous underground river, an 8.1-kilometer river that runs through an underground cave. We didn’t run into any monkeys on the monkey trail but they were waiting for us at the visitor’s center where two of them opened my bag and stole an entire bag of chocolate chip cookies. I was more impressed by the hike then by the heavily touristed underground river—which was cool—but a little cheesy since the guide spends most of the time pointing out images of Jesus, Mary, the holy family and giant Filipino fruits and vegetables in the stalactites and stalagmites.