Puerto Princesa, Philipines - Subterranean River

Nov 27, 2016
2 min read

Sorry that the next post has taken so long. The App that we use hasn't been working for a while.

The night that we arrived in Puerto Princesa we immediately booked a tour for the following day to the attraction that we came all this way to see, the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park. The National Park is located in the Saint Paul mountain range on the western coast of the island.

In 2012 the underground river was declared as one the the New 7 Wonders of Nature.

The 8.2km underground river's entrance is located a short boat ride away from the town of Sabang. Deeper areas of the river are still being explored by geologists, with many chambers still to be found.

We took a shared canoe complete with guide/paddler through the first 2.5km of the cave. We were all given an audio headset that describes the features of the cave as you glide through. This was introduced a few years ago to maintain silence from the visitors and guides for the benefit of the cave's inhabitants. The first section of the cave is home to thousands of bats. The audio description helpfully advises you to keep your mouth closed as you look up!

The limestone rock formations and huges stalactites and stalagmites were absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately the photos didn't turn out so well due to the lack of light but believe us when we say it was a magical experience and well worth a visit.

Shortly after the tour we decided to take a walk along the beach, and Ashley decided he'd like to take a look in the rock pools. Two rocks in he slipped, scraped his root along the rock and tore up the big toenail on his left foot. The locals did a quick patch job with some iodine and wrapped it up. Despite our best efforts it got infected and we had to take a trip to the hospital to have the nail removed and cleaned. The doctor tied the nail back down and we were on our way.

With the travellers obligatory trip to the hospital now over and done with we can hopefully avoid any further incidents on the rest of our journey.