Day 3: Puerto Princesa

 UNDERGROUND RIVER DAY!!!! This was the day I was looking forward to the most! We would travel 2 hours north of the city to a protected park where we would paddle through a river inside limestone caves. Its one of the Seven Natural wonders of Asia, and a UNESCO world heritage site. We had heard amazing things about it and I was really looking forward to it. 

So after leaving at 7am we drove up the island along switchback roads until we came to this place, where we waited for our Banca Boat to come and take us to the park. There are no roads into the national park to try and preserve the wildlife ad habitat there. 

Fisherman bring in his boat while children play on the beach.

Bringing in the catch of the day.

Just enjoying the view on the ride over.

We're Here!

Waiting for our time slot, we were boat 32, we arrive at 20, so we had 20  minutes to kill, who would want to hang out here? 

So we went swimming, this is where the river joins the ocean the water is cool and clean and beautiful. But apparently your not supposed to swim here, so there were several Filippino workers who came yelling at us very nicely for us to get out of the water. 

Mouth of the cave

All ready to explore the cave!

So the tour that we took through the cave was interesting to say the least... I can tell you that the are around 14 different types of bats that call the cave home, and that the water that flows through the cave is actually brackish water, a combination of both fresh and salt water. But that were the facts stopped. After which we were subjected to the guide pointing a light at different rock formations and told us what animals, religious figure or food they looked like. The Filippinos behind us in the boat loved it. Us not as much... But it was over all it was petty cool.

Cave ceiling 

BATS!

After this we left the beach, had lunch and headed back to Puerto Princesa where we flew out. We originally were going to kayak mangroves, but we didn't have enough time before we flew out. So we landing in Manila just before 6 and eventually after hours in traffic we got back to Subic around 11 pm. Over all it was an amazing weekend.