Travel Philippines: Sagada - Spelunking Sumaguing Caves

In this video and blog post we visit Sumaguing Cave located in the beautiful small town of Sagada in the Mountain Province of the Philippines. Travelling to Sagada takes approximately 11-12 hours via bus or van from Manila.
There are many adventurous activities to be found in Sagada but there’s also plenty enough for all ages. This is actually the second time I’ve been to Sagada and doing all these tours. I’m a 35 year old male that’s loves nature, the outdoors and being active though still a little round. Follow me through the amazing limestone formation offered by this vast network of caves.

All the videos and photos here were taken with my phone – Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge just to keep lightweight and flexible – Its not easy bringing a large DSLR & tripod through here unless you can completely waterproof them and wanting to spend 2-3 times longer getting around.

The tour I joined is the second one in the towns information centres flyer

The description from flyer copied below for readability.
2. Sumaguing Cave / Short Course Caving – 1 hours walk from the town centre, passing by the Dokiw Hanging Coffins and Lumiang Burial Cave Entrance. 1.5hours exploration inside the cave.
Guide Fee:
Php 500 - 4 Visitors or less
Php 600 - 5 Visitors
Php 1000 – 6-9 Visitors (2 Guides)
Php 1200 - 10 Visitors (2 Guides)
Php 1500 – 11-12 Visitors (3 Guides) - Additional visitors @ php125

I decided to forego the walking part from the town centre and ride the motorcycle with my guide to the start of the cave entrance. We needed to register and pick up a gas lantern. I also had a dive light with me just in case but those lanterns have a much nicer quality of warm light to enjoy the scenery.

Lumiang Burial Cave Entrance is a nice starting descent into the cave entrance. All those wooden boxes are coffins with some still containing skeletons/mummies and its part of the fascinating tribal history you get to learn about in this area the longer you stay. Theres two sizes of coffins with the smaller shorter ones being the older traditional one thats pre-Christian influence. There are several lizard like motifs commonly used. Back then the dead are in seated state and smoked to shrivel up into that small box whereas now they are in lying down and use full size coffin. Learning about how they get those hanging coffin up using ladders and ropes system is remarkable.

Going in deeper through the caves we have to squeeze through a lot of tight spots, climb up and down ropes and tread through shallow water. Its an amazing experience and probably for the young at heart.

There’s plenty of limestone formations all with various names though better to let you guess what some of them may be.

There’s also a layer of fossil formation predominantly sea shells from prehistoric times. Its hard to believe being this high in the mountains that water was once this high.

Finding out way back up some stairs and exiting out we hitched a ride back into town.

A good way to finish it off is some local coffee and food.

And thats me signing out. If you have enjoyed my post please upvote, comment, resteem.
@chrisdavidphoto