that time i fell down to my death, or something like that

May 17, 2011

K’s dad and sister are in country so of course we went caving. The cave is out at S &P’s sight and I went along with the family and J. Our tour guide is an English teacher at a local high school and the founder of an adventure club or sorts. Which is huge. For the most part Filipinos in rural areas don’t go to the mountains because they are full of witches and aswangs and such. Some places they won’t even go to the beach. Because of this J, K’s sister and I are probably the first females to go in this cave. We were only the second group of American’s to go through, the first being PCVs last year. Because of a lack of traffic this cave is also still pristine. Which means lots of bats and bugs.

We took a pump boat to the island the cave is on then on through the jungle. It was kind of rough going and people were falling but not me, not yet.

We get to the cave and one by one go down, the person waiting his/her turn dodging bats flying out the door, glad for the helmet to protect from bat droppings. We shimmy on down the rocks and then go into this little wing of the cave with so many bats and a cave sparrow nest with the tiniest egg. While in there it started raining through the big opening in the top. Which cooled us off after the trek up and in and got us ready to repel down. It was a neat repel down into the darkness, I’m not sure how deep maybe 30 feet, but that could be a lie. The hardest part was coming over the ledge, and I’ve got some awesome scrapes to prove it. Then we stood on squishy rocks, squishy from the guano rocks. Oh and under all that guano plenty of cock roaches (pause to shutter). Did you know there are types of cock roaches that can bite!? And fly!?

Then we went down father. Side story: When I was little when ever we went up country I usually ended up tumbling head first into a lake or stream. This time there wasn’t a body of water to break my fall. While everyone else fell with his or her feet on the ground I chose to go big. I was coming down off a rock looking for a foothold or two and down I went a couple of feet. I tucked myself up and landing pretty squarely on the bum and only got some awesome scrapes and bruises on my back and tweak to the ankle. Ain’t no thing.

After everyone else climbed down we went exploring and saw more bats, more cockroaches (pause to shutter), cave crickets, alien like spiders, centipedes and other creepy crawlers. Then turned and left, back up that fateful ledge I fell down to that taunting rope. Sure anybody can strap on a harness and slide down a rope but not anybody can climb back up it unless you’re a Filipino of course. There was another rope with knots every now and then. They wrapped their toes around this rope and climbed right up. P climbed up this rope but chose to wear the harness just in case. K followed suit. Luckily at this point there was enough manpower to pull us on up. Then we climbed up and were in the jungle again.

It was pretty slick going up before the rain. Going down post rain it was ridiculous so we just went down on some leaves on our butts. We were already covered in guano so a little mud didn’t thing like too big a deal. It for sure saved a lot of time and just scraped off the rest of my skin.

When we got back to town we went to a waterfall to wash up. A good day. I was afraid to go to sleep because I was sure I’d wake up sore. This was not the case. My ankle is a little swollen and tender but I’m walking fine, the majority of my scrapes are not oozing (of those I can see). Now I’m ready for my next big adventure whatever that may be.

In reading through I saw a mention to aswang. Not sure I’ve mentioned it before so I’ll do it now. Filipinos are very superstitious. They believe in charms, and witchcraft, and signs. One thing is an aswang (sometimes called a white lady), which is like a vampire.