A UNESCO World Heritage Site: Puerto Princesa Underground River

Image by SparklingGirl from Pixabay

Starting our second day in Puerto Princesa pretty early at around past 7AM, I already packed back our stuff as we’ll be heading straight to a different town after today’s activities, so here we have the most important meal of the day – a hearty breakfast!

Before we headed to what was considered the main attraction for the day, we took a detour to do some side activities where our tour guide asked each of us whether we preferred the chill route or the adventure route. The initial consisted of just a relaxing tour via ferry boat through a mangrove forest:

Photos courtesy of my mom @iamraincrystal

The latter tour I obviously took wherein the adventure consisted of a short trek along the beach, a hike uphill until we get to the zipline at the end – which was the ultimate best! Going back we had to walk through a sandbar and pretty much enjoy the view!

The raft to get to the beach

Adventure begins!

Love the view!


End of the line

Walking across islands via sandbar!

View on the way back (can you spot the island we came from?)

Souvenir!

Now since the morning half of the day was pretty much eventful, our group had to stop by for lunch. It was more like a buffet setup in this garden-like venue, pretty nice place plus I had to try a local cuisine they called ‘Tamilok’, which was this long oyster kind of dish. They were serving it raw or fried but fortunately went for the latter as it had a deep sea aftertaste. 😛 Still an experience.

After lunch, the main itinerary starts once we were dropped off at port and had to take a ferry to an island:

Upon landing, we had to trek through a short stretch of forest where our guide did mention to watch out for the monkeys – seems the local wildlife had a habit of grabbing stuff of your hands, even if it’s your phone… (they’re thieves in the making 😅)

At the end of the forest trail showed us a river, specifically the cave entrance to the underground river:

The tour would approximately take an hour and 45 minutes and we had this portable audio devices that explained the different parts of the interior. Honestly pretty calming experience, just don’t mind the bats inside, definitely DON’T drop your phone in that darkness ‘cuz no one would be diving back for it. Overall it was chill, kinda was close to dozing off at the tail end but there were some interesting formations inside and it was pretty spacious so no problem with peeps afraid of small spaces. 👍

Audio guide mentioned we can be in awe but try to keep our mouth shut as possible in case of drippings from... you know...

Mushroom shaped formation from the "food market" section of the cave - yes, it is called that

The cave goes deeper but some parts are closed off for safety reasons - and who knows how far this goes
Light at the end of the tunnel - really just us turning around at the end of the tour

This marked the end of the Puerto Princesa leg of our Palawan Tricity Tour at around 6PM that day and we were set to leave via van transfer at Trippy’s office to our second leg which would take 6 hours later sooo until the next post on our otherwise stormy island adventure! xoxo