Underground River

Palawan is famous for its Underground River, the Philippine's official nominee to the new 7 wonders of the world. Tourists visit Puerto Princesa to go to the Underground River.
The Underground River is in Sabang which is 73 kms from the city and can be reached in 1.5-2 hours travel. The roads leading to Sabang have sharp curves, you must have an experienced driver. There's a part where there are sharp curves every 3 seconds!

Hotels and travel agencies offer the Underground River tour at P1,500/person. This includes the aircon van transfer, permit, motorized boat ride, paddle boat ride inside the cave, lunch buffet and tour guide.

Our permit for the tour is scheduled at 7:30 am so we should leave the city at 5:30-6am to be able to be in Sabang on time. This is the first tour of the day, usually, tourists leave the city at 7am.

Our tour guide, Grace, picked us up at Duchess around 6:15am. We stopped by two other hotels to pick up other tourists. Since we were running late, the driver sped through the National Rd. going to Sabang. It was drizzling and the skies promised rain for the day.
We reached Sabang and Grace went to get our permit. It was raining! Flimsy raincoats were being sold at P50. since we have to travel by boat to the Underground River, I bought one. I urged Hubby to do the same but he insisted that he can take the strong winds and rain. He was wrong. He bought one just as we were leaving for the Underground River.

Only six persons are allowed to ride in the boat so our group was split. Grace joined our boat. The sea was not calm. Our boat challenged the waves as the boat man expertly maneuvered the boat to the island where the Underground River is located.
We registered and wore life vests. It was hard to take pictures since it was raining. You either get your shots or risk your camera to be wet and damaged. My advice, bring an underwater protector with your camera.

A five-minute walk under the trees will lead you to the area where boats await the tourists. We wore our plastic helmets and rode a boat. The tour lasts for 45 minutes. Despite the rain, I told myself to enjoy this experience with nature.

The foul smell of bat dung will welcome you at the mouth of the cave. Since it's daytime, the bats are sleeping so don't worry if you're afraid of bats. The Underground River is 8.1 kms but only 1.5 kms is navigable by tourists. The rest of the river is reserved for researchers and scientists and they need to acquire special permits to be able to go there.

People who sit in front will be the light man/woman. The boat man sits at the end. He tells stories and shows the different formations of stalactites and stalagmites as he solely paddles the boat. The best spot in the boat for me is either near the back where you can hear the boatman or in the second row, near the light. If you are assigned to hold the light, you won't be able to take pictures.

Whenever another boat passes our boat, the boatmen will greet us "Good evening!" and will joke to check if the number of people in our boat is the same now as when we road it at the start.

The official photographer takes the picture of each boat entering and leaving the cave. A small photo costs P150.

We ate lunch at a nearby resort. The buffet consists of four viands only - BBQ liempo, chicken adobo, fish steak and adobong kangkong. There's also a buko tinola soup and sliced cucumbers.