An old school friend flew into Manila last week, and two days later the typhoons chased us off Luzon and down to Palawan. We were booked into Daluyon Resort, two hours drive up and down winding, half made roads from Puerto Princesa and a stone’s throw from the underground river.
On our first full day, our plans to go snorkeling were defeated by 
grey, murky seas and intermittent rain. So we decided, instead, to head to Ugong Rock with our guide Gilbert (short for Engelbert, because his dad was an Engelbert Humperdinck fan), and a family from Cebu. A huge solitary limestone rock emerging from the valley floor, Ugong was named for the ringing sound the hollow rocks produce when you tap them. Earthquakes have brought a number of these limestone protuberances to the surface like giant zits jutting up out of the earth’s surface amidst acres of rice paddies.
Several years ago, foreign tourism consultants advised the villagers in Barangay Tagbinet to create a ‘successful community-based sustainable tourism site’ that ensure the sustainable use of their natural resources and generate an income for the community. This should include building a viewing platform on top of Ugong Rock. Yet in the beginning, despite the efforts of the villagers, few visitors came. So they lost interest and returned to their usual work.
Eventually the local government stepped in, and with the help of the ABS-CBN Bantay Kalikasan Foundation and the Department of Tourism, they came up with a plan to develop Ugong Rock as an ecotourism site.
The venture has been a success. Six years later, the village is swarming with small tourist groups. as we all gathered in a hut for our orientation talk, an articulate and speed-talking local gentleman gave the Sir-Ma’ams a run down on our proposed adventure. Kitted out in white cotton gloves and safety helmets, we headed towards the entrance with our tour guide Bon Bon.
A narrow path led away from the village and around the edge of the rock. The first twenty minutes seemed to be an endless series of photo opportunities: at the entrance arch; around sign posts; in trees; under stalactites; in ill-lit niches.
A fissure in the rock evolved into the entrance to the first cave, and proved the need for the helmet, as my head bashed into a rock jutting out at eye level. I was more wary after that.
The gloves are a great idea, to prevent tactile tourists damaging the living stalagmites with sweaty palms. We edged sideways through narrow openings and along pathways between looming rock, ducking out into the sunlight again (to pose by another sign) before clambering over loose rocks and up a rickety ladder and around a rock shaped just like an eager dog sniffing for food. A traffic jam occurred in a small cavern where we waited our turn to climb up an almost vertical wall to an opening twenty feet or more above our heads, with the aid of ropes and tackle and encouraging guides.
Breathless and disoriented (my helmet had slid forward and obscured my
vision half way up) we finally arrived on the viewing platform on top of the seventy five foot limestone formation, with an almost 360 degree view of the surrounding countryside. Three zip lines descended steeply to the valley floor. One, making a scarily steep, almost vertical descent into the river was being used by five young boys to haul bags of rice to the top. Another dropped off the top of the rock into lush vegetation and treetops to then stretch hundreds of metres across rice paddies to a small hut on the far side of the valley.
Decked out in a tight webbing harness designed for thinner thighs and smaller bottoms, I perched precariously on the launching pad, peering down at the valley floor and the wire that seemed it would run me straight into an orange hut below. I was eager to leap into the void, but I had to wait while I was adjusted and clipped and heaved about into a straight jacket arrangement to be attached to the zip line.
Eventually all was in order and my cameraman having taken a couple of pictures as proof of my immense courage, I was swung out and off the platform, arms spread-eagled, heart clenched, mouth wide. The initial plummeting sensation was a little unnerving, and as the thick vegetation on the side of the rock leapt up to greet me, I hoped I would not shut my eyes the whole way. As you would with any show ride worth its salt, I yelled loudly to release the pressure in my stomach and found myself soaring out over the rice fields below, loving the sensation of flying, gliding, and wishing it would go on forever, as I skimmed over treetops, loving the bird’s eye view of the countryside. Too soon, I was racing towards the orange wall. The line swooped up onto the top of the building, and expecting to slow down as I reached my destination, I was unnerved to find I wasn’t slowing down at all, but was about to hurtle over the platform and through the safety net and into oblivion. I hit the stoppers with eyes clenched tight, and a startling lurch like a car crash that landed me in the arms of four or five small Filipinos sent to save me from imminent death.
Once my legs stopped shaking, I just wanted to turn around and do it again, and despite an utterly tortured face at the rapid landing, Nicky felt the same. Sadly Gilbert had other plans. We were going on a short jungle trek to see Lion Rock, a cave only 300m off the road, but down a pathway obscured by undergrowth, overgrowth and inches of thick oozy mud topped with flood water. It was a very different sort of body scrub!
Australia’s Occupational Health and Safety would have been mortified by this little side trip, and it may not have been something we would have done with any pre-warning, but the adventurousness delighted us, despite mud up to our knees, broken flip flops, and potential loss of vision from the pointed bamboo stalks. Clambering through streams, and scrambling up slippery rocks, we eventually found the cave and made our way through to the open mouth on the far side. Our only complaint was that nobody had cleared away all the greenery so it was not obscuring the stunning view out over the valley below us.
We sloshed and slurped back to the jeep, my sneakers squeaking and heavy with mud, despite rinsing them off in the river. We decided we were in no state to eat out at Gilbert’s uncle’s second-cousin’s restaurant and headed home for lunch. I am still trying to rinse all the mud from my shoes…
* With thanks to Nicola Barker for sharing her photos, and the memories.