However, I found out through the Internet that spelunking took a turn and caving became a term for serious explorers while spelunking pertains now to the tennis shoe-clad adventurers or to the citified wanna-be.
I definitely belonged to this latter group.
The travel to the middle of nowhere
On October 2001, my boyfriend Rommel and I, together with some friends, drove down that bumpy road from Catbalogan, Samar to the historical town of Basey. Our bodies ached from that horrible two-hour ride. Oh dear, and to think that we still had to drive back to Catbalogan on that road! Memo to would-be travelers: make sure that your vehicle has good suspension to avoid aching backs and tortured bladders during the long drive. Hopefully the Maharlika Highway facelift would soon be finished.
I've learned that Basey was the center of Eastern Visayas during the Spanish Era. The Golden River (which cuts across the town and empties into San Juanico Strait) was a major waterway, especially for the remote barangays. The Spaniards, and later the Americans, used this river for their patrolling operations.
This same river was our means to reach the caves of Basey.
As I got into our banca that would whisk us away into the Samar Interior, I found out why the murky river was called 'golden.' The sunlight that struck the surface made the river look yellow (and I don't know---maybe it's because of the clay underwater). I was nervously looking around us while we were going upstream. "Wala bang buwaya dito, manong?" I asked our boatman while a log that looked like a reptile floated around. To my relief, there was none.
(trip to banaue and sagada)
After an hour of chugging away on our pump boat (really, the river is that long!), we stopped at the DENR rest house and started our trek to the Panhulugan Caves.
I thought it was a pretty harmless walk---but I was dead wrong. We had to use a series of bridges that was only supported by stilts attached to what seemed like the wall of the cliffs surrounding the river. If you're afraid of heights, look straight ahead or else you might imagine that the bridge was swaying.
Upon entering the mouth of the cave, our guide told us that it (the exact spot where we were) was a public cemetery. The cave was where the indios once hid and where they rolled boulders and threw rocks at unsuspecting Spaniards and Americans that patrolled the river during the Revolution and the Fil-American War. Many died with and among those rocks, thus the name panhulugan.
We were forbidden to touch the stalagmites and stalactites that were protruding from the roof and the floor of the cave. Some of the walls looked like it had some crystals imbedded but we were told that once we touched these, the rocks would turn brown after some time due to the oil that our bodies produced. OK, we got the message and no one attempted to play truant along those walls. There were also hollow walls and stalagmites and our guide showed us how to produce music by tapping on the protruding rocks that they called 'natural musical pipe' organ or something.
Panhulugan had so many passageways and exits, but one wrong turn one of us might fall straight into the river. That would be nice. After emerging from the dark recesses of the cave, we got again to our boat and went against the current to see the Sohoton Natural Bridge. It was a National Park under the Samar Island Biodiversity Program of the United Nations Development Program.
When our boat could no longer go upstream because the river became too rocky and shallow, we crossed the river on foot. I was wearing jeans (stupid me!) and running shoes when we crossed the river. When we got to dry land, I had cut my poor jeans (it was weighing me down) and I had a very squishy pair of shoes. Great. Note to would-be travelers: never commit the same mistake I did, wearing denims on a roughing-it adventure.
Voila! After 30 minutes of hiking in the forest (with slipping down the trail and holding on to tree branches to boot), we got to see this Sohoton. Then---I saw why it was called sohoton. You go under the natural bridge (suot), which was a couple of hundred feet. The river was underneath, the bridge like an arc reigning over the cool waters of the river.
My companions couldn't resist the temptation of jumping from our high rocky perch into the river below. They were like boys (and mind you these were boys in their late 20s) doing something forbidden---like breaking their promises to their mommies. It was an unplanned swimming; they didn?t have extra clothes to change into and they risked it by going home wet. The rest of us chickens just got to gaze at God's handiwork and marveled at the majestic sight before us.
I wondered how many people were able to see these simple beautiful things. "Will I be able to come back?" I pondered while we went downstream to the town proper. It was such a waste if just a handful of my countrymen will be able to see these things.
I didn't resist the lure of these caves for I may never be able to get inside an unspoiled cave again, without any writings on the wall. I may never cross a cool clean river again. It didn't matter if I went home broke because of this trip---for I may never be able to cross a river again because a few years from now, we may never have clean rivers anymore. Or rivers and caves may just disappear from our midst with the growth of industries and modernization. Perhaps people might be too caught up in their own consequence and may never stop to smell the roses'or in this case, stop and smell the caves, the cliffs, the rocks, the rivers, and the forest.
I did. And it's an adventure I will never forget.
![[Downloader]](http://us.yimg.com/i/ligans/cb/smdl.gif)