“We came, we saw, we conquered”
After a day’s rest, Ryan woke us up early to have breakfast and
prepare for the highlight of our trip – yes! Spelunking. Our guide, Kuya
Gareth defined that spelunking is very different from cave exploration
because for one, spelunking is done by tourists who would want to have
some adrenaline pump whilst cave exploring is being done by
professionals.
We are scheduled start our cave connection (yes, walk again) at 7am
with our tour guides, Kuya Gareth and Kuya Rocco. Too bad, Karen has to
leave early for Manila.
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| Big Picture: Lumiang Burial Cave entrance |
Our entry point will be Lumiang Burial Cave - is the home of a
hundred piled coffins of the ancient Ifugao natives. Kuya Gareth told us
that the coffins are rather short because the dead is being positioned
in a fetal position, in the belief that we were born in that position
and it should be same as position when we die. Also, I was surprised
that they weren’t mummified.
The entrance to Lumiang Cave was rather hard compared to Sumaguing
entrance (I once tried Sumaguing way back 2007). Lumiang is very rocky
and steep. There were times that we needed to remove our sandals because
the rocks were smooth and walking with sandals wouldn’t help with
keeping our balance with our rocky path. By the time we got tired
putting back on the straps of our sandals, we all decided to take those
off and walk barefoot. Some paths are even, some aren’t.
Inside the cave are the most fascinating and wonderful rock
formations, talkin about stalagmites and stalactites. Words cannot
express our awe, so I will just post pictures with captions :p
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| Working our way... |
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| Water here is cold but it's soo refreshing |
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| Shadow play |
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| Me! |
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| Climbing our way up to the exit (via Sumaguing) |
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We came, we saw, we conquered! Most fulfilling moment was after we survived our way out in a matter of 5 hours 
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Left: Finally! Light!!!!
Right: Bruised arms and legs, but that's ok
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After our exhaustive activity we went back to our lodge and washed up and ate Pinikpikan for dinner!
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