inside Libuton cave

While travelling, there are circumstances that we cannot control no matter how much we prepare and anticipate all the possible outcomes. In such cases, one should be creative enough for possible solutions. Luck is very helpful too. Just hope that you have lots of it.

We started our day early. I think our call time was 6am. Our planned itinerary was to tour Libuton cave and if there’s enough time, tour a Dipolog waterfall. We should be back by 4pm to catch a ferry going to Dumaguete. Our plan B was to get a ferry at 7pm in case there were mishaps.

We headed back to the Dipolog terminal, and then ride a bus(from the terminal) to Manukan which is about 1 hour away from the city. From Manukan, we hired two Habal-habals that would take us to the cave proper. The ride was rough because of the rocky, mountain road. The caves we’ve seen so far were something that can be traversed easily, so we thought Libuton cave was the same… Boy, were we wrong….

When we got to Libuton, we asked the Habal-habal drivers where the tourist guides for the caves were. It turned out that there were no guides in the area and that we need to contact a travel agent that would guide us in the cave. Their office was in Dipolog City, which meant that we need to wait for at least an hour if there were any guides at all. We asked if there were anybody that could guide us in the cave, but there were none. The locals don’t have any flashlights as well. This proved that they haven’t done any touring to unsuspecting victims, I mean tourists like us. We even asked the Bgy chairman to grant us permission to tour the cave to no avail. Some locals even tried to call the travel agency for us but cellphone signal was bad in that area.

Just when we’re about to give up, our lady luck came to our rescue… 2 vans suddenly appeared. Our knight in shining armor suddenly came to view. Armed with flashlights and helmets, Kuya Basil approached us and said he’s willing to tour us. He said that we’re lucky. The passengers of the 2 vans were Cebuano tourist agents who like to explore the cave for business purposes. But before we can proceed, there should be enough helmets/flashlights remaining, the Cebuanos should approve our sudden entries, and we should be willing to have no lunch as they haven’t prepared extra lunch for us “pasaways”. Hehe. One of the Cebuanos, was “concerned” at us and told us that we should be booking tours instead of backpacking. We fought the urge to talk back at her for the sake of the tour. I think we can be called professional backpackers by now.haha

lessons about caving

The tour was divided into 2 parts, 1 for each cave. Each cave took 1 hour to navigate. Before we could get to the cave, we need to hike 30mins from our current location. We opted to be at the back of the pack since we were the outsiders. Our guides dubbed us as “Manila Girls”, with X called as the “Camay lady” because of her flawless, white skin.haha. The first cave was easy to navigate.

I’m not sure if the spelunkers know that they’re going inside a cave. Why? Some of them wore maong pants and rubber shoes. I guess they’re not aware that they might get wet inside a cave. The guides commend us because we wore shorts and sandals for this trip. They said that we’ll definitely get dirty and wet later on.

The first cave was easy to navigate that even children could do it. However there was this one annoying lady that was so sloowwww and so unathletic she’s pulling all of us down. The guides always help her in almost every stone path. It probably took us 30 mins longer to get out of the first cave because of her.

It was lunch time when we got out of the cave. They kept asking us if we want some lunch. We only brought some cupcakes and an almost empty bottle of water while they have chicken Inasal, and I forgot what else. We almost gave in to the temptation. We’re so hungry that we decided to eat something good when we arrive in Dumaguete that evening.

duck-walking inside the cave

crawling inside the cave

We’re relieved that the annoying lady decided to be left behind. That’s also good for her because the 2nd cave was harder to navigate. The guides even prohibited the use of cameras because of its level of difficulty. We even need to crawl and duck-walk to enter it. Here, there’s a path that had almost waist-deep water so those who wore maong pants and rubber shoes probably cursed themselves for wearing such outfits. There was another path where you need to cross a water-filled basin that’s deep enough to drown a non-swimmer. In order to get past that obstacle, one must have long arms and legs and be athletic enough to traverse the cave walls and stones just like spider man or else you’ll fall in the basin. It’s really hard to describe. I’d say one should be at least 5’0 because he’d really need long arms and legs. Getting out of the cave was the trickiest. Here, the guides set up ropes because it was dangerous. There was this big hole on the other side that once you fall, you’d probably be dead on the spot. In order to get out of the cave, we use the rope to get to the other side of the wall, and then pushed ourselves upward in a tiny hole above us.

spider inside the cave

It was past 2pm when we returned back to Kap’s home. We thanked her and donated some money for the cave. We thanked Kuya Basil for the adventurous spelunking trip. He wanted us to join them back to Dipolog using their vans. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough room for 4 so we head back to Dapitan without them. We were dirty after the trip. But since we were racing for time, we didn’t care much. A Dapitan porter even asked us where we’ve been and why we wore dirty clothes.haha. Well at least we cleanse ourselves using wet wipes.

We immediately went back to Manukan, then back to Dipolog, then to Dapitan port only to find out that the last ftrip to Dumaguete already left. There was no 7pm ferry departing to Dumaguete City. We convene and then replaced our itinerary because of this incident. We bought tickets for a 5am ferry going to Dumaguete early next morning.

Navigating Libuton cave was worth it. I’d recommend it to any adventurous soul out there.

Here was our expense breakdown for Day 3:

More pics here: