Going underground

My wife and I headed out to Puerto Princesa, Palawan to spawn.

But, admittedly, it is quite difficult to spawn if you are sharing a room with your two-and-a-half-year-old daughter and your yaya. Plus your in-laws are billeted in the room right on top of yours (yes, that is the same father-in-law who custom-fitted you with a chastity belt when you and your then girlfriend/now wife were still dating). 

So to keep myself in a constantly amorous state during the whole weekend, I was on the lookout for the infamous (infamous in the same way that The Three Amigos were infamous) Palawan delicacy tamilok (wood worm), which is renowned for its, ahem, aphrodisiac qualities. However, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to break my vegetarian diet just for this worm (which I later found out was actually a slimy, fat and long mollusk that made most men feel inadequate because it was longer than a 12-inch ruler. More importantly, I have not read any scientific studies that herald the efficacy of eating tamilok versus watching really crude pornography).

Upon arrival at the Puerto Princesa airport on the western coast of the city, there were two things that immediately struck me. Firstly, since Puerto Princesa was the cleanest and greenest city in the Philippines, it had a staunch anti-littering law. That being the case, any litterbug who so much tosses an errant piece of plastic on the ground can be turned into mulch so that they can he can be properly recycled. This worried me because — as someone who was born, bred and breathed Metro Manila — my body was already composed of 25 percent trash.

The second thing I noticed was that there were just scores of giddy Manilenos, balikbayans and tourists eagerly signing up for special tours around Palawan. “Gosh,” I thought, “a lot of people must really want tamilok.”

Author RJ Ledesma prepares to travel the 8.3 km river by paddleboat.

After dropping by Vietville Restaurant — a restaurant located at the entrance of a former Vietnamese boat refugee village — for an authentic Vietnamese meal of fresh spring rolls, tofu in lemongrass, canh chua (Vietnamese sinigang), Vietnamese coffee with condensed milk and some freshly baked and crunchy Banh Mi (Vietnamese baguette) for takeout, we started on our drive down towards our resort in Sitio Sabang by Ulugan Bay on the Midwest coast of Palawan, some 76 kilometers northwest of Puerto Princesa. 

The two-hour ride to Sabang was rather uneventful, except for the driver’s insistence that we listen to a radio station that was on a continuous loop of Barry Manilow’s greatest hits. But before my cholesterol levels could reach critical levels, the van came to an abrupt stop as a freshly felled tree blocked both sides of the road. A road with no signs of other vehicles passing by. Or street lights. Or — God help us — a cell phone signal. I was tempted to step out of the van and use my last reserves of inhuman strength to cry out at the top of my lungs, “Yayaaaa!!!!! Tuloooooonnngggg (Help)!!” (Clarification: this was a cry meant for my original yaya, not the yaya of my daughter). But before I could open the van door, our tour driver stepped out of the van and yodeled some sort of ultrasonic Palawan cry. Several minutes later, a swarm of half-naked axe-wielding men appeared from the wilderness. When these men first emerged, I tried to stifle my, este, my wife’s screams until I found out that they had come out of the proverbial woodwork to help chop away at the tree so that we could eventually pass the road. I was contemplating whether or not I should help them cut down the tree, but I wasn’t too sure how effective my cell phone would be at chopping wood.

Life’s A Beach

We were greeted by a symphony of crickets as our van pulled into Daluyon Beach and Mountain Resort. Daluyon (which means “strong wave” in the local Cuyunon dialect) is a sprawling three-hectare property with a row of 16 Asian-inspired cottages along the Sabang beach that all had an expansive view of the politically corrected West Philippine Sea (with nary a Chinese warship in sight). The cottages had all the major creature comforts you would expect so that a Manileño like me would not go into urban withdrawal: great air conditioning, satellite cable TV, a DVD player (which my daughter wore out watching Tinkerbell and the Great Fairy Rescue several hundred times from their complimentary DVD selection), Wi-Fi and, most importantly, a bathroom spray for your behind (this is the height of luxury as far as I am concerned).

On top of the amenities, Chef Ed Quimson brought his mestizo style of cooking to Daluyon’s Pawikan restaurant, where there was an Asian-Global cuisine with a Palawan twist. (For the three female readers of my column, you may recall Chef Ed once shared in my column that his culinary philosophy was that food was all about foreplay. Given that I was spending this weekend with my family, my yaya and my in-laws, the food at Pawikan would probably be the only foreplay that I would be getting in this vacation.) 

The entrance to the underwater cave is eerie.

Early the next day, we took a leisurely stroll to the nearby Buyuy-buyuy   river for a 1.2-kilometer bakawan (mangrove) forest paddleboat ride to see hundred-year-old mangrove trees that rose 30 meters into the sky. Little did my wife know that I had an ulterior motive for taking her on the mangrove tour: nesting inside the rotting mangroves were the tamiloks. But I was warned to be careful scouring for these mollusks because — aside from trudging through muddy ground and evading discarded oyster shells and fallen tree branches — there could be some DOMS lurking inside those rotting mangroves as well.   

We had the privilege of being toured around the bakawan by Aida, the self proclaimed Lady Mangrove who pointed out to us the different varieties of plants and animals that occupied this protected area: there were yellow-striped snakes (makamandag), pythons, bayawaks (monitor lizards), porcupines, anteaters, parrots, myna, cockatoos, hornbills, wild pigs, and even some wild chickens (you knew they were wild by the way they foamed at the mouth).

She also explained that there were male and female mangroves, but I had a difficult time telling them apart even when I was looking at their genitals. Midway through the tour, we spotted tiny red, orange, white and blue crabs crawling all over the mud (no, we did not find them crawling around the mangrove’s genitals).

Mangroves, as Lady Mangrove explained, are actually breeding grounds for fish. “See,” I nudged my wife on the ribs “Told you this would be a good place for us to spawn.” Then she wrapped a makamandag around my neck. As the tour drew to a close, Lady Mangrove performed an educational song called Halina O Hirang to the tune of Paru-parong bukid (without the benefit of burlesque costumes, backup dancers and a meat dress, I would like to add).  

Before we alighted from the paddleboat, I surreptitiously asked Lady Mangrove if we could make an adult educational tour in search of Palawan’s infamous mollusk. Unfortunately, I was told by the good lady that tamiloks were unavailable as of the moment because of the high tide. Oh well. I guess I would have to find out if the resort had some really crude pornography.

A little before lunch, we took a carabao-driven carriage back to the resort which my family thought was quite refreshing. However, the novelty of riding in the front seat of the carriage quickly wore off as you had to stare at the carabao’s behind for about five minutes.

The Bat Cave

Later that afternoon, we had finally come to my declared purpose for this trip (aside from spawning and eating tamilok) and that was a visit to the Puerto Princesa Underground River. Conveniently enough, Daluyon was a mere stone’s throw away from the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River national park (especially if you had a pitching arm like the Incredible Hulk’s).

From the nearby Sabang Pier, we took a motorized pumpboat for a 20-minute ride to the entrance of the underground beach. The ride to the underground beach gave us an opportunity to take in the outline St. Paul Mountain Range (which was named as such because it resembled the St. Paul’s Cathedral in London) and the majestic rock formations along the shoreline that had been systematically cut into by fluctuating water levels over the course of millions of years.

 (I found out that the underground river — an 8.3-kilometer-long, nine-meter-deep underground river that winds its way through a pitch black cave underneath the St. Paul Mountain Range until it makes its way out to sea — is vying for a top spot in the search of the new seven wonders of nature. I am sure that they would have garnered the top spot by now if they had gotten more votes from Maguindanao.)

Before boarding the paddleboat for the river, we were made to don life vests and construction helmets, to make sure that we would not be the victims of bat guano (the more sophisticated name for bat poop). Our tour guide slash paddleboat operator Joyce (names are gender-neutral in these parts) also informed us that although the river is navigable up to 4.3 kms, we would only enter about 1.5 kms of the underground river for a period of 45 minutes. Given that my daughter and I are prone to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, I had to remind her that unlike the “It’s A Small World” ride in Disneyland, this ride would have no bright lights, no animatronic mascots and no catchy theme songs sung in several languages. But on a brighter note, I reminded, her, there might be some souvenir T-shirts and pictures at the end of the tour. 

Once we entered the river, the paddleboat operator’s assistant at the front of the boat switched on the car battery-powered searchlight to illuminate the different rock formations inside the cave. As we paddled into the cave, we were literally swallowed up by thousands of loudly chirping swallows that circled the top of the cave. The boatman Joyce told us that the cave was home to thousands of swallows, swiftlets and bats that have not been enlightened on the benefits of birth control. I wondered how these thousands of swallows managed to not smack into each other in pitch blackness without the help of an air traffic controller. According to Joyce, that’s because these birds employ a form of echolocation to navigate away around the cave and away from other birds.

One of the first structures we encountered inside the cave was the aptly named bat cavern. There are seven different species of bats that lived inside these caves But, trust me, all their guano smelled the same. During our visit, the bats were taking their beauty while preparing for their night shift. So if we felt something cold and wet dripping on our clothes, that was fresh rainwater that had seeped in through the mountains. But if you felt something wet and sticky dripping on our clothes, then a bat must have just woken up and used you for target practice.

To my amazement, the underground river ride was somewhat similar to an amusement park ride if you employ your imagination. The tour guide had pointed out that nature had categorized the cave into different thematic sections. For example, there was the “freestyle” section with formations that resembled a giant candle and a man and his dog. Then the “grocery” section, where rock formations resembled eggs, a clove of garlic, an ear of corn, a head of mushroom, a ripe papaya, a cucumber, sayote, puso ng saging papayas, cucumber, sayote, puso ng saging (heart of the banana) and malunggay (apparently, this is the supermarket of the gods). And finally, there was the “Cathedral” with formations that resembled the Virgin Mary, the Holy Family, the three kings, Mother and Child, angels, and Pegasus (I am unsure if this cathedral has the imprimatur of the Catholic church).

Of course, we were kilometers deep inside a cave that was millions of years old. Who knows that kind of underground fumes this river was spewing that might have affected our neurons? Joyce could have told me that he saw formations that resembled Paris Hilton and Manny Pacquiao and the actual results of the 2004 presidential elections and I probably still would have believed him.

But further down the river, Joyce told us that we would have encounter a structure that was not subject to aesthetic interpretation: the fossilized remains of a 20-million-year-old dugong (sea cow) that had been embedded in the cave walls. Yes, that’s right: a fossil that’s even older than some of the DOMs out there. 

As our paddleboat turned around and we headed back to the mouth of the river, it occurred to me that the underground river could be both an exhilarating yet slightly terrifying experience. Especially when you realize that you are a more than a kilometer deep inside an underground cave that is underneath a mountain that is swarming with bats and swallows in the air and eels in the brackish waters below and all that you can rely of for safety in a pitch-black cave is the knowledge of your paddleboat operator and a battery-powered searchlight. But probably the most terrifying part? Aside from the fact that your car battery might run out of juice or that bats go Signal Number Three all over your head? The fact that there was no cell phone signal inside the cave. The only Twitter that would be coming from the inside of the underground river would be from the swallows.

We returned to the resort later that afternoon and I found myself being lulled to sleep by the rhythmically crashing waves of the beach while swinging on a duyan (hammock). But before taking my siesta, I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket in an attempt to Twitter my experience to my three female readers. However, as swiftly as a swiftlet, my wife grabbed my phone and threw it into disputed water. “Don’t you know how to relax?” she smiled through her teeth.

My wife climbed into the hammock with me as we watched our daughter build sandcastles that would eventually tower like the mangrove trees that we saw in our paddleboat tour. 

Well, I guess this means we will get to spawn another day (and somewhere in a rotting mangrove, a tamilok breathes a sigh of relief).

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Check out www.daluyonresort.com. Tell Butch Tan that RJ sent you. Vote for Puerto Princesa Underground River as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. Visit www.new7wonders.com.