I'm (ab)seiling away

The next day after the dive I did an adventure trip with planet action, which involved hiking into the mountains to get to a deep ravine where we repelled down 5 waterfalls (the highest at 120ft) and jumped down two. It was an awesome trip, one of the highlights of my time in the PI so far. Drove along a really scenic coastal highway in mad max, the vehicle designed by the german who owns the company that looks like a cross between some war vehicle and a moon car to get to the area. Then we had about an hour hike to get up above the canyon and ravines. The ravines were deep and surrounded by cliffs so it was quite scenic, plus of course the water was oh so refreshing. But when you abseil, you basically just clip your rope into your harness and then repell down the rushing water. The biggest and last waterfall was quite a rush b/c the water really pounded on top of you and it was an overhanging falls so when you got halfway down you had no rock to push off on, just dangling there with the water rushing on you. The guides were pretty fun too b/c they were always yelling and screaming and shouting ACTION! There were several small falls that we slid down like waterslides and a couple falls we jumped. One of the jumps was a bit scary. It was about 10m high, but the water wasn't very deep at the bottom, perhaps 2 meters, which is fine to jump in b/c of water's high surface tension. The tricky thing was that if you jumped too far you were in 1m of water. Jumping too far was easy though b/c if you were too short then it was the rocks of the waterfall as it wasn't a completely 90 degrees falls at the bottom. I was with a german couple and the large, fearless german man went first. He jumped way too far and landed on his feet in chest deep water. He was still fine b/c it was sandy and that's still deep enough water. I was nervous before going since it was such a small area to hit, but I've had my practice waterfall jumping and made it easily.

At the bottom of the canyon were some hotsprings that we soaked in, though I didn't linger long preferring the cold river water instead. Then at the end of the trip, they set up a table and we had a very delicious bbq of fish, pork, and chicken and they had a 1/2 a liter of sprite and 1.5 liter of san miguel beer for us. As is typical philippine custom, you first start out with a chandy (or is it shandy) of 1/2 sprite 1/2 beer. you're next is 1/4-3/4, then full beer. Definitely an awesome adventure and then great food.

That night I wasn't really going to eat anything as I had eaten a lot at the bbq and the trip was expensive so I was saving my pesos, but the 3 girls that worked at the front desk of my place invited me to have fish and rice with them. They were sweet girls and always wanted to talk a bit before I left or came back to my room.

The next day I got up early and rented a bike to bike to Kawasan falls. It was 22km one way. The morning ride wasn't so bad in terms of heat. One of the things about asia is that public transport is so cheap and easy...and all major sites have at least dirt roads going to them, that you find yourself taking the public transport b/c it's so quick and cheap. I had been trying to do things on my own in thailand and burma, but had gotten a bit out of the habit here in the philippines especially b/c travelling with lucas and sari meant even cheaper fares since it was divided by 3, so I've been trying to get back to being more exercise oriented. Plus it feels so much better if you get there on your own after a good journey than just taking a bus, jumping of quick, snapping some pictures, and then leaving. But asia just isn't quite set up like the States in that sense where the best things are usually only accessed by trails. I got to the main Kawasan falls and it was quite an interesting place. A beautiful falls with gorgeous waters, and then restaurants and loding surrounding it as well as shaded bungalows and picnic places for rent. There were bamboo rafts in the water you could rent that the filipinos would take into the falls to get splashed. This was quite amusing b/c they'd scream, dance, and many brought umbrellas (worthless). I of course just opted for the swim. I had wanted to jump off this falls as apparently I had heard it was great for jumping. High, deep, and you could go right over the falls. But people are no longer allowed to jump because earlier this year apparently a korean guy jumped off, didn't see a raft directly under the falls and landed on a girl on the raft.

It looked like a trail went further up, so I followed it and sure enough it went by a couple more nice small falls and then another large one with more bamboo rafts and some tourist places. I kept following the trail some more before it ended at another small falls and some sort of hyro power thing. Since I had my river shoes on I kept walking up the stream. Happened upon a few more cool falls and then believe it or not I caught up to a group of planet action on their river hiking tour. I went ahead and came upon and a gorgeous narrow ravine area with unbelievably turquoise blue water. The only way to go up it was to swim. I swam through it and at one point you had to go through a small cave to get to the otherside, which ended up on a waterfall. That's as far as I went, thought the planet action tour was just beginning their "action" there and would continue on several more of these I was assuming. I didn't go further b/c I didn't have a buddy and felt it probably wasn't the safest thing to not have a spotter on some of the waterfall climbing and also I had gone much further than I had orgininally planned in the day (I had only thought there was one falls) so I was pushing the time I needed to be back to catch the bus from moalboal to cebu city to catch the once weekly ferry to camiguin. So I turned around. This was one of those times I wished Lucas had still been with me (or bro there) so that we could have continued exploring upriver and forgotten about the ferry (most likely would have made it anyways). Hurried back, but not too fast that I didn't jump off a few falls to cool down. Then I had a very miserable hot bike ride back to moalboal as I really had to push it fearing that I would miss the ferry and knowing I had a few things to do back in pangasama beach (I had thought they would have an atm there, but they didn't so I ran out of money and had to change some US dollars still in order to pay for my lodging). From moalboal it's another 4km to pangasama beach so I stopped but a coconut to chug before going on.

Ended up taking a bus and making it to cebu city in plenty of time to catch the ferry, though economy was sold out so I had to take tourist, but with my student discount (thank you Albertson College for not putting a date on your student id!) tourist was cheaper than regular economy. Met a nice woman on the jeepney from the bus terminal to the pier that took me to the mall to show me where to eat before going on the ferry since the ferry was 13 hours and had no food.