by Fratri Edson Silva

When we were first offered the option to go caving, I didn’t really think much of it. I’ve seen and been in caves before – dark and cold, with the smell of ammonia in the air. It seemed to me more of a novelty; I get to say that I went caving in Sagada. So my companions and I said yes and prepared ourselves for what we thought would be a calm and collected walking tour of the Sagada burial caves.

If only we had known…

The Sumaguing and Lumiang caves served as burial grounds for the locals in Sagada for hundreds of years. Although the practice has been discontinued, you can still see the wooden coffins at the mouth of either of these caves – that is, the ones that are left, as a number of the coffins had been dislodged by typhoons.

The steps to the cave were steep and slippery, i.e., you had to be extremely careful. This was the first shock. Not to go into too much detail, but the nooks and crannies we crammed ourselves into in the first few minutes were enough to bring out the claustrophobe in anyone.

I was first in line behind the tour guide, so I was lucky to see how I would need to contort my body to fit into the crevasses first hand. At one point, half an hour in, our guide said that if we wanted helmets we could rent them for free, he then pointed out in the corner a pile of halved skulls. Good to know he had a sense of humor.

The experience was as rewarding as it was terrifying. I scooted down nearly vertical cliff faces on my butt, slipped and slid on slippery mud in the largest bat cavern I’d ever seen, waded through chest-high water with a drawstring bag full of electronics, banged my knee against a boulder, climbed a rope 10 feet up, marveled at rock formations that have never seen the light of day and probably never will, and bonded with strangers about the shared grueling experience.

I have to say the hardest part was the last part – climbing multiple flights of man-made and natural stairs out of the cave. The body pain was real (and unforgiving).

It was the longest, most incredible, most terrifying, most amazing, most stress-inducing FOUR HOURS I had ever experienced.

I would absolutely suggest this experience to anyone willing to go through it.

Frankly, I’m glad I tried it, but I will never do it again.