My Life as a Tourism Reseacher

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Spelunking Days

The Mamas’ and Papas’ Chambers

If you want to see some of the grandest cave formations, a good bet is the Sohoton Natural Bridge National Park in Basey (pronounced as Ba-sigh), Samar. To reach the national park, get on a jeepney to Basey in Tacloban City in Leyte then hire a banca to reach the site. Total travel time is about three hours.

The park is really one of the best ones I’ve been to. There is a natural bridge, dense mangroves, a waterfall, and lots of wildlife. My ranger guide and I even saw an illegal wood gatherer who pretended that he was just answering a call of nature when we got near him.

If you have plans to explore the site, be ready to take good photos when you enter the caves. The limestone formations are mostly pure calcite or sparkling white and resembling many magnificent landforms like the Banaue Rice Terraces and the Great Wall of China. There is even one set of limestone formation they call Harpa. When hit by hands, they create melodious sounds.

My guide kept saying that I would be amused to enter the Mamas and Papas Chamber. But I was not really expecting to see this “phenomenon.” There were actually two chambers - one was the papas and the other was the mamas. Do I have to explain everything in detail? Let me put it this way. In these two chambers, I had seen the youngest and the oldest; and the tiniest and the biggest - all in their glorious limestone forms.

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