25 May Caves, Birds, and the 90s Remembered: Sabang, Philippines
Our banka glided across a protected cove toward rock drapery spilling from the forested cliff above. From a distance the cave entrance appeared merely as another fold in the rock; but, as we slipped into its darkness, our boatman’s headlamp revealed a tunnel that opened into a voluminous grotto. The space felt intimate as the light explored craggy features, highlighting a coiled reticulated python here and a ceiling full of bats there. Yet the infinite darkness of the Puerto Princesa Underground River evoked expansiveness, a feeling reinforced by a palatial gallery our guide labeled the Cathedral; a particularly impressive stalagmite towering at its center as we paddled through.
Sabang isn’t exactly a household name, but this UNESCO World Heritage Site is why people travel to this tiny town on the Philippine island of Palawan. It’s what drew a few friends and me away from a mini-high school reunion in Manila to this relatively remote corner of the world. I’d been skeptical about spending an entire week in a place known only for its underground river, but group planning across multiple continents can be complicated and this was how the itinerary settled.
Upon checking in, I deemed our hotel lovely, the beach beside idyllic, but doubts nagged that first afternoon as the hotel restaurant lacked most menu items at lunch and the town itself appeared shuttered. One trinket shop remained open, a Miami Heat tank top flapping from the door sill. The local sari-sari stores, grocery stores for the locals, contained little of interest to visitors beyond a giant spider that evoked a blood-curdling scream from one of my friends and only a lackadaisical, unsurprised response from the women tending shop.
It became clear the next morning as a pile of tourist vans overwhelmed the town’s tiny waterfront that Sabang was more of a daytrip adventure than a tourist destination in its own right. The Sabang Pier, base for the pile of bankas (bamboo-rigged boats) that ferry people 20 minutes or so across the sea to the cave entrance, bustled with tourists, guides, and touts in the middle of the day, but was barren by late afternoon; even the information office closed. I understood why tourists might not stay as we resigned ourselves to non-functional WIFI. Yet this failure resulted in a day on the beach – all of us reminiscing of high school, reading books for fun, playing in the waves, and sipping fancy cocktails to a raucous round of Jenga at the hotel’s poolside bar.
It wasn’t until our third day that we ventured to the cave with our own hired guide for a bird-oriented tour. We took the first boat to the park, arriving early to wander beyond the well-worn track to the cave and instead explore faded jungle trails. We met our first Palawan water monitors on these faded trails, their long, blue tongues forking the leaf litter as they stalked through the understory. And it was on these faded trails where we saw Lovely Sunbirds, White-vented Shama, Palawan Flowerpeckers, and several other bird species found only on Palawan. We were among the first into the cave that day, but instead of rushing back to the dozens of boats now bobbing offshore awaiting their returning passengers, we wandered the beach to see Palawan Hornbills lurking in clifftop trees, a pair of Philippine Megapodes digging in a communal nest, and another Palawan water monitor at the other end of the communal nest, eyeing the pair voraciously after having presumably raided eggs from its side.
Our lunch destination was the artistically-decorated Cacaoyan Restaurant a few miles out of town. Its expansive buffet of Filipino delicacies was delicious, the artwork inspired, yet the forest park behind the restaurant was its true gem. Strategically-placed sculptures, treehouses, and other structures briefly entertained the average visitor wandering beyond the food line, but the forest beyond housed a plethora of birds that our dedicated guide lured into view despite the mid-day heat. Highlights included the Palawan Tit, Western Hooded Pitta, Chestnut-breasted Malkoha, and Palawan Fairy-bluebird.
Our guide introduced us to another treat – a boat tour of the Sabang Mangrove Forest that proved to be within walking distance of our hotel. It no doubt would’ve been more productive from a wildlife perspective earlier or later in the day, but nonetheless the branches above yielded napping black and yellow-striped Palawan mangrove snakes and long-tailed macaques grooming one another. On mud banks beside us, an array of colorful fiddler crabs milled about while amphibious mudskippers, fish capable of spending time both in and out of water, basked on the shore, leaping back to the water’s safety at the slightest disturbance.
From a tour perspective, we’d apparently exhausted Sabang’s options because our next several stops were many miles out of town along the only road to Puerto Princesa, the island’s largest city. We stopped at a roadside shop with scenic water views from a tower where an eye-level fruiting tree attracted Palawan Flowerpeckers and Yellow-throated Leafbirds to its canopy, while a pair of Palawan Sunbirds nested at its base. We watched a family of the largest woodpecker in the world, the Great Slaty Woodpecker, swoop from one forest patch to another, pausing in the highest trees to squabble while tapping out insects. We looked less successfully for other specialty birds in other forest patches, eventually working our way back to Sabang instead of continuing to Puerto Princesa or beyond. Our guide seemed befuddled by our decision to base in Sabang as he dropped us back at the hotel reminding me of my own initial reticence, but Sabang had grown on us and it we hadn’t yet exhausted it.
Exploring around the hotel I found flocks of Asian Glossy Starlings in its flowering trees, and a Pacific Reef-Heron on the adjacent beach. Neighboring agricultural fields yielded Little and Medium Egrets, as well as my first glimpse of a Chinese Pond-Heron as it soared above a rice field. Following a coastal trail through town in the opposite direction, we discovered the Pyamaluguan Sabang Falls. A local family was packing up their picnic leftovers as we arrived – a pot of rice, makeshift charcoal grill, and assorted containers of meat and vegetables all stuffed into large woven baskets – abandoning one of the provided bamboo shelters, and the entire falls, to us. Freshwater sprayed from a forested cliff, pooling below before trickling down a rocky creek to a lower pool and beyond to merge with the ocean. Sunbirds flitted through the forest, a White-bellied Sea-Eagle soared beyond the waves, and hundreds of those bizarre mudskippers decorated oceanside rocks in an ever-shifting pattern as each wave took some back to sea while delivering others to bask momentarily in the sun.
There were many more caves, limestone cliffs, forest patches, and water features to explore further afield if we’d been so inclined, even a zipline nearby, but it turned out that one of Sabang’s greatest gifts was its invitation to a slower pace of life. I live near amazing beaches in Florida, but it took visiting this sleepy town on the other side of the globe for me succumb to the call of crashing waves. It was here, where restaurants individually cook local dishes from scratch upon order and roads clear at night, that we caught glimpses of what felt like authentic community life – karaoke crooned from a neighboring table and students practicing a dance routine in the town square. The underground river had been surprisingly transcendental, but so was its town. Perhaps inspired by our high school recollections, we found ourselves coaxed by an enthusiastic bar tender into a spontaneous 90s-throw-back dance party, a group of local children imitating our moves on the sand a few meters away.
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