Philippines Day 2: River Climbing

The day after I arrived in Moalboal (that's four syllables, by the way), I was able to jump onto a tour that had already been planned for eight businessmen from Manila, I think. This made me slightly nervous. Living in Korea has put a specific couple of images of "businessman" in my head. One is a quiet, middle-aged, straitlaced, besuited stiff. The other is that stiff, completely wasted, stumbling down the street at 9pm, hand-in-hand with another drunken stiff.

Luckily, these were not those businessmen. They were all in their 30's or so, and seemed pretty easygoing. They all spoke perfect English, which seems to be the norm in this country, so communication was no problem.

Another English teacher from Korea (you can't go anywhere in Asia in July/August without encountering us), joined up with us and we met the businessmen in downtown Moalboal (it took them forever to get there from Cebu City, where I assume they flew in from Manila), where the tour guides purchased food for our barbecue, and Sonya and I walked around (the subject of my next post).

We all piled into the Action Van and drove for a bit to the top of the river. Normally, river climbing means climbing up, but because of recent rains, the current was too strong for novices. Thus, we climbed down.

Here are Sonya and I in front of the Action Van:


This is us with Bubu, one of the businessmen (it was actually seven men and one woman):


I had it in my head all day to make a Yogi Bear joke, but in the end I never had a great opportunity and forgot to do it.

The first thing we did was climb down a path through the trees, which started off steep, but not too difficult. After a minute or two of climbing, it was so steep that it was impossible to climb it facing forward. We had to turn around and climb down it like a ladder. I'm actually afraid of stuff like this, as well as a lot of stuff this tour involves, but I do it anyway. It builds character. So I'm climbing down this thing, holding on for dear life to vines, roots, rocks, small tree trunks, and dirt, sweating bullets of exertion and fear. When I got down, my thighs were singing already, and I was almost soaked before getting into the water.

The first part was pretty nice, just some floating. These two pictures were taken as we were first getting in the water. That's one of the tour guides, Mario:





Pretty soon, though, we had our first obstacle, which was maybe a ten to fifteen foot jump off a rock. Some people took a few times of the guides shouting one, two, three, but eventually we all made it. That was pretty fun.

During the first half hour, one of the Filipinos was using a waterproof camera, but then (idiot) he put it in his open pocket while going over some rough water or making a jump, and it fell out. Miraculously, the tour guides were out at the river the next day, and they found it, still operative. I doubt I'll ever see any of those pictures, though.

I'm not sure when this picture was taken, and the rest are just in the order they were taken (by Sonya's camera), I assume by the photo numbers.




After another jump or two (I definitely remember a jump that must have been like thirty feet), we came to some harder stuff, in which we had to hold onto a rope to get down. One guide went ahead to hold the rope at the bottom and another held it on the top, then each person held onto the rope and swam to the other end. The first one was easy, and we did that because of the current. The second one was much harder, though. I don't remember the situation exactly, but I do know that it was very scrapey. There was a sheer wall to the left of where we started, and I don't think we had to jump with the rope in hand, but we probably had to climb down a little bit and and around the wall to a little cave to the left. I was hanging onto the rope, but getting totally scraped on the rock as I get down. Almost all my knuckles on one hand got scrapes, and there's a scruise on my shin that's only 80% healed that I think came from this maneuver, too.

The next few pictures are from when we had to go from one level of rock to a lower one, over water. The guides had previously put two bamboo trunks there as a makeshift bridge. One trunk we crawled/walked on, and the other was a rail. About five of use got through it first (I crawled about halfway and then stood up and walked the rest), and hung out on these rocks below:



Somewhere in the middle, it was Bubu's turn, and I was told later that she was scared, so Mario went along with her. I wasn't paying attention to the crossings for a while, just looked around at the scenery. Suddenly, I heard CRACKCRACKCRACK and as I turned quickly around, I could see the end of the complete splitting of the trunk, and Bubu and Mario falling into the water. They were both fine; the bridge wasn't even necessary, just put there to make it less scary, I guess. So the rest of the people jumped into the water and climbed onto the rock, and that whole bit went much faster.

I think this is the part of the river right after that incident, and the next several photos are from the same area:





I think after this part, or maybe before, I don't know, was the time when we had to sit on a rock and do a small jump, maybe only three feet or less, into the water. It was a really easy thing to do, but for some reason, when I landed in the water, I got assraped by what I swear must have been a wedge-shaped rock. That was probably the worst pain the whole day. My tailbone still hurts from that. To add insult to injury, the area of the river that one of the guides pointed me to (I was first to jump) was not quite right. It seemed like he was pointing me to the far right, where there was a little shore, so I swam across this current that seemed really strong, panting, until I could stand up and catch my breath. Then everyone else went to the left, and we swam that way instead (maybe the river forked, so it wasn't obvious which way we would take).




I don't know exactly when it happened, but sometime in the middle of the trip, I was climbing down some rocks amidst some minirapids, and had to step down into a little current surrounded on three sides by rocks a little bigger than a basketball. Most of the rocks in the river were slippery, of course, and this time I fell right in the area between the rocks. The rock I slipped on was what caught me, but my left hand went down first, and all my weight must have gone onto that hand. I felt my index finger separate laterally from the rest of my fingers, and it hurt quite a lot. My immediate thought was, "broken finger," so I yanked it out of the water and started feeling the bone. The bone seemed fine, but my finger was definitely sprained. It hurt kind of, but the water was cool enough to keep the pain at bay for the next couple hours. Later, I put some ice on it, and got it czeched out when I got back here. It's still bandaged, and I fell again today and pulled it again, probably setting myself back in the healing process another week or two, plus I added a brut to my list of wounds, courtesy of the bottom corner of the bathroom door, which my leg slid under.

Near the end of the trip, we reached little river cul-de-sac and transferred to a land trail, which we used to get to the site of the barbecue. There was a tiny store on the way and most of us had a soda. It was one of the best sodas I've ever had, and in a glass bottle, too.













The above are all just the river as we walked by it, I think.

Here's our barbecue, which was probably ready three hours prior to us getting to it. The guides told me it usually takes until about 2:30 to finish the trip (starting around 11 at the river), but since there were so many of us, and some of the others were kind of babies about it (I'm told--I was always in the front, so I didn't encounter anyone actually complaining or being really scared or slow), it took until about 5:30, I think. We were all extremely hungry.


This is the beach by where we were eating. Nobody swam. We'd all been in the water all day, and several people availed themselves of the shower facilities, even, instead of swimming.





The gossip I heard from the tour guides, the owner, and one or two of the Manilans was that about half of them had a great time and the other half did not enjoy it. None of them seemed to be aware of what they were getting into, although frankly, it wasn't THAT hard. Someone told me they'd watched youtube videos of it, and it all seemed very easy. The next day they texted the owner, Jochen, to say that they all woke up and couldn't move. There were also a lot of other messages, Jochen told me, like what a long drive it was from Cebu, how hard the trip was, etc. I actually had a similar problem with the soreness, but it's to be expected. It took me three days to recover from the soreness, which was lucky since three days later I went canyoning. Still waiting for those pictures to be emailed to me.

In conclusion, good trip.