Sagada, Mountain Province. As part of enhancing the promotional materials, the staff of the provincial tourism office coordinated with Sagada municipal tourism office to conduct a joint documentation of the famous sunrise and two gigantic caves in this famous tourist town.
At 5:30 in the morning when we arrived at Kiltepan, eastern part of this tourist town, some local and foreign tourists with their guides were already there waiting and ready with digi cams and videos to take some shots of the sun to peep.
Sunrise at Kiltepan, Sagada. Photo by Annie Graal Morareng.
We braved the cold breeze and clouds billowing over us for more than 30 minutes. At 6:00 am, the colors of golden yellow and red colors slowly appeared at the east. For a few seconds, the red color outshined the yellow color.
As seconds passed by, the wide red color slowly disintegrated into red spots while the golden yellow color became more prominent and overshadowed the former. Each of us tried to find a place to take the best shots. However, for more than 20 minutes of positioning our digital and video cameras, the sun seemed not to go up.
According to one of the guides, he said that there were instances that the sun didn’t show up at Kiltepan. He suggested that we proceed to “Marlborro Country”, where sometimes the sun rise can be best taken. We stayed with the strong perception that the sun will appear as expected.
At exactly 6:30, the sun started to peek. Every second, the sun slowly ascended while lots of clicks were heard from the various cameras.
The next destination was the famous Sumaguing cave. Our guide Eddie Dapliyan gave us the don’ts and dos inside the cave while he lighted our kerosene fed petromax.
Crawling into this small tunnel inside Sumaguing cave is a great
Experience. Photo by Marie Fe Camso
For more than 2 hours of exploring, appreciating and taking photographs of the magnificent rock formations, the team also rappelled in 2 critical pathways, crawled tunnels, walked and enjoyed the cold waist line level pools, stepped on and held rocks greased with bat dung.
Some of the amazing eye catching rock patterns were the pig pen, giant turtle, king’s palace, giant buttocks, soothing pools, mini rice terraces and other rock arrangements that can be imagined depending on the creative minds of those who see them.
After a light snack, we went down to Balangagan cave in Suyo barangay through a combination of paved and rugged road. The road is being concreted under the convergence tourism road projects of the Department of Tourism and Department of Public Works and Highways.
Before the big mouth of the cave is a small lake. Inside it are rock configurations that are very different from that of Sumaguing cave. The earthen jars believed to be coffins for children were not there anymore as seen in the late 70s. Accordingly, these were shattered into pieces by vandals.
The 1st floor has very fine sand and rock arrangements covered with green and brown mosses. At the 2nd floor are sparkling stalactites and stalagmites with figures seemed to be antiquated. The very prominent formations are the chandelier, mushrooms, little ponds with cool water, etc. The cave was named as the Marcos cave during the Marcos era. This will be formally opened to visitors on November 5, 2014 by the Department of Tourism-Cordillera Administrative Region.