The World-Class White Cave of Sultan Kudarat

Hidden in the mountains of South Central Mindanao, more than 900 meters above sea level, is a cave that is perhaps the most beautiful in the country and no doubt one of the most beautiful in the world. The cave, located in the village of Kuden in Senator Ninoy Aquino town, Sultan Kudarat province, was discovered just the previous decade, so it has been known only to the locals and to a handful of spelunkers, travel bloggers, and tourists. Though the underground paradise has been given the name “Lagbasan Cave,” after the Dulangan Manobo term for “bypass,” a more fitting name would be “White Cave,” for the cavern is swathed from the floor to the ceiling with immaculate white and cream-colored stone formations.

White Cave so far has been found to have at least three chambers, but for conservation reasons, only one is open to tourists. The chamber, though, offers more than enough. It is at least 40 meters wide, 50 meters high, and 250 meters long, and more than 80 percent of it is covered with stalactites, stalagmites, and other speleothems. The first ones to greet you are columns, many of which are taller than an average human being. Formed millimeter by millimeter over thousands of years, they look like corals piled on top of one another and then coated with milk. But don’t think that you’ve seen the best feature of the cave. The view gets more and more awe-inspiring as you walk further.

The floor of the cave is not even. It is composed of tiny hills filled with stone formations of various shapes and sizes, each one a beauty, like a garden of wild flowers left to grow freely. The tourist guide will lead you through a maze of flowstones, gypsum flowers, stalagmites, and columns, and to reiterate, these rocks and clusters of rocks are white or off-white. In some spots, you have to hold on to ropes to pull yourself up a slope or across a small crevice. The landscape is dreamlike, but some of the rocks, or their parts, uncannily resemble familiar objects, such as dog’s teeth, transparent straws, a large piggy bank, and a figurine of Cupid. At the end of the chamber is a flat area the size of a basketball court, and on one side of it is a mass of rock that looks like a huge multi-layered throne. On the opposite side is a long deep trench draped with stalactites.

An expert from the National Speleological Society of the United States, consulted by the Department of Tourism, explored White Cave in 2008 and called it world-class. He also said that some of the stone formations in the cave are so unusual that they do not fit existing classifications. But despite the seemingly hyperbolic yet accurate descriptions of the tourist spot, it has remained largely a secret. This is due to the remoteness of its location. From Isulan, the capital town of Sultan Kudarat, SNA is two to three hours away by jeepney, van, or skylab (public utility motorcycle). To get to Kuden from the capital village of SNA, you may hire a skylab or use your own vehicle. The trip takes fifteen to twenty minutes only. However, from the center of Kuden to its hamlet of Siokong, where White Cave is located, you have to travel again for two hours, and from the center of Siokong to the cave, you have to climb on foot a forested slope for forty minutes. You might wonder if seeing the cave is worth the effort. Among those who have been there, the answer is a resounding yes.

If you’re planning your next getaway, SNA might just be the perfect place for you. It’s destined to be the Sagada of Mindanao. Like the well-known backpacking destination in Luzon, SNA is mountainous and home to indigenous people—not Igorots, however, but Dulangan Manobos, one of the least documented lumads—though majority of the local population now is Ilonggos, Ilocanos, and Cebuanos who migrated to the area half a century ago. Similar to Sagada’s hanging coffins, SNA has limestone burial jars, estimated to be 1,500 years old, but these jars have not been preserved or curated in the town, and most of them have been taken away. (They are on display now at the Museum of the Filipino People in Luneta, the Ayalas-owned museums in Makati and Davao, the university museums in Cebu and Dumaguete, and in some private galleries.) Furthermore, White Cave is just one of the dozens of caves that SNA has, and coffee is flowing in the town. SNA produces about 25 percent of coffee in Sultan Kudarat, and Sultan Kudarat, the number 1 coffee-producing province in the Philippines, produces about 25 percent of coffee in the country.

To get to White Cave, you must coordinate with the local government of Kuden, for the village keeps the key—literally. To protect the cave from reckless adventurers and souvenir hunters, the local government installed at the narrow entrance a small door made of steel bars. The village also collects an entrance fee of P170 per head and imposes a minimum requirement of 10 tourists per visit. Solo backpackers or small groups are welcome, but you must pay the minimum fee. And to make sure you don’t get lost in Sultan Kudarat province, tell the people, especially the drivers, that you’re going to Kulaman, not Senator Ninoy Aquino or SNA. Though the town has been using its official name for almost thirty years, people in the province still use the name of the capital village even when referring to the whole town. In many local campaign materials, Kulaman is touted as a land of “a hundred caves with a thousand thrills.” That’s a fitting description. To experience the thousand thrills, though, you don’t have to visit all the one hundred caves or so. One cave, the White Cave of Kuden, is enough. More than enough.

(Blogger’s note: The photos above are owned by the tourism office of the municipality of Senator Ninoy Aquino. I wrote this piece for the travel website of a major television network, but I decided not to submit at the last minute. I don’t like the way the editor is handling contributions. The section of the site that I wanted to be part of is something like citizen journalism. I noticed, however, that the editor uses her own byline and then just mentions the source in the article. She must have reasons. Maybe the contributions are badly written and she has to do a lot of revisions. All the same, I believe that there is no enough justification to deprive contributors of due recognition. The website does not pay them after all, and it is part of the job of an editor to polish accepted submissions.)