The Hidden Treasure of Kulaman (Part 2 of 2)

(The first part of this post appeared on May 13, last month.)

Something was telling Santiago not to walk straight ahead into the darkness. He groped at the wall of the cave and treaded on the muddy slope. He climbed down for about thirty meters before his flashlight shone on even ground. He stared back at where he had come from, and was horrified at the sight of a steep cliff a dozen times his height. If he did not keep close to the wall, he would be digging his grave instead of gold. The cave was a fully enclosed cathedral. It did not have a huge doorway in front. The only opening it had was a small window on top of the bell tower.

He continued exploring the cave. In a short while, the beam of light from his flashlight hit something lightly colored. He examined it closely. It was an oddly shaped column that stood taller than he. It looked like a very tall coral, but its surface was smooth and as white as milk. It looked soft and even edible, but when Santiago touched it, his finger curled at the hardness of the stone. It felt much more compact than concrete.

Santiago wondered if he could sell the thing, if it would fetch as high as the price of gold. He thought right away, though, that cutting the oddly shaped column is much more difficult than digging a hole. He walked on—and found hundreds of similar stone formations, competing with one another in size and grandeur and strangeness. Santiago trembled in awe. God seemed to have coated the whole interior of the cave with thick, divine white paint. It was his secret playground. Santiago fell to his knees. At last, he found the treasure he had been looking for. It was not in the form of gold, and it was something he would not want to sell.

Now, eight years since, Santiago visits the cave regularly, taking along with him tourists, spelunkers, and speleologists. The tourists usually whine on the long and torturous trip. Santiago assists them with their needs and just smiles to himself. He witnesses such a situation often. He knows that when the visitors reach the cave, they will utter one pleasant interjection after another and say all the hardship is worth it. He receives a modest commission from the fee that visitors pay the local government. It's just enough to get by, but he's not complaining. He's happy. He's got something more precious than gold, something priceless. In the cave, people tell him they have not seen anything more beautiful.

Five YouTube Videos on Kulaman

I'm back in Cebu, but rest assured that I will maintain this blog. I'll continue posting here at least one write-up per week. For the first week of May, I'm featuring five videos I created recently. They're all about Kulaman Plateau, and they're uploaded on Youtube.

They're the very first videos I've ever created. I wanted to expand a little the reach of this blog, so I decided to capture some scenes in a digital camera, download Windows Movie Maker, and create a Youtube account. The product was five very short videos, each running for just one minute or less. Two of them are merely slideshows of related photos.



The first video shows a raft taking a motorcycle across the Kulaman River. People traveling from the east usually ride the bamboo raft instead of crossing the concrete bridge to save some mileage. The bridge is a few kilometers away, while the part of the river featured in the video is a shortcut. It leads travelers directly to the public market. The fee is P5 for every motorcycle regardless of the number of people riding it. For those who are not riding a motorcycle, the fee is P2 per person.

In the video, you can hear my brother's and my mother's voices. My brother is bantering with the three teenage boys in the raft, his schoolmates. My mother, in Karay-a and at the top of her lungs, is greeting the "driver" of the raft, Tiyoy Tony, a relative of ours. The two nearly naked boys are either sons or grandsons of Tiyoy Tony. The passengers of the raft are on their way to the poblacion, while my companions and I were leaving the place.



The second video was taken at the top of Ilyan Hill, in Barangay Buenaflores. I went up there with my brother (singing off-key) and his classmate (in red jacket) last month. From the peak, we could see at least five barangays. The course of Kulaman River was also a sight to behold. The water winded through the mountains and flattened the earth on both its sides. The snakelike plain the river formed had become a fertile ground for rice paddies.

The next video shows how corn is ground the traditional way. My companions and I were on our way to the White Cave of Kuden when the video was taken. We were resting in a house in Sitio Siokong when I saw the crude yet intricate machine. I asked how it was used, and my two cousins and my mother, all public high school teachers and aspiring Youtube sensations, demonstrated for me.



The last two videos are each a compilation of related photos. One is on the Kulaman limestone burial jars at a museum in Cebu, and the other is on the White Cave of Kuden, also known as Lagbasan Cave. I've featured the jars in this blog quite a number of times, while the White Cave will be a subject of my future posts.

Enjoy the videos. I know they're never going to be phenomenal, but I'm sure they will be helpful to those who want to know more about Kulaman.

Lagbasan Cave

The previous post, I wrote about the mystical cave of Tacupis, whose beauty was marred by human activities. Fortunately, the same thing might not happen to the well-preserved Lagbasan Cave.

I don’t know when exactly the cave was discovered, probably not more than ten years ago. It is touted to be world-class and was the main site of a Mindanao-wide spelunking summit a few years ago.

I’m dying to visit the cave myself, but because I have other priorities now, I will have to give you secondhand information again. My excuse is that this is a research blog, not a personal adventure or travel blog. So I’m afraid all I can do is recount the story of my cousin who had been inside the cave and give you related links to online forums and other blogs.

As to the links, however, it looks like there are only a few that are worth your time. When I googled “Lagbasan Cave,” most of the results led me to search engine–optimized blog posts that contained useless crap. The following sites, though, have some nice photos and helpful info:

• Mindanao Magazine
• Balita.ph
• Mountaineering Blog

I have a feeling that, unlike most things, the huge gypsum flowers look more magical when seen in the actual site than in photo. Going inside Lagbasan Cave should be in my bucket list.

A cousin of mine and her friends went inside the cave sometime last year. She said the cave was about two hours away by motorcycle from Kulaman proper. The entrance fee was P250 per head, but her group haggled with the tour guide (which I suggest you don’t; help boost the tourism income of the local government). Only one chamber was open to the public, and a special permission was needed to see the other chambers. The cave’s mouth was small. My cousin and her friends had to crawl through the opening one at a time. But all the difficulties, especially the torturous motorcycle ride on muddy road and the long walk through dense thickets, were worth it, she said.