Trekking in Palawan (George of the Jungle!)

If you spend enough time in Sabang and meet the right people, you are sure to cross paths with “George of the Jungle”. Our friend RJ mentioned his name early in the week, and a few days later the jungle man made his way back to town and joined us for dinner. He had just returned from a 10 day trek across south Palawan with a Spanish girl who bailed on her flight to journey with him instead. George told us about a few treks we could do, but he was leaving at 7am the next morning and we weren’t prepared to commit to that at the moment. We decided to take our chances and pray that he would return before we had to leave the island.

A few days later there were rumors that George would be in Sabang one again. It’s a very small town so we knew we’d run into him when we needed to. Once again we were blessed with perfect timing, and spent our 2nd to last day on a short but strenuous trek through the jungle and up the mountains to visit “Daylight Hole”, which is the entrance point to the Underground River of Sabang. (Early in the trip we decided we would skip the Underground River tour, as it is filled with day-trip tourists and the guides are mostly on autopilot from what we heard).

Daylight hole was incredible. After a bit of a mountain summit, you arrive at a HUGE cave with spectacular views and beautiful rock formations in all directions. George has named a few of these, very fittingly, and it was an honor to share this special place that he has discovered on his own. There was the “Sad Buddha” with a machete in his head, and the “Sleeping Dragon” guarding him (albeit drooling condensation). There is “Alien Rock”, “Pepsi Bottles” and “George’s Titty” (named by a group of Americans he had brought there previously). Our pictures don’t quite do this place justice, but then, they never do.

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From there we trekked back to the main highway and caught a bus back to Puerto, where had to fly back to Manila the next morning. Suffice is to say the dirty, grimy, loud city of Manila was a major shock on the system and we didn’t leave our hostel except to eat. Thank goodness we were on our way to Bali in a few short days. :)

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