Pagsanjan Falls, Manila

Day 2 (26th June 2009)
I have done some jungle trails in India and also had some river ride experiences there. But I would rate the trip to Pagsanjan Falls as one of the best jungle and wild river ride experience. On day 2 of the trip we started off for Pagsanjan Falls early in the morning. It was a journey of around 2 hours from Tagaytay. The place can be compared as Philippines little amazon where the river flows through magnificent canyons sheltered by lush green vegetation.

We read about this ride online and had great expectations. When we were on the way to the place, we were chased by a guy on the bike. He stopped us and spoke to the driver in their Filipino language. Later driver told us that he chased us to ask if we are interested in taking a ride with their company. We said OK for it and we were taken to house which was connected to the river. We discussed about the cost of the ride and then after getting to an agreement we ordered some breakfast. We had nice breakfast and then waited for the canoes to arrive.

The canoes arrived and we were asked to sit 2 in each canoe. These canoes were manhandled by two boatmen. Once we all sat in the canoes, a motor boat came and tied these canoes to it. The wild river ride what we expected started off very slowly from the dock where we hired the canoes. Firstly, I couldn't understand why our canoes were stringed and towed by that motor boat for some distance. After going some distance in the water, then I realized that the boatmen were conserving their strength for the upcoming rapids we were about to battle with.

With in no time the calm river turned into cascading rapids. From here the boatmen showed their extreme agility and strength to skilfully manoeuvre the canoes upstream by hopping on and off the canoes against the rapids. We all couldn't help them but were just amazed and excited with such an incredible showmanship. This was an awesome entertainment for all us. We started shouting in excitement as we saw some small waterfalls and when we saw the rapids ahead.
As we entered further into the magnificent canyons, we were all overwhelmed with excitement and joy that’s hard to explain. It was very surreal. The mind-blowing sights and eerie sound of the jungle caused a great sense of awe … all we could say was …wow.

Once we reached the main waterfall we were all happy to see the final destination. We were taken inside the cave which goes just below the waterfall, I had tough time covering my camera to avoid any water to spill on it. We dived there for sometime and we returned back to the shore. We then were taken down the stream through the rapids which was again very special experience with in itself.

Like what most tourists do, we took a lot of photos of ourselves and of course…the scenery and waterfall.

After coming back to the company we took shower, changed clothes and started off for a good lunch. We searched all over but finally landed up having a vegetarian pizza with unlimited soft drink. From here we went ahead to Metro Manila where we wanted to visit Mall of Asia. This was the biggest mall I have ever seen in my life time. We had only 1 hour and hence we saw just one building in the whole mall. We entered a shop and bought some souvenirs.
At around 6 we reached the airport and flied back to Singapore.