Cagayan white water fun

Pinacanauan River

The gang meats up at the Hapchang Restaurant on the West Avenue, rush through platters of food. Everyone gulps down Bonamine as insurance against motion sickness on the overnight ride up to Tuguegarao, jump off point for a weekend communing with nature.

We board the bus. A pleasant surprise- two aisles and three rows of seat. One on each side by the window and one in the middle. No seatmates! Each seat reclines to an almost horizontal position, much like a dentist’s chair.

Pulling off the noisy and bustling North Expressway, we pass towns quiet in sleep and soon enter stretches of empty roads. The full moon throws the mountains in stark relief and bathes with silver fields and clouds. You almost forget it’s a warm, tropical country; the view looks like New England fall, steeped in the season’s first frost.

Halfway, up in the mountains after Dalton Pass in Nueva Viscaya, the bus stops. We step out into the night’s chill. Pitstop is a storefront selling vegetables and other sundries. A huge iron pot of arroz caldo simmering on a stove. For R40, I get a respectable bowl of steaming comfort food with a piece of chicken and topped with fragrant toasted garlic and chives. The carbo rush lulls me back to sleep.

Dawn breaks as we arrive in Tuguegarao. Anton Carag, bossman of Adventures and Expeditions Philippines Inc., takes us to his family’s ancestral home in the heart of the town. Wood panels display citations, awards and historic old photos that belonged to his grandfather, who was the Governor of Cagayan in the 1950s.

In the spacious open-air living room, where his grandfather must have conducted his political affairs, a buffet table is laid out with a breakfast spread that warms my heart.

Browned dried squid, generous tomato and onion omelettes and the local garlicky Tuguegarao longganisa, fried until all the fat had drained off filled several platters. Hot pandesal, fragrantly steaming garlic rice, coffee, tea, and THICK native chocolate.

We wobble to an oversized jeepney and settle our royally stuffed bodies for the ride to Pinacanauan River. We spill out onto a broad riverbank covered in round stones. Colorful kayaks are breached. We listen attentively to the short but thorough instructions given by Anton and his crew on how to get on the kayak and how to maneuver it through the rapids up river.

After doing a half-hour of skills practice, we pile back into the motorized bancas and in a convoy, motor up river to our starting point.

Mist covers the cliffs. From the broad riverbank, thick jungle rises. Dragonflies flit just above the water’s surface, the sun glinting off their wings.

We pull on our vests, strap on helmets and are off. In the beginning, we maneuver our boats into the calm stretches of water. Gaining more confidence as time goes by, we start looking for whitewater.

We zip along until we see smoke coming from a camp pitched by a beach. At the smell of cooking meat, we all steer for shore.

Anton, with beer in hand and a cooking fork in the other, flips pink pork ribs and chicken on a hot grill. A ravenous group falls on the steaming rice and pinakbet and paksiw na pla-pla that complement Chef Anton’s culinary efforts. Sated and drowsy, we struggle to listen to a short lesson on rappelling, our next activity.

Two lines are laid out for us. One is about three stories high, the other 10. We have to climb to the starting point so I opt for the shorter rope and watch the others disappear into the jungle canopy high above my head. 

Back at the house. Crackers, a cheese and salami spread, with red wine greet us. By the time we finish our warm showers, dinner is served. A steaming black bean soup followed by Fried Garlic Chicken, Crispy Catfish, Lumpiang Shanghai, with Leche Flan and fresh fruit for dessert.

Our rooms are the same ones Anton and his family use. Three of our female companions share his parents’ huge bed. The rest crash around the house. We wake up to the cheerful smells of a happy kitchen-tapa, smoked Salinas sardines, potato omelette and the requisite carbohydrates.

I doze on the jeepney and miss the grandeur unfolding. Companions later rhapsodize about the peaks and valleys that greeted them at every bend.

Two hours later we are on the banks of the Chico River. We fill the rafts with air, batten down all lose bags and boxes and start down the waterway. The Chico is a broad river, with virgin forests guarding each side. We float down for the most part, a lazy river. Then we hit a stretch of whitewater and paddle like mad to the barked commands of our navigators in the back. Anyone who doesn’t pull his weight gets a whack on top of the head.

One section of the river has a rapid known as God’s Playground, and one of the rafts manages to go through it backwards. The others did go through correctly, but buck off two paddlers first!

Lunchtime finds us tethered beside a small waterfall. The coolers reveal cold beers, soft drinks and tuna and chicken sandwiches. Long runs of quiet water provide some horseplay as we take turns dunking each other in. The giant jeepney come for us around 4 p.m. We all pitch in to pack the gear and fall asleep against each other on the ride back.

We hurry through showers to catch our bus. Anton fed us one last time, a pork rib soup with a succulent young vegetable I have yet to find in Manila, lumpiang gulay, piping hot lechon kawali, and steamed pla-pla in a light soy based sauce. I make sure I have three kilos of the delectable longganisa and a bag of carabao milk candy in my bag.