Budlaan River Trek & Kabang Falls Adventure

I don’t know if you’d notice or not but there’s usually a gap of about three days before I put up a post on our most recent trek. Laziness is probably the best reason for the delay, coupled with sore muscles and my unconscious aversion to anything hi-tech (i.e. a computer) right after a trek in the irrational hopes of prolonging the sensation of still being in lost in the wilderness. To those who eagerly await for details of our latest adventures or to those who thought that we might not have made it out of the jungle alive, please do accept my apologies.

So anyway, last Sunday our patent pending “Adventure Spirit” led us to Kabang Falls, the most underrated yet amazing waterfalls right in the backyard of Cebu City. This time around our trekking group grew larger from just Yannie and me to a modest nine trekkers courtesy of my friend Hanz and his energetic group, the Radical Millionaires. We had agreed to meet at Jollibee near University of San Carlos Main Campus so we could take the 13C jeepney ride to Sunny Hills Subdivision in Talamban. From Sunny Hills Subd. we would take a habal2x ride up to Sitio Baugo where we would start our trek. All things went according to plan and by 10:30 AM we arrived at Sitio Baugo, all set and raring to find adventure.

The next phase of our plan was to follow a trail starting from the town center that would lead us to the bottom of the valley and into Budlaan River. From there we would follow the river upstream until we would reach Kabang Falls. Everything went smoothly at first, the beginning of the trail was well trodden with occasional stepping stones placed along the way to help us keep our feet from being stuck in the mud in case it would rain.

Along the way we passed by small orchid plantations. Sadly the orchids had already been harvested to meet the demands of graduating students’ parents and their need to pin a corsage onto their child’s toga.

To compensate for missed opportunity to see scores of orchids in bloom, Mother Nature gave us mango trees in full bloom to appreciate instead. 🙂

The trail was pretty straightforward with just the occasional fork along the way. Since we were on an exploratory expedition and imbued with the innate ability of not asking for directions, we took the most viable route whenever we encountered a fork on the trail, placing great trust on our “instincts”. Little did we know that our “instincts” just made our trek very challenging.

After about 30 minutes of trekking the trail abruptly changed into a steep and dangerous single track that went straight down into the valley. We were unsure where to go next but upon hearing the sound of rushing water below and catching a glimpse of the river, we decided to go ahead and climb down hoping for the best.

The trail was so slippery with pebbles, not much to hold on too and lots of sharp spiky plants that ripped our skin. Everybody tried their best to help each other out.

But unfortunately my friend Hanz lost his footing and slid down about 2o feet and temporarily lost his eyeglasses. Everybody was very concerned, I and Jan helped him find his eyeglasses. But afterwards we couldn’t stop laughing because I caught it all on video, hahaha!

As it turned out, we actually took a wrong turn and ended up making a shortcut right to the foot of Kabang Falls!

After the hazardous trek downhill, our next hurdle was climbing these humongous boulders.

At last, Kabang Falls!

The water was freezing yet that didn’t stop us from taking the plunge into the falls.

We discovered that there was a cave hidden behind the waterfalls, fantastic!

By 2:00pm, dark clouds were gathering over the mountaintops, so we decided to cut short our fun and head back before the rain could make our climb super slippery and dangerous.

Finally, we were back where we started. Tired, bruised and wounded, yet still enjoyed every bit of adventure.

Till next time!

Charlie & Yannie

You can check out more pics on our Facebook Page here.