This week, I was able to participate in the 8th annual exploration of Calbiga Cave in Western Samar, with 10 other cavers and 4 porters who live near the cave. We spent the better part of 3 days hiking in and out, and exploring the interior of the cave, and two nights camping in the cave.

There are many caves that are longer in distance than Calbiga, but it ranks first in Asia for sheer volume, as most of the rooms are so large that you cannot see one side from the other, and at most places in the cave, even the brightest LED cannot illuminate the ceiling, which in some places, is over 100 meters high. The locals here in the Philippines do not venture inside caves, as they are seen as places where demons and 'fairies' reside, so therefore, many caves are still not mapped here, and the ecosystems, largely undisturbed are relatively pristine, with huge cave crickets with adapted long antennae and reduced eyes, blind cave crabs, blind fish endemic to this one island in the Philippines, as well as cave snakes, huge spiders, tarantulas, and, ofcourse, cave sparrows and millions, (literally) of bats of all kinds.

The first day, we got inside the cave at around 1:30 after hiking about a kilometer in off of a dirt path where we rode to the drop off. We hiked about a kilometer down into the belly of the cave to the campsite where we laid out tarps, tents, cots, and hammocks for our first night inside. We immediately saw a snake we estimated to be 7 feet long on the campsite where we would be spending the night, gingerly chased it off to another area, and hoped it wouldn't be returning. The snake was identified by our guide as a Philippine Cobra, a venemous, but rather subdued snake. After a few hours ciesta, we got up, and walked into the cave, over thousands of boulders trekking to the back of the cave, past walls of flowstone, and past ruins of harvested calcite stalagmite towers taken by koreans before protected status came to Calbiga in the '90s. (We were told that Koreans paid 6 pesos per kilo of calcite harvested from the cave and would use raw calcite for industrial processing, or would just sell stalagtites for souvenirs or whatever) Anyways, that's when my shoes fell apart. I'm not embellishing, they literally fell apart, after months of use and rebonding with superglue and shoe goo, they just fell apart, first the rubber soles fell off, then the fabric bottoms of my shoes, so then I was just walking in sock feet over a boulderfield of jagged limestone. Now you might say "Wow, that sounds awful", and basically, you would be dead on, it sucked. One of the porters, a guy about 20 years old who was carrying our rubbish and urine (we were packing everything out, as any nutrients from foodscraps, trash, or our bodies could disrupt this fragile ecosystem) gave me his rubber boots, didn't even think twice, and although I tried to refuse, since it was my lack of good judgement that brought badly suited shoes, he gave me his shoes. He was left carrying about 40 kilos of weight on his back, walking through the cave on boulders in bare feet. He wouldn't take his shoes back, so although my feet were about two sizes too big, I squeezed my feet into the rubber boots and walked on. We got back to camp around 11:30 and all went to sleep, hoping that the snake wouldn't return and the crickets wouldn't get too rowdy.

Day two, we rose, took down camp, and ventured on to our next camp site, about 2 kilometers away. The site was in the wet area of the cave, where the cave is still 'alive' since water is still flowing, leaving the calcium deposits which basically build the cave. It is estimated that the process of stalagtites growing by means of calcite deposits, or gypsum, or whatever, takes, on average 100 years to produce 1 centimeter of growth. We saw some stalagtites in the cave that were over 10 meters tall, do the math and thats a 100,000 year old work of art. It's really something to see such incredible pieces of nature that have emerged over millenia, and just think about all of the time and history and birth and death and growth and regrowth that they have supported, the beauty that has emerged out of absolute darkness over years and years of flowing water, drip by drip, molecule by molecule. We hooked up ropes and hooked in to descend a short portion of vertical climbing, but for the most part, the going was much easier than the first night, with much less bouldering to do, and much more walking around forests of columns and stalagmites.

In the early afternoon, we arrived at the lagoon where we would be camping for the night, but found that the typhoon which came through here last week had made it into something more like a lake, and we would not be able to camp where we normally would. Our porters swam the lake and went outside to find bamboo to construct a raft that we could use to portage perishables and cameras across the water while we swam. The raft was a success, and at about 5, we had arrived at the exit of the cave, larger than the entrance, about 200 meters across, and about 120 meters tall, with a towering jungle falling into sight, it was really someting. At this point we were surrounded by the sound of bats preparing to exit the cave for the night and we found a small overhang in a pocket of the cave where we could set up camp for the night without the threat of getting covered in a layer of gwano by morning. We then witnessed the exit of hundreds of thousands of bats around 6:30 p.m. and prepared for our night exploration of the live cave.

We spent the night going to the lower portion of the cave, where there were many pools lined with calcite, many tarantulas, much more fauna overall, and cool waterfalls where we were able to swim a bit. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of this part of the trip since we wer fully submerged during a small sump where I was afraid my camera would get wet, but take my word for it, it was a great experience.

Sunday morning, after a chilly night and not much sleep, we took down camp, and climbed through the jungle for around 5 kilometers to a spring where we got fairly clean, and waited to rendezvous with our transportation. It was great to be going back, and since I didn't have much money to give him, I handed my favorite Carhart working jeans that had seen me through the trip to the porter who had given me his shoes without hesitation. He looked at me as I held them out, and I explained in broken Waray that since he saved my feet, I wanted him to have my pants. He didn't thank me verbally, but took the jeans, looked me straight in the eye, and went to washing the cave dirt out of them in the stream while we relaxed in the cool water nearby. He scrubbed and scrubbed, and by the time he was done with them, they looked as good as new.

I have been to many caves in Virginia and West Virginia, where the limestone bedrock of the Aleghany Plateau gives way to some of the best caving in the world, but one huge difference is that the ecosystems of the eastern United States Caves have, for the most part, died. Lots of the terrestrial life has died or been reduced dramatically, and right now White Nose Syndrome, a non-native fungus probably spread by well-meaning humans just visiting caves, is systematically killing the majority of colonies of eastern bats. I have never seen as many snakes and critters in Virginia caves as I did in this one cave in Samar. I don't think we are more careless with our caves in the US, it's just that we like to see everything, to 'look' at everything, to 'experience' everything, and it never seemed so bad until I got to see the ecosystem as it used to be, fully functioning, without the endemic species having been extirpated through 'exploration' or 'study'. It reminds me of Thoreau's saying that 'Man is rich in proportion to that which he can let alone.' I don't think he was referring to caves in Samar when he said this, but his statement definately fits.

One part of the trip I keep thinking about now is when I was down in the bottom of the cave on the second night with about 5 of the others and one porter, and we all were washing in the waterfall coming from one of the huge calcite-rimmed pools. It was like a paradise, cool, refreshing, clean water, and just the sound of our voices and the rush of water. Everyone of us was washing, shirts off, heads submerged, as one of the porters sat and watched. Concerned that he felt ashamed to wash in the same water, to have fun with all of us, I asked the man to come and bathe with us "Pwede makarigo ka liwat?", he looked at me and laughed and said "Hilo it tubig"(Poison water).

GIS Training, Bacolod City

This week, I spent my time in Bacolod City, in Negros, Occidental. It is a beautiful city, very modern, with lots of culture and pride. I was working with three Australian volunteers from two different Australian organizations, and with two other Peace Corps Volunteers, one of which is a Peace Corps Response volunteer who was in charge of setting up a GIS training project.

The objective of the whole week was to work with Provincial government Disaster Management Personnel to train in the use of GPS and GIS tools to create spatial data for modeling and reference during emergencies like typhoons, floods, earquakes, landslides, and volcanoes here. If you are familiar with GIS, you will understand how the creation of spatial data on demographics, structures, dwellings, roads, rivers and the like can be used to not only respond to disasters, but predict effected parties, steer land use planning in disaster-vulnerable areas, and do a multitude of other functions.

Our class consisted of about 40 Provicial engineers, employees, and IT staff who would be in charge of gathering required information to be consolidated into GIS databases and would also be tasked with attaining new GPS'ed information on existing features of areas, population data, all sorts of stuff. Although the training was really technical, and we packed a huge amount of information into one week, teaching everything from satellite triangulation, to explaining Latitude and Longitude, to going into digitizing information and creating modeling scenarios for natural disasters, the participants hung on and got a lot out of it. The ultimate goal, to teach people the need for this technology, and to get them interested, was superceded. At the end of the 5 long days of training, people who were learning how to right click on Monday morning, were asking how they could get recent Raster files for their provinces and how they could simultaneously project multiple files into WGS 84/Zone 51. In other words, they came a long way in just 5 days.

We were fortunate that while we were here for the training, Bacolod was also celebrating the Masskara Festival, a famous mardi-gras type of street fiesta. The festival is full of ornate costumes, dancing, music, and lots of drinking.

Throughout the week, I was really impressed with 1) the participants showed a real investment in learning the material and a stamina for sitting through a full week of really tough stuff, and 2) Our Australian counterparts showed a level of professionalism that was really a breath of fresh air. It was an air of sophistication that I really haven't seen during Peace Corps trainings thus far. I've worked with Australians before on field crews where I could see clear differences in culture with Americans. I think the lack of perceived professionalism is due in part to Peace Corps' efforts at total integration and understanding of the local culture, and we could see the real value of a truly straightforward approach without the games, or the wavering deadlines, or really much 'emotional' stuff at all. Us Peace Corps volunteers were very soft with our communication, giving energizers at breaks and singing songs to break the tension, all of the suggestions we've been given by program staff, while the Australians were nice, but did not spend as much time 'making people comfortable', got right to the point, moved along at the necessary pace regardless of whether a few people were left behind, and ultimately, the Australians, I believe, were more successful in getting the information across to participants.

People seemed to respect the fact that the Australians were not as interested in being 'fluffy' and 'nice.' It just helped to show me that cultural integration and patience has a place, but sometimes that is not the most effective in achieving the desired result.