Jenny's Blog: Pagsanjan Falls P1

So you all know by now that I will try anything once and I want to see everything there is to see wherever I go. Hence the need to go see Pagsanjan Falls. While there was very little in any of my guide books or online, I thought "what the hell, let's give it a try". That was my first error in judgment. If it's not in a guidebook - don't go! Let me preface this post with the fact that although I love the Philippines in so many ways, I also get annoyed by it in many other ways. One of these reasons is that although it's a beautiful place and tourists would/should flock here, they fail to get their $hit to together and make it easy for tourists to visit places. Sorry for the rant, onto the post.

So we woke up at 6am and made the 2 hr drive. This place is where part of Apocolypse Now was filmed. According to my research in order to get a boat going to Pagsanjan Falls you have to go to the town municipal hall because they were having issues with boatmen ripping tourists off or leaving them stranded at the falls demanding more money to return to their cars. We get there at 8:30. We pull into the parking lot and suddenly people are surrounding our car, all trying to sell us a boat ride. Which is what my research warned me of and is supposedly illegal to do. Noel goes over to see what the deal is and the security guard told him that since it's Sunday, he doesn't know when municipal hall will open. WTF?? So we get back in the car and debate over what to do. Finally we decided that since we were already there, we might as well go with one of the dudes drooling at our window. Of course they won't tell us the price right away so we drive down the street and I find out that the price is much higher than what my research had told me. So back we go to the municipal hall. I go inside and she tells me that in fact that is the going rate. I ask her where I get a boat, she says one of the hotels. I said I am not staying at a hotel, so where do I get a boat. She looks perplexed. OMG! So I go back out to the same guy and ask some more questions. Turns out that since the typhoon hit, the water is too high so they can't go all the way to the falls. I ask for a discount. He say's he will take me 1/2 way for 1/2 the price. Ok, whatever! By the way, I found out later that you couldn't go all the way up the river because there was a huge tree that fell across the river, not that the water was too high.

So this guy leads us to the end of a road and down to the water. As we are leaving, I tell Noel if we don't come back he can have the dogs. He timidly laughs. As we were being led through the nasty river bank, I was thinking to myself - what have I gotten us into?? Then we get to the boat and I realize there are no life jackets. I ask if they have them. NO. Okay, I see people in the river and realize it's not super deep. I am actually more worried about what parasite I will pick up if I fall in the water than if I will drown. Off on our river adventure we go.

So as we are heading up the river, you first notice the smell of the water and the color. Let me just tell you it wasn't right. Next thing we noticed was the people fishing in the river. How fish could actually be alive in this river I have no freakin idea. There were guys with homeade masks spearing fish under the water and I have no idea how they could see anything. At one point I saw a carp that looked like it could eat a small child. Along the way you see people swimming, bathing, and washing clothes in the river and upstream from that there are water buffalo chillin in the water. So nasty.

Although it was beautiful scenery, it was way to polluted to enjoy.