Minalungao National Park, Nueva Ecija, Philippines

One of Nueva Ecija’s pride and joy, Minalungao National Park! It is located at the foothills of the Sierra Madre mountain range, in sitio Minalungao in the town of Papaya (officially called Municipality of General Tinio).

Since we didn’t bring any lunch with us we just rented one of the small bamboo rafts for P300 for half the day. I recommend bringing a packed lunch though, we assumed that there would be food to buy there but there wasn’t so we didn’t stay for long. Also there are larger rafts with a table for  about P800 for the whole day, it’ll be in one of the photos below. There are also covered huts to rent available to rent.

Of course the raft comes along with guides (most of them were children), however if you’re a bit iffy with safety and all that you can request an adult.

This is called the Peñaranda River. Awesome rock formations! These limestone walls reach up to 16 meters.

Behind me, is the larger bamboo rafts that I was talking about earlier, perfect for a whole family.

We also climb up a few steep rocks to get to this cave, I recommend wearing sneakers when going up. I went bare foot and it was a little painful. View from the top. So picturesque!

We reached the cave but didn’t go inside, they haven’t established a tour for inside the cave yet.

The shallow end of the river.

Take a look at the view. Amazing isn’t it?

Look at how beautiful that water looks!

If you’re going to jump off the cliffs make sure to ask the locals/guides where it’s safe to jump (there are some very shallow and some very deep areas).

If you can’t swim, best if you swim near the shallow end of the river since there are a lot of deep parts. On the way back, my brothers, dad and I were swimming along with the raft. The water is clean and very very very refreshing!

xo

some information credits: http://www.choosephilippines.com/