SICALAO, LASAM, CAGAYAN | The Negro Cave (New Tourist Spot)

THE ENIGMA OF NEGRO CAVE: UNCOVERED
I was dreaming of trekking the vastness of the Amazon, conquering the peaks of the lofty Kilimanjaro, enduring the aridity of the Australian Outback or even braving the hostility of the Antarctic realm. But I could never fool myself into thinking I was in some dream place of nowhere. After all, I was in Sicalao, the incontestable and the last ecological frontier of Lasam, Cagayan.
The last, the largest and the wildest, Sicalao lies east of the still formidable Cordillera hemlines and southwest of the municipality.
Much, if not all of Sicalao's inventories of its natural benisons are tucked hidden in the massive tropical rainforests and limestone mountains near its border in Flora, an adjacent municipality in the province of Apayao.
This positioning cleaves a realm where potentiating extremes engage in one of nature's most fascinating dramas of duality: wetness and wildness; the wetter, the wilder. And the continuous barrage of alternating wet and dry shapes the indefinable landscapes of Sicalao that conceal its unknown charms only the seasoned outdoorsy could find.
But the magnanimity of my spirit with my insatiable quest for new amazement has brought me into the hell-like interior of the blackened Negro Cave...
It was a huge mystery relief that I was eventually able to uncover the enigma of its namesake, "negro" which meant "black".
Not so many people know about the Negro Cave though, even among the people of its locality. While Sicalao is the most visited destination in Lasam because of its clean rivers, majestic waterfalls and the iconic Sicalao Bridge popular to the mob, its caves remain as the less frequented ports of call to any visitor.
This dark, black cave only stirred my curiosity and craving for "pioneerism".
For me, it is always been great to be the first, if not among the firsts; the very few firsts.
It's not all about feeding our egoistic tendency but rather, it's all about our delicate chance to see the most raw, the most beautiful, the most natural and the most untouched form of that wonderful place taken into account before they could be vandalized, defaced or humanized.
"There is a mystic and a magic to this place", I sighed.
Negro's spacious double domes are empty in many ways and yet, full in others. There's nothing so special as to be inside pointing my torch into its walls full of draperies, some flowstones, columns and helictites - all in monochromatic black to grayish hue. Its commanding dark color was so bizaare for a cave that is found in Sicalao. Most of the others, including the Isus Cave and Abot de Sicalao Cave (both previously featured) are white to brownish due to the natural hue of the calcite and limestone. The Negro Cave lacks the usual defining characteristic of a cave - stalactites and stalagmites; the major speleothems in general.
Its ceilings are not adorned by imaginative formations of stalactites, anthodites or other speleothems. But rather a regularly arranged circular depressions in light color decorate the overheads, with protrusions in a sea waves resemblance.
From its nothingness, life still teems silently. Forest crabs could be seen in the streams of running water inside this vastness of unending night.
Resembling as lava rocks, the black, darkened scapes of Negro could have been due to fungi growth, atleast for one reason. Breathing caves pull in air from the surface as barometric pressure rises so there are fungal spores in the cave. A fungus can live without any sunlight as long as it has a source of energy. That source is biomass that gets washed into the cave, so we normally see no life deep within cave except for the rare forms of extremophiles that have adapted to some source to replace breaking down biology, such as sulfur or hydrocarbon feeding.
Another reason for its charcoal-charred appearance could be due to the byproducts of bacteria that can photosynthesize in total darkness. Or could be the natural state of the sedimentary rocks that formed this specific cave.
Or does it suggest a possible coal deposits?
This abyssal landscape possesses an alien, other-worldly feels, worse to compare - the Hades, literally the underworld. Gray and black dominate a minimalist spectrum ruled by walls of rocks and very little else. Soil hardly exists. The flooring is cobbled with limestones, with occasional cave corals or coralloids.
This barren immensity of the underworld was beautifully crafted by the Earth's fiery eons ago.
And so, this timeless splendor of the land before time continue to exist to amaze us. Negro Cave, an underrated outdoorsman's paradise has never failed me to project an awesome sight, exhilarating and utterly breath-taking extravagance of nature.
As we left the place, there in my unflappable mind, I was already anticipating prospect of another memorable day on a land not as perfect as the Amazon, Kilimanjaro, Australia or Antarctica but equally intriguing and fascinating.

[@glistherfamfam8762]

Wow ganda naman yung Lugar

[@sptheexplorer2023]

that's unique and very different type of cave

[@jay-arlumibao1161]

Ingat po mga sir..

[@sptheexplorer2023]

thanks pogi!

[@DeloridesG.]

idol baka sakaleng ma pindot mo ren,, samalat sa support,, new channel here

[@sptheexplorer2023]

yeah of course. cno pa ba ang magtutulungan kundi ang mga bagong katulad natin

[@majinbuang2]

sana po hindi hinahawakan ng bare hands yung mga stalactites. #NapansinKoLangPo

[@sptheexplorer2023]

napansin ko rin yan sir, kaya nga kung mapapanood mo ung interview sa una, may advice si Mang Lumibao.