Chasing Waterfalls: The Elusive Binalayan Falls in Samboan, Cebu

I had a two-day unplanned trip on January 28 and 29. It started as fancy tweeting between the Boss and my high school classmate Mr. Tan, who happened to be her workmate as well. Neither had a destination, they just wanted to get out. Like a quadrant with a very high “Y” but no “X.” So much energy, no place to channel.

I am lingering too much on my reluctance here. It’s because I did not really want to go out last weekend. I just rode a 160-km route Monday of that week and I wanted to stay in my bedroom in a fetal curl. No, the distance is not traumatic. It’s just that I’ve been out too often, too much for the past four months. I want to make myself feel that I have a home. Remind myself that I don’t have to stay out in the open all the time. Lol. So much for that.

Actually, it was a crazy fun weekend. We kicked off at Aguinid Falls, spent a great time at Pebbles Beach in Santander, then finished up at Inambakan Falls in Ginatilan. I have only posted about Aguinid Falls so far and this one wil lbe on Binalayan Falls, which I erroneously wrote as “Gimbalayan” at the previous post. I will post about Pebbles Beach later since it is the only place you can stay at when you are far down south. Then Inambakan Falls maybe tomorrow. I wanted to be more helpful lately after finding out that bots are not the only ones who visit my blog. Kudos to you if you are human, dear reader of this entry!

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I’ll be anti-climactic and say that we did not find Binalayan Falls. We did not intend to go there in the first place. Mr. Tan and Chyrel Gomez just noticed that tarp on our way back to the town of Samboan. So we dropped by. If you are familiar with the south, the junction is along that perpetually under repair bridge in Samboan. It’s where your bus takes a turn around the bridge since that bridge have been under work since like the Big Bang. The water that flows under that bridge comes from Binalayan Falls. The locals told us that Binalayan Falls is just “near.” Again, let us remind ourselves that descriptions which do not involve numbers are always relative. We forgot about that and we assumed that near is, well, actually near.

We thought it’s just a walk in the park from the high way. But there was no park, only lots of walk. Actually, if you are familiar with the place, it would only take 15 minutes to reach the falls. Just walk upstream. You will have to criss-cross the river and even part from it for a while. Just don’t walk too far from it. You will eventually reach a point where all footpaths vanish. From there, you will have to walk in the river, Jesus Christ style. We did not proceed because there were leaves and twigs that block the river passage. We found out later from our friendly locals that the falls are just a short walk behind the river block (it’s not a road block!).

 If you want to go out falls cruising down south, do check out Aguinid, Binalayan, Dau, and Inambakan falls. Make the most out of you 4-hour bus trip. Was our 20-minute of aimless wandering it? Yes, the river trek is worth getting lost for.

 PS: There is nothing romantic or poetic about getting lost. I hate it, in fact. I just had a great night drinking-till-head-whirls, which I have not done for quite some time now since I have not been seeing my whore high school friend Michael. Fortunately, getting lost has no hang over or I'd put two people on top of my hate list.