Having settled on Siquijor for three weeks, we had the chance to visit most of the island’s heavenly waterfalls. Two of them were the Locong Falls and the Kawasan Falls which we did together in one go.
Locong and Kawasan Falls are formed on the same river, very close to each other, near Tigbawan Village, not far from Cambugahay Falls. Both are accessible from the road running between Tigbawan and Cangomantong. You can’t miss them; the road is full of signs leading there and the villagers will shout to you anxiously as soon as you drive past.
Exactly that is the bad thing with those waterfalls. Unlike Cambugahay Falls, which are under the jurisdiction of the government which has set a fair, low entry fee for their maintenance, Locong and Kawasan are left to the villagers to exploit arbitrarily. A bunch of them are stationed by the trailhead of each, demanding money from all visitors. In theory, this is a donation; not in practice, however.
The costlier of the two is the Kawasan. We ended up not paying a dime for that one (read on) but of what we heard, they force you to get one of them as a guide and pay PHP 200 to be led to the falls. At Locong Falls, they let us go without a guide and asked us for PHP 50 per person as an entry fee. We ended up paying 50 for two people after some negotiation.
We hiked down on our own and made it to the falls in some 5 minutes. The place was really beautiful and the water clean. We stayed there for about two hours and only a handful of tourists came by. They also have a jump rope installed. I reckon that, for using the rope, we were meant to pay a PHP 50 fee, as is the norm at Siquijor’s waterfalls. An idle local dude who was loitering thereabouts was probably meant to collect that fee. However, we just proceeded to the rope, took the stick to pull it back ourselves, and began jumping again and again. The dude seemed a little stunned but didn’t say anything.
Then we came up with the idea to hike to Kawasan Falls straight from Locong. This was obviously not allowed as the villagers controlling the two falls have a competitive relationship between them and they’d lose money if visitors began killing two birds with one shot.
That’s exactly why there isn’t a proper trail between the two falls, even though they are located a mere 500 meters away from each other. We, however, located some tracks used by local farmers; pushed a bit through the growth here and there, waded through the river for a short distance, and made it from Locong to Kawasan Falls in about 20 minutes.
Unluckily, we there met two local guides with their tourist group of three. The senior guide scurried to us no sooner than he took notice of our presence. He asked us where we’d come from and tried to persuade us that we were not allowed to have done this. We ignored him politely and stayed by the pool – he probably didn’t want to get obnoxious in front of his clients – but he surely would have otherwise, his countenance suggested. He said that “ok, you can stay for a bit but you take the same way back. Not allowed to use our trail.” Fine with that, we weren’t intending to, anyway.
Kawasan Falls was an outright spectacular place; my favorite on the whole island, I would say. The pool is very deep and the surrounding nature alluring. The waterfall drops into the pool over a very smooth and slippery slope that can be used as a slide. They also have my favorite rope of all the island’s waterfalls. It flies over the bare rock before it brings you hovering over the pool. We asked the guide if we can use it and he, of course, asked for 50 pesos per person. We refused. Soon enough, they had to head back, after their clients’ request. We took the chance for a quick, free jump before we headed back the way we had come from.
Getting back to Locong Falls, we were waited by a woman who apparently was the villager in charge of the waterfall’s arbitrary exploitation. She gibbered on for quite a length of time about how we were not allowed to go to Kawasan Falls because they are concerned and responsible for our safety and other such nonsense. She surely had an ulterior motive of asking for some money as a sort of fine. Though, after I explained to her what I really think about their safety concerns, she didn’t pursue the case any further. So we rode off.
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