Callao Cave

Callao is a long limestone cave in the hills at Penablanca, reached by a staircase of a couple of hundred steps up from the road. Seven chambers are open to visitors, and what makes them unusual is the lighting: holes in the roof drop shafts of daylight into the dark, and the first chamber, where the beam lands squarely, has been fitted out as a chapel with pews and an altar. Beyond it the floor becomes rougher and the guide's lamp does the work. The cave also matters to science - fossil bones found here were described in 2019 as a distinct human species, Homo luzonensis. Below the hill the Pinacanauan river runs through a gorge, and at dusk bats stream out of a cave along it.

What you actually see

• The chapel chamber - pews and an altar set under a natural skylight in the first chamber.
• The skylight shafts - beams of daylight dropping through roof holes into the deeper chambers.
• The Pinacanauan gorge - the river below the cave, with boats and swimming spots along it.
• The evening bat exodus - bats leaving a river cave at dusk, watched from a boat or the bank.

When to go

November to April is the dry season and the safest time on the wet limestone inside. Cagayan gets a heavy share of the typhoons that cross northern Luzon between July and October, when the river rises and access can close. Go in the afternoon if you want to combine the cave with the bat flight at dusk on the river.

Honest expectations

The steps up are steep and there are a lot of them in humid heat. Inside, the floor is uneven, wet and slippery in places, and the deeper chambers need a guide and a torch rather than a phone light. Some sections are cramped. The chapel fit-out strikes some visitors as odd in a cave, and graffiti and broken formations are visible near the entrance.

Nearby

Tuguegarao is the base city, and the Pinacanauan river runs directly below the cave.