St Paul Subterranean River National Park

Puerto-Princesa Subterranean River National Park

Useful Information

Location:	Saint Paul Mountain Range, Palawan. Sitio Sabang, Barangay Cabayugan. Northwest of Puerto Princesa, the capital of Palawan province. (10.1989395, 118.9256762)
Open:	All year daily 8:30-15:30. Weather permitting. [2026]
Fee:	Adults PHP 1,000. [2026]
Classification:	Karst Cave
Light:	bring torch
Dimension:
Guided tours:	D=1 h. V=50,000/a [2006]
Photography:
Accessibility:
Bibliography:
Address:	City Government of Puerto Princesa (Palawan), Protected Areas Management Board, 146 Manalo Street, Puerto Princesa, Palawan. PPUR Office, Sitio Sabang, Brgy. Cabayugan, Puerto Princesa City, Palawan 5300, Tel: +63-48-434-2509
As far as we know this information was accurate when it was published (see years in brackets), but may have changed since then. Please check rates and details directly with the companies in question if you need more recent info.

History

1887	first mentioned by Dean Worcester.
26-MAR-1971	National Park established under Presidential Proclamation No. 835.
1992	won an award of the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) in the Environmental Enhancement Category.
1999	inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
11-DEC-2003	declared a National Geological Monument by the National committee on Geological Sciences.
2010	upper level of the cave discovered by cavers.

Description

The St Paul Mountain Range consists of limestone, and is a typical tropic karst area with sharp ridges, and rounded peaks called towers. It shows pinnacles, stone forests, shafts, dolines and limestone cliffs. The principal feature of the park is an underground river, more than 8 km long and known as the Subterranean River or St Paul Cave. The river flows underground for almost its entire length. Its spring is at an altitude of 100 m asl, 2 km southwest of Mount St. Paul. Soon it is swallowed by the cave and reappears at St. Paul’s Bay, where it flows directly from the cave into the sea.

The fact that the underground river flows directly into the sea is rather special, such a spring is called a submarine karst spring. The lower portion of the river is brackish and subject to tidal influences and thus a unique habitat. The biodiversity in the park is very high as it shows both, a full mountain to the sea ecosystem and a sweetwater to saltwater ecosystem, plus the troglobitic ecosystem of the underground river. Most submarine springs are only accessible for divers, this is one of the few such rivers which the public can easily visit.

The cave tours are offered by local boat operators which are supervised by the park. They start at a nearby harbour, the Sabang Boat Terminal, with a boat ride to the resurgence. Then the boats enter the cave and cross the first 4.3 km of the 8.2 km long underground river. The upper part is not navigable, so the boats return on the way they entered. We once read that it was possible to cross the cave completely and leave on the swallow hole. We have no idea if this is actually true, probably it requires special boats.

St Paul Cave is very impressive, with huge passages and enormous chambers. The biggest chamber is 120 m wide and 60 m high, the length is hard to define, as it is just a very wide section of the passage. St Paul Cave has been known to local Batak people since ancient times. According to legend, it was inhabited by a spirit that prevented anybody from entering the cave. Today only 200-250 Batak survived, the surrounding area is inhabited by Tagbanua communities, who are Christianized.

Today the Park has become the major tourist attraction of the country. More than 50,000 people visited it in 2006, about 20 % of the visitors were from foreign countries. The government makes a great effort to make this cave more popular, although it is still in an almost undeveloped state. It was renamed Puerto Princesa Underground River (PPUR) after the capital city. This makes absolutely no sense, as the city is on the other side of the island a 75 km/2 h drive away. But the weirdness goes on. It was nominated to become one of the "New 7 Wonders of Nature" some years ago. This "contest" is actually one of numerous rather unimportant internet polls, where people can poll to find some kind of "democratic" ranking list. This poll was pushed by the government by frequent press releases and campaigns, they even talked about ordering every Filipino in the world to vote. So the actual idea of the poll, to give some kind of demographic result on the popularity of natural wonders has been annulled. This is even stranger, as there is nothing to gain, it’s just a poll initiated by a guy from Canada. The frequent media coverage kept the cave in the headlines, but that would have been the case with any other campaign as well, had just as much effort been put into it. Fortunately the poll ended on 11-NOV-2011 and has since, thankfully, been forgotten, except on the website of PPUR.

And a word about our classification: we have not classified the cave as a show cave. This is actually historic, at the beginning it was a natural cave which was visited by inofficial boat trips by the locals. Today it is a major tourist draw, but still it is an undeveloped cave which is visited by boat trips. Until today this cave still has no trails, no gates, no lights, and no other infrastructure. Some websites show pictures of a chamber with electric light and trails, but that’s definitely not this cave and another indicator of how unprofessional the marketing of this site is. Visitors get helmets, we have no idea why, but we guess because of bat droppings. The guides have lamps to illuminate the cave a little, bringing your own waterproof lamp is probably a good idea.