Hinatuan Enchanted River
Interesting facts
- The Mayor's Chamber, the main cavern found beneath the spring, measures about 37 metres long and 31 metres wide, with a ceiling up to 8 metres high.
- Early surveys mapped the flooded cave to about 87 metres deep; below roughly 50 metres divers must breathe helium-based trimix gas.
- Passages inside the cave carry the names of its explorers, among them Doc's Door, Bernil's Crawl and Patrice's Way.
- The spring pushes out so much water that divers time their entries for high slack tide, when rising seawater slows the outflow from the cave.
- Fish swim even inside the Mayor's Chamber, deep within the flooded cave beneath the pool.
- The river is fed by an underground spring thought to draw on aquifers recharged by the heavy rainfall common around Hinatuan.
- Divers have watched the soft limestone around the pool crumble and settle at the cave entrance, so the way into the cave keeps changing shape.
- Besides its enchanted nickname, the river is also known as the Hinatuan Sacred River.
Why it is worth it
At the edge of the Philippine Sea coast of Mindanao, a short river wells up from a deep spring and runs for only about 270 metres before meeting Hinatuan Bay. Its source pool is the reason for the fame: the water shifts between deep sapphire and jade green and is clear enough that the eye drops a long way down before losing the bottom. The river lies between the barangays of Talisay and Cambatong in the municipality of Hinatuan, Surigao del Sur, and it owes its popular name to the diplomat Modesto Farolan, who celebrated it in a poem called Rio Encantado.
Beneath the pool lies a flooded cave system that is still being mapped. The first recorded exploration was made in 1999, and a more ambitious effort began in February 2010, when a team of three cave divers led by Dr Alfonso Amores found a concealed opening at a depth of around 30 metres. Later expeditions reached further chambers. On the sixth expedition, on 17 June 2014, Amores died of a cardiac arrest in a narrow tunnel about 40 metres down. Exploration resumed in 2015 under Bernil Gastardo, aiming beyond 82 metres, in a joint assessment with the University of San Carlos, the German development agency GIZ and the Philippine biodiversity authorities.
The unusual colour and the unknown depth have fed a body of local lore. Local tradition holds that fairies tinted the water, that engkantos, nature spirits of Philippine folklore, live in it and guard it, and that some of its fish cannot be caught by any means. A daily fish-feeding ritual is accompanied by the town's own hymn. At the river mouth, Hinatuan Bay shelters several species of sea turtle and offers boats a safe anchorage in storms and typhoons.
Getting there
The river is about 10 km from the town centre of Hinatuan. The nearest airport is Bancasi Airport (BXU) at Butuan, about 111 km away in a straight line.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Hinatuan Enchanted River, also called the Hinatuan Sacred River, is a deep spring river on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. It flows into the Philippine Sea and the Pacific Ocean at Barangay Talisay, Hinatuan, Surigao del Sur. It is found between the boundaries of Barangays of Talisay and Cambatong. It earned the moniker "enchanted river" from the diplomat Modesto Farolan who described the river in his poem entitled "Rio Encantado".
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