Pamuayan Falls: A Solo Trek to a Palawan Waterfall! Port Barton, San Vicente
Channel: ZIGGING by Mark Sigg
Date: 2022-07-30

In this video, I get a little lost in Palawan as I veer away from the usual day at the beach and trek through Port Barton's back roads to visit a majestic site: the Pamuayan Waterfalls. Pamuayan Falls, as referred to by locals, is a brief 5km trek from the main beach front of Port Barton. You can hike here in a little over 1 hour or even take a motorbike which should  get you to the waterfall in under 30 minutes. I've done the trek from Port Barton to Pamuayan Falls in the past and I thought that it was time to revisit one of Port Barton's key attractions. From my memory, I remembered this trek to be uneventful and quick. But in this video, I'm sharing how my current trip to Port Barton left me feeling disoriented and downright lost as I made the trek to Pamuayan Falls. What's gotten me feeling lost? First off, the roads look a lot different from last time. Whereas in my last trip, the trek was all muddy and cool, the newly paved roads made this trek a lot warmer with the sun reflecting on the concrete! It also didn't feel as rustic and off the beaten path as last time with the paved roads of San Vicente making me feel like I'm in the middle of the high way. And because of this heat, I felt a lot more winded during this trek! For some time, I was wondering if I had been walking in the right direction from Port Barton.  I was getting really gassed and I wondered to myself why... I then realized that it had been nearly 4-years since I last went on this hike! By no means was I a young man then but from my 30's, I am now nearly 40 and starting to feel the effects of father time on my body. Why had it been so long since I've last visited the Pamuayan Waterfall? I didn't plan it this way and in 2018, I decided that I'd be living a lot, if not most of my time in Port Barton. But then the pandemic hit and blindsiding me as much as it did you as the rest of the world! So my last trip to Port Barton was in January 2020, just when COVID was just starting to pick-up. Moreso, my last trek to Pamuayan Falls was even way before then. 

If you missed one of my earlier videos in this channel, click here to watch I managed to escape my 9 to 5 job and live in Palawan: https://youtu.be/4TdO5J6Mj3M

So with youth no longer on my side, it took a lot more time for me to trek to the falls. What I thought would be a little over 1 hour became a longer and more arduous journey of over an hour and 30 minutes. In retrospect though, what made the hike a little longer this time was the harder terrain once you were already within the vicinity of the waterfall. Wheras paved roads made the main part of the journey debatably easier, the build-up to the last 20-minutes of the waterfall trek. What greeted me in the last portion of the hike were a lot of fallen trees and branches ---- something that you'd see all around Port Barton still reeling from the effects of typhoon Odette from December 2021. Whereas previously the hiking trail was clear, this time it was almost like you'd have to make your own since much if the path was not even beaten. Tree roots serving as makeshift stairs in this terrain and crossing the stream multiple times amidst slippery rocks made me rethink my decision why I had done this. The hike was much harder and while I had done this solo in the past with no fear, this time I definitely felt more conscious about my safety with barely anyone else in sight. I remembered the movie 127 Hours from several years ago where a lone hiker/adventure seeker found himself stock in a boulder for days. i sincerely hoped that's not what would happen to me! But as with all things, this became a rewarding trek. Once I was swimming under the waterfall, my fears were literally washed away. And the experience this time was even more special as I had the waterfall to myself for a good 30-minutes before someone else arrived. What a beautiful time it was for me just to take in the beauty of Pamuayan Falls. It was just myself and Mother Nature in its purest form. Perhaps I'll never get this serenity ever again when tourism is back in full swing!

Want to visit Port Barton in Palawan? Here's a brief travel guide as I share my journey back from Manila into Puerto Princesa via an Airbus A321 NEO operated CebuPacific 5J 645: https://youtu.be/ZcMrwr_Etfs

#palawanphilippines    
#palawan 
#palawanbeach 
#portbarton 
#sanvicente 

Sub-count: 3,110

This video features short clips from the Juicy Vlog and trailer of 127 Hours available on YouTube through the following links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj3rLa5P8wo&t=437s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlhLOWTnVoQ&t=84s

This video also features music from www.bensound.com