Tuturingen is a ‘wondrous’, ‘mystic’ subterranean river on the west coast of Palawan Island, long reputed as the Philippines’ final frontier. This paper examines travels to that karst landscape and the travels of this underground river beyond by drawing together ethnography with accounts from field scientists, colonial administrators, coastal surveyors, spelunkers, speleologists, and other visitors. The paper focuses on the material descriptions of darkness, swiftlets, bats, crocodiles, hidden entrances, rockpiles, cathedrals, lost ways, cold flows, traders, and guides that not only provide insight into how the imperative to explore is established but simultaneously provide a portrait of a cave inhabited. In doing so, the paper discusses how tropical imaginaries of exploration blur distinctions between colonialism, science, and tourism.

Dr Sarah Webb is the Thomas and Margaret Ruth McArthur Fellow in Anthropology at the University of Melbourne. She is an anthropologist who examines the intersections of material culture, environment, and development. Her research focuses on how the politics of sustainability in the Asia Pacific concern postcolonial crises of nationhood, belonging, and inequality in the Philippines.

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