Canyoning the Kawasan River in Cebu, Philippines

People always ask what our favorite activities were during 52 Countries in 52 Weeks. They expect the big answers. Safaris in Africa. Gorilla trekking. Shark diving. The things already sitting on bucket lists around the world. But one of our top five activities from the entire year was something most people have never heard of, canyoning in Cebu, Philippines.

Whenever I say that I'm a big canyoning fan, I have to explain it. The simplest description is that it's basically going the opposite direction of rock climbing, except through waterfalls and rivers. You start at the top of a canyon and work your way down through waterfalls, pools, rocks and whatever else the river has carved into the landscape. I've done it all over the world, mostly self-guided, and I did an incredible guided version in Spain I still think about. It's one of my favorite categories of adventure anywhere.

Cebu was different from anything else I've done. No ropes. No rappelling. You simply follow the river downhill for about three hours, swimming, hiking, jumping and sliding your way through the canyon... and that almost made it more fun.

You meet in the city, gear up with a helmet, life vest and water shoes, then take a van up to the start of the route. From there you walk down a steep series of stairs until you reach the river. Then you get in. For the next three hours, the river is the trail. It cascades through an incredible tropical landscape, creating waterfall after waterfall, pool after pool. Your guide knows every inch of it. He knows exactly where to jump, where to land, where you slide the rock face and where you swim underneath enormous boulders.

Fifteen foot jumps into pools below. Twenty foot natural rock slides. I stopped counting sections, but it felt like twenty or thirty, each one revealing something new around the next corner. The water is warm. The scenery is spectacular.

Then there were the guides. This sounds like a small detail but it became one of my favorite parts of the entire experience. Everywhere we went, the guides grabbed our phones to take pictures for us. They would see a spot and just say, 'give me your phone'. They knew the angles, the settings, exactly where you were about to jump and where the shot would be. By the end of the day they felt like part guide, part photographer, part member of the group. You come home with a full set of photos and video that looks professionally shot. That alone separates this from almost every other guided adventure I've done.

But what really makes Cebu canyoning special is the balance it strikes. Adventure. Activity. Access. Very few experiences get all three right. This one does. You're hiking through a canyon, jumping off rocks, sliding down waterfalls and swimming through spectacular blue pools in the middle of the Philippines. It feels legitimately adventurous. And yet the guides make it accessible to almost anyone willing to get wet. You don't need experience. You don't need special skills. You just need to show up.

The best evidence I can give for how much we loved it is that I did the whole thing twice. Briana wasn't feeling well the first morning, so Braden and I went without her. We finished and had such a great time that when she was feeling better the next day, there was no debate. We went back and did it again.

In a year of nearly two hundred activities across fifty two countries, we almost never repeated anything. There was always another country, another experience waiting. Cebu canyoning earned a second day. In Reject Average terms, the FAVE score on this one sits near the top of everything we did that year. Even compared to the Jetski2catalina trip.

If you're going to the Philippines, and I highly recommend you do, Cebu is already on most people's radar for the whale sharks. Go see the whale sharks. But don't make the mistake of thinking that's the key adventure. The canyon might be the thing you remember most.