The Ultimate Guide to Kawasan Falls: Canyoneering in Cebu

The Philippines are incredible and one of our favourite places that we have travelled to in South East Asia. The Philippines has some of the most beautiful beaches, islands, crystal clear waters and also some of the best adventure activities. One of our favourite adventure activities during our time in the Philippines was going to Kawasan Falls and canyoneering in Cebu. It is a must!

Here is everything you need to know about Kawasan Falls and canyoneering in Cebu (specifically Badian).

Kawasan Falls: Canyoneering in Cebu Badian

About Kawasan Falls, Cebu

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Kawasan Falls are considered to be the most famous and one of the most beautiful sets of waterfalls in the Philippines.

Kawasan Falls can be found on the island of Cebu, 130km southwest of Cebu City in the mountains of Badian. People are drawn here by the vibrant turquoise waters, the lush jungle and the chance to have an adventure, including of course, canyoneering Kawasan Falls!

Most people will do a day trip to Kawasan Falls to spend the morning canyoneering and the afternoon relaxing by the falls. You even have the option of jumping on-board a bamboo raft and floating under the falls themselves!

The cost for access to Kawasan Falls if you are not doing an organised tour is 40 pesos ($0.67)

Kawasan Falls, Canyoneering in Cebu: What is it?

For those that have never heard about canyoneering, it is really quite simple. With your life-jacket and helmet at the ready, you jump, climb, swim, slip and slide through the Canlaob river in the middle of the Badian jungle.

The reason canyoneering is so popular in Badian is for the water. The water is the colour of bright blue Gatorade and is quite mesmerising. You will want to jump straight in!

As you traverse down the rivers, you will have to slide down naturally formed water-slides, swim through small caves and the most exhilarating thing you will do is jump! Now these are not just little jumps, at one point we were up to 10 metres. It took a few attempts to build up to this one but it was well worth it!

For most day trips, this will take maybe 3 hours and the finishing point will be the beautiful Kawasan Falls.

How to get to Kawasan Falls, Cebu?

Getting to Kawasan Falls is fairly easy as the island of Cebu is relatively small.

If you book a Kawasan Falls canyoneering tour, then you should be able to include transportation to and from anywhere on the island, whether you are staying in Cebu City, Moalboal, Oslob or Mactan Island (these being the most popular tourist places).

This will mean an early start, 5am from Cebu City for example.

If you would like to make the journey yourself to go exclusively for the Falls and not on a canyoneering tour then this is what you need to know:

Oslob to Kawasan Falls

The journey from Oslob will take about 2-3 hours by bus. You should aim to get the first bus of the day in the direction of Bato. Once at Bato change for a second bus to Badian.

The bus should cost c$3-5 and once you arrive at the bus stop in Badian for Kawasan falls, you have a 1.5km walk from the road to the falls.

If (like us) buses are not for you, then just organise a private taxi. This should take an hour and you should be paying around $20 maximum each way. Make sure your taxi driver knows to return at an agreed time.

Moalboal to Kawasan Falls

Moalboal is much closer than Oslob so it makes sense here to jump onto any bus towards Badian which will take 30-40 minutes and cost c$1.

Cebu City to Kawasan Falls

The bus from Cebu City takes about 3 hours and costs c$3. You will need to get the bus to Bato via Barili.

For all these bus options, just make the driver aware that you are travelling to Kawasan Falls. If like us, you want to keep track yourself, download maps.me or similar and whether you have data turned on or not, you will still be able to see your location via GPS to keep track of your journey.

Which company did we use for Kawasan Falls Canyoneering?

The company we used at the time was called Planet Action Adventure Tour Services.

The full day tour cost $42 and included:

Transfer by action truck from Moalboal and back
Lunch
Guide fee
Park Entry fee
Life jacket
Petzl Quality Mountaineering helmet
Waterproof bag

We opted to include transportation to Moalboal at an additional cost simply for ease. This cost $67 for the car (shared cost) from Cebu City, Mactan or Oslob. In total, the day cost two of us $151 and we were more than happy with that price for the fun that we had! Our guide was great, he even provided a make shift floating device in case we dropped our Go Pro!

When to go to Kawasan Falls for Canyoneering

You can book this trip all year round in theory, however, in the rainy season from July to September activities could be cancelled. We went during April and it was perfect.

What to pack for Canyoneering in Cebu

This is an activity that you will want to remember and hopefully capture for yourselves! Make sure you have:

Go Pro: This is perfect for every canyoneering trip in Cebu. The footage and memories we got were incredible. The most recent models are waterproof, dust proof and shock proof, perfect for all those activities. Take a look at the Go Pro Hero 7 Black!
Go Pro Accessories: The minimum accessories we can’t live without and used a lot in Costa Rica were a strong selfie stick (you do not want to lose your Go Pro!), a spare battery is a must and some extra mounts.
Memory cards: This falls in to the same category as the power bank, running out of memory can be just as frustrating and having to decide which memories are worth keeping. Just get a memory card with a huge storage in the first place, even if this takes a long time to fill.
Water shoes: These Speedo Mens Surfwalker water shoes were useful for the trip!
Blister plasters: Sometimes water shoes can give you blisters the first time you use them, these blister plasters worked perfectly, make sure you get some of various sizes.
Dry bag: We used a dry bag on this trip. We could store all our valuables without worrying about them getting wet or the bag getting splashed. You can get ones like this bag that fold up quite small.
Head torch: If you go to Kawasan falls independently and stay late, it may get dark so a torch comes in handy. Get a good quality one like this.
Insect repellent: Do we really need to explain this one? Insect repellent is a must!
Small Towel: You don’t want anything huge, but a quick dry small towel is needed for when you have finished the day.
Swimwear: You are going to get wet, get your swimmers ready!

We love our adventure activities and canyoneering in Cebu and seeing Kawasan Falls was one of the best we did while in the Philippines, we can not recommend it enough. Make sure you add it to your list, we hope you are inspired to visit this amazing country!

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Want to read more about South East Asia and the Philippines? Check out these posts:

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