Maitravelsite's Blog and Travelogue

Get­ting to Alona Beach from Cebu is easy: a 1.5 hr ferry to Tag­bi­la­ran (550p/p) and a tryci­cle to the beach (200 p)nwhich wil take an addi­tional 30 min­utes. Cheap accom­mo­da­tion is scarce, so if you are tavel­ling alone you might want to head else­where. For 800 pesos you can find a room at Bohol Divers Resort ( no frills) and for 1400 and there abouts you have a lot to choose from, and bar­gain­ing can make the prices go down about 40%.

We chose Bohol Sea Breeze– a big cot­tage with 2 lev­els, TV, AC, clean and escel­lent staff with Hank being the man­ager you would like to find everywhere.

The beach is about 800 m long, with palm trees, white sand and turquoise water. Snorkelling is not very good but can keep you busy if you wish. There is plenty of div­ing though, but prices are higher than any­where else in the Philippines.

It is also a good place from which to visit the Choco­late Hills and Bohol’s ende­nagered Tar­sier, a pri­mate that is an enden­gared species and endemic to these islands. There are sev­eral options to do the trip, but we chose to rent a scooter (450 p) for 24 hrs and stay overnight some­where in Loboc.

The ride to Loboc is about 1 hour from Alona, where acco­mo­da­tion is easy to find in Nuts Huts or Cot­tage Hills, both offer­ing stun­ning views. We made frind with Jani, a Finnish solo trav­eller with whom we would hook up the fol­low­ing day to ride to the hills. The 2 motor­bike con­voy rode smoothly through spec­tac­u­lar scenery, spot­ting places that you usu­ally only see in Nat Geo or Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel. The Hills are an inter­est­ing site, but I would say that rid­ing the motor­bike and stop­ping along the way to take pic­tures and chat with locals is the best part of it all.We all made it to Tag­bi­la­ran late in the after­noon after sev­eral hours of rid­ing, checked ferry sched­ules and decided to stay in touch hop­ing to travel together in Viet­nam later this year.

The fol­low­ing day we expected to hop on a ferry on our way to Min­danao, but were sur­prised to learn that com­mu­ni­ca­tion prob­lems had us in the wrong side of the island at depar­ture time. We made it to Jagna a day later where the ferry now departs from, and I rented a scooter again to get lost  some­where in the moun­tains– a won­der­ful expe­ri­ence yet again, spot­ting  Kawasan falls but not being able to jump in the emer­ald col­ored water because it was get­ting dark and I had to makie it back to town.

I am not quite sure when we will make it to Siar­gao, but get­ting there seems to be a bit longer and more com­pli­cated than what we expected. Unfor­tu­nately this is tak­ing time away from the 21 days our visa granted us on arrival…

Myself hard at work

UNESCO’s World Her­itage Choco­late Hills

Tar­sier

Field work