Bohol

After christmas, Jon and I went over to Bohol to meet up with some friends of his from Manila. Bohol is famous for two things: the chocolate hills and some little furry animals called tarsiers.

The chocolate hills are interesting geological formations, but we didn't think it was worth driving two hours each way just to check out a bunch of hills for 10 minutes and take a picture.

We stayed at the Lost Horizon resort at Alona beach on Panglao island. A nice little place with decent rooms at a decent price. The people we met though satyed at a really nice place called Amarela. For about US$100...it's probably worth staying there, you can get the contact info here.

After staying up late the night before we traveled, we were pretty tired when we got there so we slept for a few hours right away. We had a late lunch afterwards and then rented a couple mopeds and rode into the island a bit to check out the tarsiers at the visitors centre. Cute little creatures...here are some pics:







The next day, we did a couple of dives around Balicasag island. Lots of coral, and cool fish. On the first dive, Jon said he saw a big tuna, but I missed it. On the second dive, we saw a couple big schools of Barcuda. It was awesome...I had a thought to swim in between them, but thought better of it. They are pretty dangerous animals...probably best to check them out from a distance.

We met up with the group from Manila later on that night and had dinner at a place called the Bohol Bee Farm. The food was pretty good, especially the grilled fish. Not sure what it was, but I think it was most likely Mahi Mahi. Anyways, we decided as a group to go on a dolphin watching / snorkelling bangca boat ride the next day...starting at 6am !

I got some neat shots of the sunrise while waiting for the group. Here are a couple:





Sadly, we were about an hour late leaving so we didn't see much of the dolphins. The weather was overcast and cold. The bangca boat was poorly built too and kept letting big splashes over the bow and soaking us. The group in general were pretty miserable, but Jon and I kept laughing about it...it was such a bad ride that it was funny. The snorkelling was fun though. We packed up and headed back to Cebu that evening. I decided to switch plans around and head to Boracay with some of Aimee's friends for new years.