Blinding Tarsiers
Today we had our first day trip, heading to the island of Bohol, South of Cebu.
Our trend of arriving early before transport departures continued as we got to the ferry terminal, which was a short taxi ride away from the hotel. Getting on board gave me memories of previous journeys in Hong Kong/Guangzhou. The journey time was 2 hours and it seems Tash and I have decided to take pictures of each other sleeping in precarious positions, having started this I have now become on the receiving end!
On getting to Tagbilaran (the main city of Bohol) we met our tour guide, Roland. Bohol has around 1.2 million inhabitants, and each main town has some kind of tourist attraction. Our tour company is run by a Expat who married a Filipino lady and moved to Bohol. Roland has been working as a driver/guide for the last 3 years, like most people we have met so far he was very friendly, and had amazing English. I don't think I've even had to attempt sign language or poorly pronounced Tagalog as yet.
We drove to the furthest point of the tour for about a hour to The Chocolate Hills through lush green rainforests, rice paddies and past a church that had been made unusable by the 7.2 scale earthquake here in 2013. There are over 1,260 of these limestone hills in the area. This used to be below sea level, and the mounds were coral. When the sea level decreased the mounds became exposed, the only thing that could grow on them was grass. During the hottest months the grass burns, giving a brown colour to each mound, so hence the name. Legend has it that a giant's a girlfriend dumped him and the hills were a result of his tears calcifying. You have to love a good Asian myth!
Next up we went to a Butterfly enclosure, and had a short tour with a very funny guy named Justin. We were shown how caterpillars form cocoons and then change into butterflies, plus a set of preserved butterflies that were both male and female. Jordan likened this to a trip to Bangkok! We were then able to take photos of a butterfly that had freshly hatched from its coccon. At first their wings are too wet to fly and I ended up with the butterfly clinging on to my nose, and trying not to inhale too strongly!
I had been waiting for the chance to see some Tarsiers, and we did see them by visiting a conservation area. These Tarsiers are part of the monkey family and are much smaller than I thought they would be, you could probably hold one in the palm of your hand. They are also nocturnal so you only get to see them resting. They do have a large set of eyes. I managed to get some good pictures (now I have to wait for one of our hotels to have a computer so that I can upload them). However - you shouldn't use a flash, and it seems my cameras settings revert back to auto when it's switched off, so I probably blinded two of them during my photo shoot. I'm sure they were glad to see the back of me.
We then had lunch on a floating restaurant, that is actually then pushed down the river by motor boat. We were taken to an area where some local people acted out some scenes that the old local tribes would have been part of; drumming, shooting bows and arrows and fire breathing. It did turn out to be a way for us to hand over money as tips and for the younger kids to beg (the 70p we handed over though is obviously no issue). We had our photo taken with some lizards, but we are unsure if it was a attempt for the kid next to us to try and root through Tash's bag - the picture is a bit suspect! Although we did manage to kick off our photo tally with some people who wanted to take a photo with us (remember my previous post where I said I would start getting photos back!)
One of the parts I was looking forward to was the bamboo bridge but this was closed because of damaged sustained in recent Typhoons.
On the way back to the port we went past the oldest Church in the Philippines, which is also under renovation after the 2013 earthquakes and then to "The Blood Compact Mark". I had mentioned to my mum that I thought this must have been lost in translation and must be some kind of market to buy a selection of black puddings, might have been wrong there. It's actually a monument to mark the invasion of the Spanish where they apparently concluded hostilities with the local Muslim chief by taking blood from either side and mixing it in a cup and drinking from it.
I also had my first fresh coconut of the trip, here they call it Buko.
Bohol itself made me think - this is the real Philippines away from the congestion of Manila. The tricycles in this area are motorbikes with a trailer on the side and room for one maybe two people. There are also a lot of stray dogs, my friend Darren would be in his element here, let's hope they don't get deported to Vietnam.
Selfie sticks seen; 7 too many.
Photos with people who wanted photos with us; 1
Hours travelled; 23