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Published: December 16th 2008
We arrived in Alona Beach on Panglao Island after a really comfortable 2 hour Supercat Ferry from Cebu. Alona Beach is really nice with white sand, not nquite as developed as Boracay but with plenty of restaurants and small hotels.
The atmosphere here is more relaxed then on Boracay, dinner is a BBQ on the beach where you first select what you want from a huge table with everything from crabs, lobsters, all kinds of fish and different meat kebabs and then the cook it on the barbi (we've just finished dinner now, around 6 pounds including beers for the best food ever!).
So, accomodation wise we first stayed at Alona Tropics (a nice resort) as arrived one day early. Then onto Hayahay, a small beach front hotel which is tied to Genesis Divers. These were recommended from our Boracay dive instructer to finish out course. After a couple of nights here we realised that is was a third of the price to stay above the dive shop, so moved again for the final night to a really nice Nipa Hut style room with sea view and resident cat (which I fought with all night as it tried to
get into our mosquito net over the bed! 😊
On the second day here we were up at 5.30 to meet a local guy with a small boat who we'd aranged to meet the night before to go dolphin watching. We'd been guaranteed to see dolphins, so we had high hopes! The sun was rising as we set off and everything was really peaceful. After 45minutes we were supposed to have reached the place where dolphins usually hang out, but we saw nothing.
More and more boats arrived and our captain started to look a little worried, in the end he turned around and headed for home, I was sooooo dissapointed! But then, what now..our captain was turning around again and I could see someone waving from another little boat.
And then we saw them...WOW! They were jumping alover, around 20 or so, it was amazing. They swam so fast and dissapeared just as quick as they arrived. But then another wave and they were back, it was really funny, around 10 little boats all racing to the next sighting! After an hour or so they dissapeared for the day and we headed back to the beach
for some breakfast...banana pancakes with chocolate sauce, pleased and content that we'd seen the dolphins!
After breakfast we headed to the dive shop to arrange the final two dives of our course for the next day. We were in luck..there was a boat leaving at 9.30 so we jumped aboard and headed off to the first site, Arco Point. This was at 18m, 6 more than before and it was absolutley awsome! The reefs here were so much better than those we saw in Boracay! (See the pics below).
After almost an hour under we had a quick lunch on the boat and headed to the next site, BBC (no not the channel) Bohol Beach Club, where we saw our first wreck. This was a jeepney truck they sank by mistake when a boat capsized, it was really nice with plenty of fish and a couple of small sea snakes swimming around the pedals haha!
Diving was great and the afterdive (ok well I made that up but kind of like afterski) was good fun too, we spent the night with a gang of germans who we'd met on the boat.
This was our first real
party night at the local Saturday disco and we moved resorts the next day to a cool French owned place, Alumbung, which is 2km from the beach in a friendly little village. Steve spent all day in the hammock nursing his hangover but made up for it this morning with a jog through the village while I was still asleep before breakfast.
Yesterday we took a trike to the capital town, Tagbilaran, over the bridge on the main island of Bohol. After a couple of sightseeing stops at some 400yr old Spanish churchs we spent the day at the mall, stocked up on books and tried the local equivilant of McDonalds, Jolibee.
The next stop on our journey starts tomorrow at Nuts Huts on Bohol, a trike ride to the mainland and a ten minute boat up the Lomboc River. There we'll see the Chocolate Hills (a candidate for the new wonders of the world), plus some Tasiers at the local sanctuary. We also plan to rent some bikes and explore the countryside where there are apparently beautiful waterfalls and friendly villages. We're realy looking froward to this and some proper rainforrest trekking after out month on the
beach!
Overall we've loved Alona Beach and Bohol so far, we've met some realy nice people (hi Catherine, Audrey and Ayern Rohbins Uncle!), and feel totally relaxed here in the Heart of the Philippines!
Will write soon but no internet at the next stop, Nuts Huts. Some of you have asked where we'll be at Xmas, well we're off to Bantayan Island off the north of Cebu, see http://wowbantayan.com/wowhome/
Hope you're all well! Love Maja and Steve x
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Anna
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Yo yo yo big bruv! :) Missing you lots. Looks like you're having a fabulous time :) soooooo so so so jealous! Just laughing at Dads last comment! LOL! I'm trying to teach him how to use the computer, progress is slow but he'll get there FACT! lol. Got my christmas hamper today from work so sure Mum is gonna be pleased about that! I'll save you something from it like the tea bags... ha! Dad said you're missing a good old cuppa! :) Christmas next week! I'll have an animal skin handbag please I'm sure you can get lots of weird skins over there! haha! Hope to hear from you before christmas! Lots of love your not so lil sis :) x x x x