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Published: April 2nd 2008
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Mt Mayon
Just about the best view I got of the mountain The main point of me coming to this dilapidated town in Southern Luzon was that it stands at the foot of Mount Mayon. Translated as the 'Beautiful Mountain' it is dubbed the world's most perfect volcano due to its near symmetrical appearance. I had plans to climb it over a 2 day period. However, due to the fact that the volcano was at an activity level 2 (out of 5) and more so the torrential rain that was pounding the area, no company would allow me up for the trek.
I decided to wait a day to see if the weather would pass and spent it looking at the limited sites the place had to offer. Yet it insisted on raining the next day too, so my trek up the volcano was well and truly kicked to touch. I had a look up the volcano viewing point but given the weather around, I just managed to take some cracking pictures of clouds instead. The hill was also home to the Philvolcs volcano monitoring station which had a sickingly friendly guy who invited me in to show what went on and how all the geeky machines worked. Along with him, I also
spoke to many locals, making jokes about the weather and the rain etc. Their reply was almost always the same, "It's only rain, at least no wind".
Now the problem with following a Lonely Planet guidebook two years out of date, and not putting in any other research, is that I missed the fact that this region was hit by the huge Typhoon 'Reming' in November 2006. It became apparent as I looked around just how much devastation existed in amongst the town. So I gave up feeling sorry for myself looking like a permanent drowned rat and decided to move on.
In an amazing run of coincidences that you would not even believe if I wrote them, I found myself being picked up at 6am the next morning, winging my way across the region and ending up by swimming with Whalesharks!
It was truly awesome as we spotted 5 sharks, and swam with 3 of them - the biggest being a cool 10 meters long! The moment the first one appeared next to the boat, it was like the scene from Jaws where they see it for the first time. No joke it was bigger than the boat!!
The next couple of days/nights were spent travelling down to the island of Bohol. Potentially boring, the journey was made better as I was travelling with Paul, a guy I met on a bus a few days earlier.
Bohol is home to two of the Philippine's biggest tourist attractions, the Chocolate Hills and the Tarsier Sanctuary which we headed for. In case, like me, you are not sure what the latter is, they are dubbed the 'smallest primate' in the world (although this isn't entirely accurate as they aren't primates....) and are aptly described as the love child of ET and a Gremlin. They are only found in this part of the world and if I’m honest, are pretty cute. We spent a while observing them in their habitat which was cool.
But maybe the best part of Bohol was a night spent at a place called Nuts Huts - a real jungle getaway in the middle of the wilderness. Run by a friendly Belgian couple, the whole place really had the feeling of complete isolation from the outside world.
From here we started to wind down our trip, and especially as it had been over two weeks
since I had seen a proper beach, we made tracks for some tropical islands.
The best of these being Apo Island, the definition of a idyllic tropical paradise. The added benefit of this was that it often gets voted into the top 10 diving spots in the world, and being the fully qualified diver that I now am, I was able to experience this claim first-hand.
Apo Island is tucked away, reachable only by small boats. It has no roads and is only blessed with electricity for a few hours a day. Needless to say it was easy to get caught up ambience so we stayed for 3 days. Plus I got to dive with turtles and some deadly fish which as a first for me, was pretty cool.
The only downside is that to get back from the island required 8 adults and 2 children piling onto a 6-berth boat (I say boat, matchbox would be more accurate) in a huge storm. Result: Drenched passport, wallet, bag and a ruined phone for Paul!
The last few days were spent travelling back towards Manila for my flight back to re-unite with my ol' travelling buddy again. We stopped off
at a town called Dumaguete and then Cebu City which, on the face of them, looked good. But the more time we spent there, the more we noticed the abundance of seedy old men with young Filipina girls in tow, half their age. I don't want to pass judgement on this too much, but after a few blatant offers from prostitutes and seeing the amount of 'girlie bars' around, I kind of saw more of what was going on in these places (especially Cebu City) but each to their own I guess.
So as I write this, I sit in Manila airport awaiting my flight back. I will genuinely miss the country and much like Vietnam, wish I had more time to spend here. I would recommend it to anyone to visit based on the fact that it has so many varied activities to do. But the one single thing that has made the most impression has to be the people, hands down the friendliest I have met on this trip. Even the numerous 'Hey, Joe's' that you get in the street are delivered with a friendly smile.
Travelling on my own has been enjoyable too and has really
Legaspi
The aftermath of Typhoon Remin given me a different taste of the backpacking experience. But it’s got to be said that I'm missing my old pal, maybe his woman like demeanour isn't so bad after all.........
Ross
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Vince
non-member comment
Great blog
Great blog, mate! Be sure to visit again, there's 7000 more islands to discover, more reefs to dive, more caves to explore, more volcanos and mountains to hike, and more 'hello's' to hear. And not a whole lot of tourists to see.