Sabang and Panglao Island

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SABANG

We ended up staying in Sabang for 17 days. We had a pretty nice situation at our hotel, Oriental Sabang Hill. It was a nice clean, small room with A/C and hot water for 1,250 p. We had good neighbors, Tomas on one side and Tomas on the other. Tomas 1 was from Sweden, he ran a salmon fish farm 100 km from the arctic circle. While he professed often his love of snow, he spends 3-4 months in warmer climes in the winter. Tomas 2 was Danish. He was there to get a lot of dental work done. Apparently there is a very good dentist in Sabang. Both had been to the Philippines many times and neither dove. They were there for the girls. This was the case with many of the other travelers (men) we met in Sabang. Chuck from Hawaii, 18 times. Charles from LA more than 30. It was unusual to meet some who had not been here before.

The guys at Octopus Divers, the dive shop at the first place we stayed at were great and very accommodating. Charles, for example, had a lot of health issues. He did all of his dives 1 on 1 with a divemaster and they really looked out for him. I guess that is why people keep coming back to Octopus. We certainly would if we came here again. We got our advanced open water certification while there.

The diving there was very good. The best was out at Verde Island. Unlike the rest of the dives which are at most 5 to10 minutes from our end of the beach, this was 45 minutes. They do it as a day trip when they can round up 6 divers and the weather is calm. We dove a submerged pinnacle that had lots of current. As is usually the case with current, there were tons of fish. We dove in the morning, had a barbecue on the beach then did another dive. The current got really crazy on the second dive when we encountered a strong up welling.

We really came to appreciate German food. There are lots of Germans down here. Villa Sabang had just reopened their restaurant and the German, Italian and Philippine food was excellent. Fred, a German master butcher and executive chef, Jake a French trained chef from Minnesota, and Wolle, one of the German owners of the dive shop deserve a lot of credit.

ALONA BEACH, PANGLAO ISLAND, BOHOL

From Sabang, it was a 1.5 hour ferry ride to Batangas and then a 2 hour bus ride back up to Manila on Feb 20. The next day we flew down to Tagbiliran on Bohol Island. From there it is a short cab ride to Alona Beach on Pangloa island. No boat needed! Bohol is a large island located in the central part of the country. The region is known as the Visayas and it has some of the best diving in the Philippines.

The island is only separated from the southwest corner of Bohol by a few hundred feet of water. The island itself is oblong, about 25 miles long and 10 miles wide. It's a low island with only a few bumps that keep it from being a perfect pancake.

We landed at Alonaland resort. Oddly enough, it is right next door to Bananaland and across the road from Mondoseeland. We got a nice clean little a/c cottage for for 1700 p. The resort had lots of palm trees and was nicely landscaped with a pool. There were probably about 20 rooms. The only problem was that it was about a 15-20 minute walk to the beach, contrary to what the website said. Until 2 months ago it was a 5-10 minute walk through another resort but the resort closed the road to through traffic. It also had lot of mosquitoes, to be expected in a garden setting. We stayed there for 4 nights then moved to the beach.

The new place was Hayahay Lodge, a 3 story contemporary deal with 6 rooms right in the middle of the busiest part of the beach. We got the front room and had a view of the beach and a nice common sitting area in front of our room which we claimed as our own. For some reason the thumping bass and voices from the bar right next door did not bother us. Right beside that is a dive operation, so we are surrounded by the siren song of clanging scuba tanks and the compressor all day and into the night. Such a sweet cacophony.

They have a kind of ridiculous pricing policy for the rooms at Hayahay. Non-divers pay 2800 p, divers who dive with their shop pay 2500p, divers with another shop pay 3400p. Since we started diving when we were over at Alonaland we went with Sundivers. To get the best deal we needed to do 10 dives each with them. That left us with just enough time to do the requisite 2 dives with Genesis Divers, Hayahay's operation.

Alona beach is a pretty nice beach facing south southeast. No green flashes here. It's about a mile long, but at high tide there is not much left of it in places. There are resorts along it's entire length. Mostly small affairs of up to 20 rooms. There are a few big ones too. There is one road that leads down to the beach from the main road and from there it is a walk up or down the beach to get to the smaller resorts. It is really a dive destination with a beach.

The diving here is very good, but we both agree that Sabang was a little better. The best, healthiest reef here is at Balicasag Island, which has a marine reserve. The coral there is in excellent shape and there are lots of fish. It is a 30 minute banka ride from Alona Beach. There are no bad dives here, it is mostly wall dives. The reef top is very nice too with many types of soft coral and fun small fish. One interesting dive was snake island. It is a drift dive south of the island on a small plateau. The place was lousy with sea snakes. At most dive sites a sea snake is an unusual critter. Here we saw at least 30.

I (Kevin) got really sick at Alona. On Saturday my hair hurt, always a bad sign. I dove Sunday morning, but by Sunday night my fever topped out at 102+. I was feverish Monday and Tuesday and by Wednesday was able to go out for more than meals. Karen kept diving and logged the dives we needed for the divers discount.

On our last day at Alona we took the day off from diving and did a land tour. The big attraction on Bohol is the Chocolate Hills. They are on all of the travel brochures and are even promoted as being one of the big attractions in the country. We skipped them last time we were here, so we felt obliged to check them out. On the way we stopped at the oldest stone church in the Philippines, St Baclayon. It was a pretty basic affair, having been built in 1595. Then it was on to the Chocolate Hills. The best time to go is in the early morning during the dry season when they are, well, brown. So we had two strikes against us when we got there at about 10:30 (we like to sleep in). We had pretty low expectations and they were not exceeded. It was an interesting formation of low hills, but it is hard to imagine that even on the perfect day at the perfect hour they would live up to their hype. Oh well, check off that box and move on. Our last stop was the Tarsier sanctuary. Tarsiers are these tiny primates that are found throughout SE Asia. One could comfortably sit in the palm of your hand and they have huge eyes. They are incredibly cute. Being nocturnal, they just hang on to the trunk of a small tree or bush and sleep all day. The Tarsiers made the day trip.

It was really nice, after almost a month in highly touristic areas, to finally get out into the countryside and have a look around. This part of Bohol is principally a rice farming area. When we passed through they were harvesting and drying the rice, they get two crops per year. After they bring the rice in from the fields, they dry it on tarps on the side of the road. In places they would take a whole lane of the two lane road with their tarps.

We left Alona on Friday March 6, taxi and fast ferry, arriving at Dumaguete on the island of Negros. From there we were picked up by a van, did some provisioning and drove south to Malatapy were a boat took us to Apo Island. There were two boat options, big banca, one capable of carrying 8 persons and a medium banca, which carried 5. We opted for the medium banca given it was cheaper and there was only the two of us. We had to wait an hour for the boat to come back from Apo Island. The journey across took about 30 to 40 minutes on what most would consider a small banca. It was a very wet experience!

Well that is it for now. We left Apo and spent the night in Dumagette, "The least atrocious city in the Philippines. From there we took the fast ferry to Cebu City (atrocious) and then flew to Puerto Princesa on Palawan, dusty.

Look for another update real soon on our Apo experience, it is mostly written. Hopefully we will have a few days of net access so we can get it up.

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Photos

Sabang Jeepney
We rode this jeepney to Puerto Galera to get money from the ATM. It was a 20 min ride for 20p.