Into the Interior

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Im sure I saw somewhere on a poster that Bohol is the 12^th largest island in the Philippines. I could quite easily google it right now to confirm my thoughts but where would all the fun be in that? The point of this thought is that I was expecting the drive back across Bohol from Anda, via the chocolate hills and the Tarsier sanctuary, to be quite a long one – considering it took the local bus 3 hours to cover the same distance in a straight line. To make sure our asses were covered we arranged to do this trip back to Tagbilaran the day before our flight. This was not needed (tip 1).

If you want to arrange to go and visit the highly popular attractions of the Bohol interior then I would probably not arrange it from Anda (tip 2). There is only 1 option and that is to arrange for a local in his car/minivan to take you and your friends (minus the friends in our case because we hadn’t acquired any) to all the sights and through to Tagbilaran in return for many Peso’s. If we were backpacking, we would not have been able to afford this and would have booked from Tagbilaran fo sho.

So we had arranged the trip with the tourist information centre in Anda Town and were picked up at 7:30am ready for the long day ahead! Within 90 minutes we were at our first destination – the chocolate hills. What a crazy sight these things were. This lump of land is littered with similarly shaped hills (over 1,200 of them) that spread out in every direction. The viewpoint where everyone gets taken to is quite nice actually. The lonely planet is a bit harsh on the poor place. It was busy, sure, but it was a good spot to view the hills and marvel at Mother Nature’s work. The explanation for these topographic phenomena seems a bit back handed. I don’t think that scientists have spent enough time studying this place and I actually preferred the locals’ explanation – the hills are the tear drops of giants. Nice.

After an hour or so spent up on the hill we were back in the car. Expecting another long slog to the Tarsier Sanctuary we were shocked to arrive within about 30 mins. If you have your maths head on you would have worked out that it was still before 11am and we knew the sanctuary was only about 30mins from Tagbilaran. Anyway – we joined the queue to get our tickets and were on the pathway through the forest within 10 minutes! Within 1 minute we had come up to the first Tarsier clinging onto a tiny little twig underneath a little umbrella type banana leaf. It was ridiculously tiny – much smaller than I had imagined it to be and a remarkably beautiful creature. The outside of the sanctuary seemed quite busy but the pathway through the forest was empty and we were often stood viewing a tarsier from about a foot away all by ourselves.

This place is a bit like a Tarsier factory instead of a sanctuary but the place is doing genuinely good work to increase the awareness of the demise of the Tarsier populations throughout Asia. They also have a good breeding program (I can only imagine what a baby Tarsier looks like, maybe just 2 normal sized eyes) that enables them to release some of the primates back into the wild. I was genuinely happy to be seeing these animals after many failed attempts to see them in the wild on jungle treks. I think the sanctuary is doing good work and the experience was a great one but it left a small feeling of sadness in me. I shook it off pretty quickly but I think you know what I mean…

So back to the car and within 20 minutes we were being dropped off at the backpackers hotel in Tagbilaran already! It isn’t a particularly nice place to spend a day unless you need a new phone cover or some new pirate DVD’s but fortunately Nisa Backpackers Inn where we were staying was really nice and had a good social area. We ventured out and grabbed a Jollie Bees then went and took advantage of the free coffee at the hostel. We decided to take a walk in the evening to give the place more of a chance but we really couldn’t find anything that endearing.

We decided to have dinner at the Garden Café as we had read about it previously. The place is owned and run by the International Deaf Education Association and most of the employees are deaf. The experience was really nice and the food was decent. I had a pulled pork and pineapple bap that was amazing. I think we had found our endearing feature – good luck finding yours.

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

We loved Bohol
The Tarsiers are cute. The chocolate hills were brown but lovely. It is a lovely island. Enjoyed your photos. They brought back pleasant memories.