Olango Island

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Olango Island


Sunday morning I met up with a few people to take a boat trip over to an island not too far from Mactan by the named Olango. One of the students here had invited me to join his group for the day and since it was my first weekend here, I wanted to make the most of it in every which way possible without completely exhausting myself. The previous night I didn’t do anything because I was so exhausted from the exploration around Cebu Island, so I managed to be prepared for the trip to Olango. There were eight people in the group, which was nice to split the costs evenly amongst us as we are all on budget and as much as I wish it were a free ride, it’s not. Soon after we all met up in the lobby at Bigfoot, I was introduced to a few students, and then off to docks to grab a boat.

I was quite excited for the boat ride, so as soon as the motor was running, I took off my dress and embraced my chance of basking in the sun, listening to In Search of Sunrise by Tiesto swaying along with the currents of the sea. I sat at the very front of the boat as we set sail to the island in the distance known as Olango. By the way whom ever reads this, I know my blogs sound like they were written during Amerigo Vespucci’s exploration of discovering America, but that’s the way I am, detailed. ☺ The ride over on the boat only took us between 20-30 minutes crossing over to reach the loading dock. From there, we took two tricycles that was able to seat four of us comfortably over to an estuary just south of the island that was peacefully exotic. It was a 10 minute ride through little villages that are set along side the tiny road that led us past an elementary school, tiny stores, children running around, a calm river bed straight towards the end of the road where a raised house for guests to sign in and pay a fee was situated at.. From there we took a walk through trees, and a trail leading us to a rock path that crossed shallow water.


This path in particular, the way it’s built and laid out, it kind of has an enchanting feeling to it and I had concepts start developing in my head for photo shoots in the near future. The path, because of the strict preservation policies, you were not allowed to step foot into the water, and because of this, we were able to see all the tropical fish swimming around, along with how clear the water as well. The rock path goes out a fair distance and unfortunately I can’t really give any insight as to how far. At the end was a look out house for people to utilize and if you have binoculars it’s great because you can see other islands, birds, etc. I’m guessing we stayed there for maybe thirty minutes before heading back to the tricycle bike taxis that were then going to take us to a place where we eat lunch in the water. The ride was 10 minutes long crossing the island through extremely tiny villages to a docking area for us to jump onto another small boat that shoots us over to an open-air lunch house a few hundred yards out in the sea. As soon as we stepped onto the stairs leading up to the top, there were three guys dressed up in bright flowered shirts with instruments. I’m sure you know what happens next? Yep, I danced around.

After a few songs with the trio, I went to the other side of the house (house, hut, restaurant; not quite sure what to call it) only to see four kids with pucca shell necklaces, floating on stuffed rice sacks, using square cut corrugated pieces to paddle themselves around in the water. I called them children of the sea because all they did was sit in the water and float around, it was so adorable to see the smiles on their face as they starred at us with spurts of giggles bursting out. This place is one of those you choose what you want to eat out of the small tubs of seafood type places such as (but not limited to…lol) Lapu-Lapu fish, prawns, oysters, calamari, crab to name a few. I choose Lapu-lapu fish but because we were on a budget, the fish ended up living to see another day, as we had to take it off some of the chosen items on the list due to the price. Instead we ate some garlic rice, cooked and sautéed spices, prawns, and calamari while drinking coke in a bottle.

Once we paid, we sat around waiting for our boat to arrive and take us to a beach to splash in the waves and for me to run in like Pamela Anderson on Baywatch ten years ago. Ha-ha I don’t think so, but how ridiculous would that be? I don’t know where our boat went, but it did take them sometime to arrive, which I can honestly say I was a bit irritated with as we were paying for their services. When they eventually did come, we piled onto the boat to sail to the side we originally docked at to find a beach. Unfortunately, there wasn’t one that was open for us to dock and the day was slowly fading so we headed back towards Mactan to find a location for us to anchor at. The water was choppy so the ride back was entertaining for me, bouncing around at the front of the boat again. After twenty minutes of sailing, we parked at a spot for a few of us to dive into the water and splash around like little kids. One of the guys who were in our group didn’t bring swim trunks, so he ended up jumping in his underwear. What a trooper, not to mention his body is well built so it wasn’t that terrible of a sight to see. It was all good fun, but the day was coming to an end and we decided it was good to call it a day. We then proceeded to head back to the docks.


Here’s my overall opinion of the day, it was great to see even though we felt like we were weaseled out of money more so then what seemed fair to pay for the whole trip. Despite there being eight people total the trip was not by any means cheap and not to mention that is when I concluded that the US dollar does not go very far here if you don’t really control your spending habits in the Philippines. The estuary was beautiful, the restaurant was also an enjoyable experience as well, though, I do wish there was more to choose from in terms of sides to the seafood. The children made it genuinely meaningful though just simply because of their presence of innocence. I almost forgot to mention that I did swim with them for a short time while waiting for the food to be cooked and would push them around on their floaters. Looking back to the day trip, it wasn’t too bad sharing it with a group of friendly people who attend and work at Bigfoot Entertainment so though I would like to complain about the price, you only live once so it shouldn’t be too painful to spend a little.

Sunday wasn’t a huge adventure. It was more along the lines of checking off from the list:

• Island trip - check
• Basking in the sun - check
• Back flips off boat - check
• Getting a slight tan - check

I think I covered what a Sunday afternoon should entail in the country of seven thousand islands. The trip came to end when we docked up by the Mactan Hilton, we gave thanks to the crew, paid the fare, all of us said bye to each other as some were going else where and I was headed back to Casablanca just near Bigfoot. Needless to say my weekend was definitely exciting for it only being the first with seven weekends to go. With that being said, Sunday evening I didn’t do anything but chill out in my room, watched some television, played on the internet, before calling it a night and gearing up for the second week.

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Photos

A child handling business
He must of been about ten years old, he was pretty amazing manuevuring the boats around.

Small taxi over
This is what we took to the open-air lunch in where we were going to eat.