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Published: November 13th 2018
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Malapascua Island After a brief one night stopover in Singapore, we arrived in Cebu to be greeted by our private van to chauffeur us all the way to Maya Port the gateway to Malapascua Island. After nine years of being pain free my sciatica flared up again so we opted to go private so I could lay down and be in some sort of comfort for the journey. After a few hours we arrived and boarded an outrigger boat bound for the island. The weather was ordinary, raining and overcast it had been a long day of travel so we were happy to be finally checking into our little bungalow at Thresher Cove.
After getting checked in and settled we set out to find the village on the south side of the island and have a bit of a look around. It only took about 20mins by foot to get to the village and motorbikes/bicycles are the only mode of transport to get around, you are constantly being beeped by bikes to get out of the way.
The first day we decided to relax and get over to Bounty Beach where all the rest of the dive centres and
restaurants are, its lively over this side and a lot more going on but we were happy that we were at Thresher Cove, it is tucked away and very private and only open to the people staying there (unless you want to pay to spend time there which is also an option). We laid in the sun on the first day and then organised our first couple of dives for the following day at Gato Island. We did two dives here at Gato Island and they were both pretty good, maybe too many people as there was a bit of a fight to get a look at a seahorse but other than that there were some nice species of Nudibranch that we hadn’t seen before and a few other little pretties we managed to get some photos of.
The third day we set off at 4.30am to Kemud Shoal in the hope to see Hammerheads, it was a long shot as the locals tell us they don't frequent the area until May but like a lot of other people at the resort we were under the impression they were about in April. We floated out in the blue for
about 20mins, seeing nothing but some fluoro plankton and a wee jellyfish that Sam managed to get some footage of. We then headed over to Monad Shoal to spot some Thresher Sharks, by this time it was a bit late in the morning (8.30am) and there was not much hope in spotting one this late in the day as they don't like hanging about in the light but we got lucky and managed to see one lovely Thresher that came pretty close to us.
Rising early again before the sun come up we set off for Monad Shoal in the search for the reason why we came here. It was crowded but that was to be expected as diving here you are almost 95% guaranteed to see Threshers and we weren’t disappointed, spotting one within minutes of settling down along the roped section. It was a wall of bubbles with all the divers down there but in the end we managed to see two sharks before our watches started to alarm us that we needed to start our ascent. On the way back up we scoured the walls looking for Nudis and other hidden treasures, the visibility was pretty
good around 12-15m and all up it was a fantastic dive even though it went extremely fast!
Malapascua is very well known for macro at most of its dive sites, we ventured out on a few more dives during our stay, lazed on the beaches and dined out every night usually in a different spot just to get about and see what the island has to offer. We were spoiled for choice for food and drinkies – as I usually eat vego only while on holidays to avoid getting sick we found there was no shortage of vego options and after last year in the Gili Islands when Sam fell ill from eating seafood he avoided meat most of the time as well. What was really surprising was the efforts put into conservation in this area, plastic straws are nowhere to be found on the island due to the devastating effects they have on the marine life and all bars/restaurants proudly displayed this fact.
Bohol Island After our wonderful island time we headed back to Cebu City where we were lucky to book a day trip on a ferry over to Bohol Island. Bohol is the tenth biggest
island in the Philippines, is located in the middle of the archipelago (the country has more than 7000 islands). It has a bit more than 4k square kilometers and is surrounded by others 75 small islands. After a two hour ferry ride to Tagbilaran Port, we were picked up by our guide for the day in our own private van and headed straight to the sanctuary to catch a glimpse of the world’s smallest primate, the Tarsier. These little guys are nocturnal so we all had to creep around making sure to be quiet and not to disturb them, we managed to get a few good piccys of them with their eyes open – precious little things. We were then transferred for lunch on a large (but very tacky) boat which sailed sown the Loboc River where we enjoyed a pretty impressive buffet of food whilst listening to a local muso belt out some tunes – not something we would normally partake in but it was all a part of the tour. After lunch we then proceeded to the landscape of the Chocolate Hills - The Chocolate Hills are a geological formation in the Bohol province of the Philippines. There
are at least 1,260 hills but there may be as many as 1,776 hills spread over an area of more than 50 square kilometres. They are covered in green grass that turns brown during the dry season, hence the name. it wasn’t as dry this time of year so as you can see in our photo there are a few chocolatey coloured hills but quite a few green ones as well. The last part of the tour consisted of seeing the Baclayon Church & Blood Compact Monument. The Blood Compact site was made in honor of a very important event in the Philippine history done between Miguel Lopez de Legazpi of Spain and Rajah Sikatuna of Bohol and was considered as the First Treaty of Friendship between two different races, religions, cultures and civilizations. It was a treaty of friendship based on respect and equality.
I feel this would not be the last time we visit the Philippines, though not as safe in the southern areas of the country there is still so much we would like to explore of this beautiful country above and under the water!
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