Mabuhay! 10 days in the Philippines :)

Asia » Philippines
April 13th 2008

Published: June 1st 2008

Edit Blog Post

Simon and Heather

Sunset Donsol

More than made up for the rustic accommodation!

Hi! For those of you who were wondering / care yes we are still alive but have just been a bit slack with putting new blogs together (do have a good excuse though as we’ve been busy emigrating to Vancouver - 6 weeks ago now). Rather than just come straight here though we managed to wangle a nice little holiday in the Philippines enroute and so this is a brief summary of that!

After packing up, saying our goodbyes and leaving Australia we headed to Manila (capital of the Philippines) for a night before our onward journey to Donsol where hopefully we were going to get to swim with Butanding (or Whale Sharks to you and me). Nothing much to report about Manila and wouldn’t recommend it as a destination of choice - pretty bad poverty and never a good sign when your taxi / luggage gets checked for bombs before you can get into your hotel!

Unperturbed (well maybe a little bit perturbed) we get our flight the next day to Legaspi having heard no explosions of note the previous night. A further white-knuckle minibus ride later and we finally arrive in Donsol - the self proclaimed Whale

Welcome to Whaleshark capital of the world!

let's check in for our boat

Shark capital of the world! Not a whole lot happening in Donsol other than chasing big fish so we only had 1 full day here (probably for the best as our accommodation was at best “rustic” - H is still traumatised!).

Luckily our whale shark interaction went to plan and over the course of the morning we successfully located / snorkelled with 4 different sharks. The best of these encounters was with a huge 10 - 12m long one who we frantically kept up with for 15 mins as he cruised effortlessly below the surface feeding (thankfully not interested in eating anything bigger than plankton). Unfortunately didn’t have an underwater camera so no action shots but was an awesome experience, definitely worth the effort and highly recommended if you fancy it.

Our next week was spent at a lovely little resort on Negros Island, (http://www.thalatta-beach.com), which consisted of 10 bungalows right on the ocean with views across to Apo Island. The resort was pretty self contained with own bar, restaurant etc so the only time we left was by boat to go diving either along the coast or across to Apo. Some great diving here as the waters

Whale shark spotter

surrounding the island are designated as a marine reserve so saw lots of cool marine life and beautiful coral. Other than diving, eating, drinking and relaxing not much else to report - flew back to Manila for a night (back to afore mentioned hotel which we later discovered was used by US Forces personnel on their way home - hence the bomb checks and big bulls eye painted on the outside!) before our onward flight to Vancouver and into some unseasonably cold weather brrrrrr.

Vancouver blog to follow..................

Additional photos below

Photos: 23, Displayed: 23