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Untitled Our flight from Changi airport’s budget terminal was uneventful- we were lucky and our flight left on time at 12:20am. We arrived at Cebu and headed straight for the ferry wharf. We got a 6am Oceanjet ferry to Dumaguete, via Tagbilaran. From Dumagete we had a transfer arranged , after 12 hours on the road with little sleep, stinking hot and sweaty (and with lots of other people insisting THEY were picking us up) we were so grateful to see a man waving a sign with our names on it. He pointed us towards our “taxi” and for a second neither of us could see the air con vehicle we had imagined. WRONG.. some backpackers we are anyhow. We had a small jeepney style truck, with us riding in the back on bench seats with our luggage. We quickly fell out of Singapore thinking and into Philippines thinking. If it moves, it’s a taxi- for at least 10 people.
After an hour or so, half of it on sealed roads and then bumping along a dirt track with people waving and shouting hello as we passed we arrived at Kookoos Nest, a small cluster of beach cottages all in traditional
style, with a dive shop attached on it’s own little beach. Our cottage was nice, with a balcony overlooking the sea and sunset- of course it had a hammock too. It gave us much needed time to rest and relax after the hectic week of packing and leaving Singapore. We ended up staying 5 days and we dove on 3 of them. The most memorable day was taking a tiny outrigger boat over to Apo Island- crystal clear, flat calm water and suddenly we sighted a huge pod of dolphins. We puttered over and we were lucky enough to have 6 or so playing around our boat, bow riding. The diving was brilliant too, Apo had amazing visibility, some crazy currents (although we’re told that’s mild for Apo) and walls which went down forever. On the house reef and nearby to Kookoos Next, we saw lots of critters like frogfish and pipefish. The corals were healthy and teeming with fish which was nice as sometimes a house reef can be quite average.
Each night we tended to eat dinner with our hosts Nikki and Jamie so we haven’t progressed that far along our “traveling= getting fit and healthy” plan, but
hey. One night we wandered along the jetty, watching the phosphorescence in the water- literally hundreds of little sparks of light - and we were treated to two large thunder storms out to sea, not to mention a simply amazing amount of stars overhead. Without sounding cheesy, we were both awed by nature that night. We left Kookoos nest on Friday morning and headed via Dumaguete to Tagbilaran, Bohol. We bumped into a German couple, Dieter and Connie who we had met at Kookoos Nest, on the ferry and are traveling with them. We’re now in Alona Beach, Bohol which is full of beach resorts and divers- a bit of a shock after our week of isolation. Hope all is well with you, please stay in touch.
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hammocks!!
Wish we had been able to use ours but far too cold!! and no view.