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Published: December 24th 2008
We've done some real traveling since our last blog. From Alona Beach we moved to a nearby village and had 3 nights at a real nice French owned place, Alumbung. The cottages were two story and really nice. Steves favorite thing was the outside shower in our own tropical garden!
After a month of beach life we fancied a change so headed for the jungle on mainland Bohol. A short boat ride up the Loboc river (we felt like Bruce Parry on the Amazon) brought us to Nuts Huts, a place we'd heard a lot about. Nuts Huts is a hippie health retreat in the middle of nowhere. We were greeted halfway up the 250 steps to the reception by a 1 meter long iguana (between the eyes Eric!) very scary! The owner suggested that we follow the activity schedule in the manual, this included a 1000m swim, a 4 hour bike ride and all day treks in the jungle, We opted for a less strenuous activity and hired a moped to check out the Chocolate Hills, the country's biggest tourist attraction.
There are around 1200 hills covering the landscape which the locals believe are the calcified tears of
a giant whose heart was broken by the death of a mortal lover. Whatever they are they were pretty impressive.
The next day after a tough night in the jungle we decided that it wasn't for us. Maja was up all night as the jungle animals came out to party on the top of our cabin, it was soooo loud! We don't even know what was out there but there was some weird noises! On our way back to civilization we visited the local tarsier sanctuary. Tarsiers are the worlds smallest primates and look like tiny monkeys at around 10cm tall with huge eyes and human looking fingers. It was nice to see them in their own private jungle and nit in cages.
We had a couple of nights in Cebu and splashed out on Xmas presents at the mall..new swimming shorts for Steve and new vest and shorts for Maja. Our next destination was Bantayan Island where we had 2 weeks accommodation booked for Christmas.
The first leg was a three hour bus ride to the northern tip of Cebu. The bus was a real experience in itself. It was jammed full of people and animals.
Maja was sat next to a chicken! no pre-packed battery farmed breast here, everyone has live chickens until just before dinner! We were a bit disappointed with Bantayan, especially the hotel we had booked, Tickety Boo Resort, which was anything but Tickety Boo, which catered for old fat western guys with their young mail-order local girls..oh dear!
The village itself was nice and we toured the island one day on a moped which was nice as there were no cars. The kids from every village we passed ran out to shout hello and merry x-mas to the strange foreign people! After 3 nights we decided we wanted a place with more life and headed back to Cebu on the ferry, bound for Malapascua Island.
It was a 2 hour trike ride to the Port of Maya, but we had a 1 hour pit stop to fix a puncture which was actually quite fun as the whole village came out to help and get a look at the strange foreigners. We got a small boat to Malapascua and couldn't believe our luck as we hopped off onto a beautiful white beach and saw our resort right there. Our last
Christmas Party
Christmas spit-roast pig.minute reservation turned out to be the best yet, we're writing this sat on our big porch of our huge native style nipa hut right on the beach..its a hard life!
Malapascua is hailed as Boracay, 10 years ago, and we can see why. The beach is lovely with maybe a dozen small resorts in a row, instead of the endless bars and restaurants of Boracay. We've just bought bananas and the worlds sweetest mango's from a lady walking the beach with a fruit stall on her head 😊
So, we're now 5 weeks into our Philippine adventure and what have we learnt? When we first came to Boracay the owner of Frendz Resort told us we'd messed up coming here first as this was the best place in the Philippines. Other islands were less developed, quiet and only had a few hours of electricity and cold water. nothing really to do except lay on the beach. We smiled and thought " that's just what we were looking for!". Even though we've been to some amazing places around the Visays we've realised that we need more than a beautiful beach, we need people, an atmosphere, good choice of
restaurants, a bit of development and things to do. We now think he was right all along! Boracay gave us all of this and has the best beach to boot!
We've also learned that cities here should be avoided at all costs, and if you have to go for transit etc, then stick to the malls. The jungle is only for people who are not scared of animals and creepy crawlers or hippies looking for the inner peace! Alona Beach on Panglao is really nice and well worth a visit as well as here in Malapascua.
Some other good things about the Philippines: Mango's are fantastic, and can be eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner, the people here are really, really friendly and diving here is a must!
All in all Boracay deserves its title as the number 1 island! So we've managed to find a cheap flight on Boxing Day back there for New Year..yihooo! We'll spend our last 14 days in the Philippines where we spent our first 14 days, with our friends at Frendz haha!
Happy Christmas / God Jul everyone!!!!
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Anna
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Hey guys :) Nice to hear from you its been a while!!! Suppose you have been cramming lots of adventures in though :) Glad you're having a good time and that you'll be having xmas with your lil 'frendz' family in Boracay :) Waaaaaay more exciting than Bet's xmas dinner lol. Hope you have a really good Christmas and you manage to get some kind of replica dinner lol. Will let Mum and Dad know that you've posted this as I'm at work at the mo! Xmas bloody eve!! Finishing early and heading out with the girls though :) I slammed the door in Cassie and Clares face last night because I thought they were carol singers! haha! They only came to give me xmas cards lol. Mum and Dad are going to Jane's Santas supper tonight so I'll tell them to add comments whilst they are there then you'll hear a lil something from everyone :) Happy Christmas guys missing you lots and lots. Loadsa love lil sis x x x x x