Wonders of Bohol

July 5, 2012. After our adventures on Panglao and Balacasag Islands, including getting lost trying to walk from the beach to the hotel, our day had just begun. We hired a guide for the day to take us to the great tourist spots around the island of Bohol.

Loboc River.  Traveling east from Tagbiliran City, the Loboc River was our first stop. The Loboc River is in the southern part of Bohol Island, just north of the town of Loay. Loboc is a quaint tourist town, and our driver pointed out the centuries-old buildings and churches along the way. The Loboc river cruise on the floating restaurant was highly recommended, so we took the advice.  Our second lunch was a buffet of grandeur delicacies and live entertainment, while we floated on the wide green river between Loboc and Busay Falls to the north. Suddenly, a dock came into view, and on the dock sat a long line of pink-costumed men and ladies singing and playing ukuleles. As the boat sidled up against the dock, we were serenaded with traditional songs, and some of us disembarked to join the minstrels. I haven’t played much ukulele, if ever, but when one was handed to me, I watched, I imitated, and I jammed on a tune or two. Then our floating restaurant/dance party brought us back to our waiting driver in Loboc. We were ready for our next attraction.

Tarsier Sanctuary. I am not big on zoos, but I am big on recovery of threatened and endangered species, even if that means keeping them in captivity for safety and propagation. The Philippine tarsier is the smallest primate in the world. It looks like a monkey and is roughly the size of a tiny bat. Its body is small enough to fit snug in the palm of someone’s hand, while its large brown eyes are the dominating feature of its little face. It exists only in a few of the Philippine Islands and is in danger of extinction. The Philippine Tarsier Sanctuary, near the town of Corella on the west side of Bohol Island, is run by the Philippine Tarsier Foundation, a non-profit organization established for the conservation of the tarsier and its habitat. We visited the netted enclosure and took a small self-guided tour, with park personnel available to point out the 10 resident tarsiers resting in the trees. They are so small, they would have otherwise been impossible to spot. A nocturnal species, most of them were asleep, but we could see them well enough. Since we were trying to cover all of Bohol and its ancillary islands in one day, we did not take the time to hike the more wild side of the sanctuary. It’s on my bucket list.  

Chocolate Hills. The Chocolate Hills National Monument is something that is not to be missed. We were driving north through the center of the island on the Loay interior road towards the town of Carmen, passing through typical island scenery filled with green foliage, small towns with open-walled stores, motorcycles zipping around, and old men walking oxen along the road or leading them through the soggy fields as they tilled the soil by dragging heavy wooden plows. Then suddenly, as if we were in a Dr. Seuss illustration, hundreds of treeless conical shaped hills surrounded us, dusted with different shades of low-lying grasses, brown dust, and rock. A fog hung over the Chocolate Hills as if to accentuate their drama. Our driver took us up one of the hills, and dropped us to finish ascending its height up a long flight of limestone-rock stairs. We reached the top, rang the bell, and took in the view of our hill’s surrounding brethren, limestone formations that had once heaved up from the sea and then were carefully molded by thousands of years of rain, wind, and flowing water, resting on a bed of greenery. For miles we passed by these hills that accentuate the center of the island and then thin out as they get closer to the southern shore.

Mabini. After a long day of touring, our driver was kind enough to give us a lift to the far eastern side of Bohol and off the beaten path, to bring us to the municipality of Mabini. Mabini is about 5 or more miles off of the main highway that circles the island, and sits on the northern tip of a small delta of wetlands, bays, and river-like channels that are connected to a larger bay of the Bohol Sea. Farming, fishing, and agriculture are the town’s mainstay, and open-air stores line the main street. We were honored guests of the Mayor, and were offered accommodation in her guest house, complete with running water, flush toilet, air-conditioning, and internet. Meals of home-cooked local cuisine – mostly rice, pork, chicken, fish, seafood, eggs, and always some novel treat – were offered to us in the tiled outdoor kitchen. Our hosts were warm, kind, and gracious. A night out with our new family at the bring-your-own-tequila karaoke bar topped off a very delightful first evening in Mabini. In the days that followed, we were immersed in the culture of planning, organizing, and executing the logistics of a wedding. Completing the wedding “tasks” involved visiting with numerous relatives of the bride; taking rides on the back of motorcycles to the neighboring towns; making a whole slew of awesome friends; and sitting under the shade of coconut trees, sipping fresh coconut juice while harvesting the fruit. All of the food was fresh, and the heat-of-the-day siestas were restful. Music blasted festively from various homes, and people walked or biked on the streets, always friendly and social to one another—a welcomed contrast to our American society of closed-in vehicles driving into closed-in garages, and formal invitations or events required to just hang out with others. The week culminated into a beautiful wedding at City Hall. The happily betrothed couple accompanied us back to Tagbiliran City, to start the first leg of our journey home and spend our final evening on Bohol riding in trikes and partying in one of the nightlife spots in the city. And of course my husband the foodie had to try the balut.

Panglao and Balacasag Islands

A twenty-two hour flight took us from San Francisco through Taipei , Taiwan, and to Manila of the Philippine Islands. The purpose for the trip was a wedding, but beyond that, to step out as far east as Asia, the farthest I had ever been across the globe. Manila was not our destination, however; it was a layover, and a sardine sandwich at the airport was not a very good culinary start. We boarded another small plane that took us to Tagbilaran City, Bohol. Bohol is the island we would explore for one day as tourists, and live on for the next four days as family.

Panglao. On July 4, we landed in the very small Tagbilaran airport and were greeted by my brother, his beautiful bride-to-be, her children, and cousins. A taxi-van took us all to the small island of Panglao, attached to Bohol by only a bridge. Bohol is in the Central Visayas, just east of the larger island of Cebu. If you think of Bohol as shaped like a turtle, Panglao Island is its tail, extending out a bit to the southwest between the Cebu Strait and Bohol Sea. We all settled into the Lost Horizon Resort Annex and walked down to Alona Beach for seafood dinner, and dined at plastic tables in the sand, watching the tourists and partiers walk the boardwalk-style beach lined with restaurants and bars, live music, and fire dancers. Better than fireworks in America.

First thing in the morning, we were greeted by a boatman for an excursion out on the sea to see dolphins. We boarded a pontoon-style fishing boat and sailed south into the Bohol Sea. The dolphins came and started breaching and showing off, except for the minor problem of about 20 similar tourist boats turning their courses full-speed ahead toward the pod. At which point the dolphins had enough of the gaping apes and their big floating contraptions and disappeared. So our boatmen/fishermen called it good and made a westerly swing toward Balacasag Island.

Balacasag. As Balacasag Island came into sight, at first I saw the lighthouse jetting up from the green center. Approaching closer, we headed toward the shallow reefs surrounding the island’s beaches, and joined a number of other fishing/tourism boats docked in front of a beach lined with huts. We were welcomed warmly by the fisherman’s family and their large line of handmade jewelry and trinkets they were overly eager to sell. And while the boatman took us to the island’s dive sanctuary for a bit of snorkeling for Chris and viewing fish from the boat through crystal-clear water for me, the villagers were busy cooking us up an 11 AM lunch of fresh-caught fish and blue crab. All for an extra fee of course, but a small splurge for us is like a week’s pay for them. Balacasag Island is one of the tiniest islands in the Philippines, just about 5 miles southwest of Panglao. It’s hard to make a living, and the wife never in her life left Balacasag. Never went as far as Panglao. We, however, were on our way to our next adventure. That is after the boatmen fixed some busted spark plugs to revive the dead engine while floating on the sea.

That makes 4 out of the 7,107 Philippine Islands I have been to; only 7,103 to go.

Route 33 - Not just I-5 Exits

Most people get their kicks on Route 66, but on a nice day in April, we got ours on California State Route 33. We were traveling from Vacaville to Los Angeles for family business, and decided to take the scenic route: from the start of Highway 33 to its end. The goal was to stay off the freeway, and the drive started with some nice bay-delta action to get us to Tracy where Hwy. 33 starts. Highway 4 to Byron Road took us out of the Delta and through Tracy, where our Hwy. 33 adventure began in the town of Vernalis.
We were now in the California heartland between Interstate 5 on the west and the San Joaquin River to the east. We were surrounded by orchards and other aesthetically pleasing agricultural ventures, then passed through the small town of Westley. Known previously as only the name of an exit off the fast-moving I-5, Westley was actually a town, with businesses and people and schools, not just a sign. So was Patterson and Crows Landing, Newman, and Gustine. Newman had more to offer than just being a real live town. It had a lunch stop at El Campestre Dos, serving a Mexican shrimp dish that was just short of amazing, along with a refreshing horchata. At Santa Nella, Hwy. 33 zigs across I-5, leaving the orchards, to join the brown grassland characteristic of I-5's lack of scenery. Just past the large channel of water that joins the San Luis Reservoir-O'Neill Forebay with millions of thirsty people in southern California, 33 meets up with Hwy. 152 and zags back east into Los Banos. Back and forth, the highway crosses I-5 to the east and west, alternating orchards with grassy hills, until it finally leaves the Interstate at the Fresno-Coalinga Road and heads into the western hills.

The eastern foothills of the coast range west of I-5 are grassy and rocky, and the road is windy, until it flattens out into a small valley of dried-out fallow farmland. It keeps going south, alternating through valleys and hills, bringing us into California's oil fields. We were suddenly surrounded by oil pumps, known as "grasshoppers", and various other oil-extraction contraptions, as we rolled through the city of Taft and into Maricopa. The grasshoppers at one time were eclectic, some painted as animals. They were all the same now, and the grasshopper-art-of-the-past hopefully now sits in an oil museum. Dinner time in Maricopa, we decided to settle for the night at the Motel 8, along with the sleepy oil workers, and save the mountainous part of the ride for the morning.

In the early morning we were going west and south, past the spectacular Carrizo Plains, Cuyama, and New Cuyama, and into the beautiful Los Padres National Forest. Took in the views overlooking the valleys to the north before winding down into the coast range town of Ojai.

The last time I visited Ojai, I was a small child listening to Krishnamurti speak to a crowd of hippies with long hair and painted bodies. Now, some forty-odd years later, Ojai offered a delightful breakfast at Eggs N Things in the Ojai Valley shopping center and a coffee from Starbucks. That was all I needed to take the remainder of Highway 33 into Interstate 101 to Los Angeles. Times have changed, but not my childhood-born enjoyment of travel to places like this.