The end of a wonderful three months in the Philippines. Where to spend the last week? We were at the southern end of Panaon Island so the first thing to do was get a ferry from Benit to Surigao City on Mindanao. From Surigao City, however, ferries go all over the place. We decided on the surfing island of Siargao.
First we had a short ride on Mindanao from Lipata to Surigao City where we found an ear doctor who loved to bicycle and had even completed an Ironman! Ferda’s ear was healing well, he said, but she still wasn’t allowed in the water.
Banahaw
We enjoyed Surigao City’s waterfront night market,
Leyte treated us well — friendly people, pleasant riding, tasty food, good places to stay, and — one of the highlights of our trip to the Philippines! — whale sharks.
When we were doing a little research for our ride in southern Cebu (which never happened), I read about visiting the whale sharks near Oslob. Sounds like a disaster of feeding the sharks and too many tourists. That’s when I learned about whale sharks at Padre Burgos. Our goal in Leyte was to go see the whale sharks there. The ride from Hilongos to Padre Burgos via the provincial capital of Maasin was often narrow with too much traffic.
Wow, nice bicycle touring on Bohol. At times we were on main roads with too much traffic, and at times the roads were in pretty poor condition. But overall I wondered if Bohol didn’t have the most “best views/km” of anywhere we visited in the Philippines. And certainly those kms involved considerably less effort than what Jeff and I were doing inthecordillera.
We arrived late in Tagbilaran on the ferry from Larena, Siquijor, and the next morning ran into Jon and Tarikak (?) from Salt Lake City on their new foldable Bromptons.
I left Jeff in Dumaguete on Negros where he had booked a day with a bird guide up in the mountains/lakes/forest to the west of the city. I was in a bit of a hurry to get to Siquijor because Ferda was arriving on a ferry from Cebu that evening. Siquijor Island is an entire province, but it’s a small one — the third smallest of Philippines’ 82 provinces. The ferry from Dumaguete dropped me at the Town of Siquijor, and I had to get to Larena to meet Ferda. It wasn’t far. The most exciting thing I saw along the way was the church at Banban.
The next morning Ferda and I rode to Sandugan since I had read that that was the best snorkeling on Siquijor. The visibility was poor. The best photo I took is this:
From the very north of the Philippines Jeff and I traveled pretty quickly rather far south — from 19°N to 9°N. We started with a 10-hour overnight bus ride from Pagudpud to Manila. Those big pink Florida buses that look like they have huge baggage holds — well, somehow they don’t. There were two other cyclists (with unloaded racing bikes) on the same bus, and it took some effort to get all of our bicycles into the hold.
Jeff and I had time in Manila to visit Ermita Mall. We bought snorkeling gear at Decathlon, and I bought an action camera while Jeff treated himself to a shave, the thought being that a beard inhibits a good mask seal. In the evening we got on the ferry, and it was midnight ~30 hours later when we arrived in Dumaguete. That’s a lot faster than bicycling!
Throughout the Philippines we came across many rooster farms. Here’s an example:
These farms are for raising fighting cocks. Each animal is tied up and has its own shade structure presumably so they don’t kill each other before game day. South of Dumaguete Jeff and I stopped at the Dauin Cockpit Stadium and learned that matches are scheduled for Sundays. When we were checking in for the ferry from Manila to Dumaguete, we learned that it costs five times more to bring a fighting cock on the ferry than a regular chicken.
