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.
But we found a good “sizzling” lunch in Maasin at a restaurant with friendly staff, curious about our trip.
That evening we stayed at John and Elvira’s beautiful fairly new hotel, Searendipity, just south of Ichon. John saved money for nine years working as a helicopter technician in Abu Dhabi so they could build their hotel.
I snorkeled there and saw hard corals and small fish, mostly damsels and anemonefish.
From John and Elvira’s place it was only about an hour ride south — near and occasionally on the coast — to Padre Burgos where over the course of about four hours we learned a number of things.
Most importantly, the whale sharks aren’t in Padre Burgos at all. They’re 25km SE near Sonok and Pintuyan on Panaon Island. There are resorts that offer whale shark day trips out of Padre Burgos, but these resorts aren’t actually in Padre Burgos either — check San Roque, Tangka’an, or Lungsoddaan instead (this is common in the Philippines where district names share the name of the district capital so when someone says it’s in Padre Burgos, is it in the town or simply somewhere in the district?). We went to all these places trying to understand what was going on. Various resorts offer trips, but next availability was one to three weeks out.
Padre Burgos is at the end of the peninsula, and anything on the Sogod Bay side (east side) was very windy when we were there (March). Snorkeling or even just hanging out did not look pleasant. Additionally both the accommodation and the whale shark tours were full and overpriced. Why wouldn’t anyone just continue on to Pintuyan? you’re wondering. Diving! There are lots of dive sites on Sogod Bay, and the operations run out of Padre Burgos (district).
It took some time to gather all the above information, and once we did, we made an easy call. We left. The catch is that the “25km SE to Sonok” is 120km by road! Sogod Bay is deeply inset between the two peninsulas of southern Leyte, and Pintuyan is at the southern end of another island, Panaon, at the SE mouth of Sogod Bay. The great news is the riding around Sogod Bay was fantastic.
We stayed that night in San Vincente. The owner had worked for 30 years for Otis elevator in Riyadh to buy a place here on Leyte. They made us a tasty dinner.
We spent about six hours the next day to end up just on the opposite side of the bay perhaps 10km from where we started! There was less traffic after rounding the peninsula at Padre Burgos (the day before). On this day we passed Sogod at the head of the bay, and I was worried we’d have more traffic from there as we went from yellow road 692 to red National Route 1 (aka Pan-Philippine Highway, aka Maharlika Highway). In fact there was even less traffic on the east side of beautiful Sogod Bay.
This section reminded me of riding on Kauai (but it’s been 15 years since I was there so I’m probably remembering wrong!).
A good lunch — jackfruit and other veggies — at a basic eatery right on the bay:
I noted that that afternoon was one of the hottest of the trip. Were we finally getting into the Filipino summer which everyone said would start in March? We found accommodation and more friendly people in Ilag.
The snorkeling at Ilag was decent. I saw a tiny moray eel (?), lots of cucumber worms, colorful wrasse, and various anemonefish. The water was “very cold” (my notes).
The next morning we came to Tagbak Marine Park which from above the water looks like an underwater paradise.
Indeed it was as good as any snorkeling I did in the Philippines — many pipefish, crinoids, damselfish, feather duster worms, and again cold water.
We crossed to Panaon Island via the bridge at Liloan where the current flows like a swift river. Apparently the diving is good because of a steady supply of nutrients.
The riding got a bit more hilly. The scenery was still good.
The good view and good food restaurant theme continued.
Pintuyan, finally — we made it to the click bait, I guess you’re thinking. First, another hotel with friendly owners, and this one had a nice rooftop terrace where I enjoyed coffee two mornings in a row. The view was good, and it was so cool (before sunrise) I almost wanted a jacket.
Don’t get too excited about the whale sharks. My photos are lousy. The experience, however, was fantastic. The operation is run out of Sonok though you sign up at the tourist office in Pintuyan. The boats are big enough for 1-3 tourists — the price is per boat with a bit extra for each additional person. Each boat has a motor, a driver, and a guide, and is accompanied by two other non-motorized boats. There’s a whale shark spotter in each of these boats, and of course the guide, Carlito, and our driver also worked as spotters. We started by towing the spotter boats away from the shore. Ferda still couldn’t snorkel because of her perforated ear drum, but she joined the tour hoping maybe to see something.
We weren’t in the boat five minutes when I was told to get ready — fins on, hat and sunglasses off, mask and snorkel in hand (or even on?). I was ready.
The guide said “go”, and I was in. Boom, a whale shark right in front of me!
A minute later it was gone. My notes: “Just that, wow, that was enough. I thought it was worth it. Ha! That was barely the beginning.” There was one other tourist boat like ours with a Spanish-Argentinian couple. Turns out they couldn’t swim so well or something. I don’t think they saw that first whale shark.
They definitely saw the second one though. I ended up swimming with it for a full 15 minutes. That was Carlito’s estimate, and I confirmed it with the timestamps on the photos. It wasn’t hard to keep up, but Carlito said sometimes they move much faster than that.
Here’s Carlito:
After that long encounter the other couple had had enough so it was just Carlito and me for the third encounter with a third different individual. Suddenly, however, there was noise and people everywhere. One of the large tour boats from Padre Burgos had shown up. When we got back in our little boat, Carlito asked me if I had had enough. I wasn’t sure, and Carlito could tell. Immediately the spotters found another one. We quickly swung our boat around, and Carlito and I swimming with a whale shark again. The large tour boat had to gather up all their people and then reposition which isn’t so quick because the boat is so much bigger. That meant that it was just us again for a bit until the hoards showed up. It was the same individual that we had already spent 15 minutes with.
Bye-bye, whale sharks. By the end of the morning Carlito had said to me two or three times, “you are very lucky today.” Certainly among my best wildlife days.
Thank you, whale sharks, Carlito, Virgilio (the program leader?), Sonok, Pintuyan, and everyone else who helps to make this such a great experience.
Another ferry, another island, on to Mindanao.
Very cool !!! Sounds and looks like a lot of fun.