Motorcycles diaries of Bohol

Dear Friends,

Last week Karin and I traveled to Bohol for 4 days to see some extraordinary things. Bohol is an extraordinary island for reasons that soon will become apparent! To give you an idea about the island of Bohol: Bohol is situated south-east of Cebu and with the ferry it is only 1 hour 45 minutes away. Bohol is a rather easy-going island where the influence from the Spanish rule is much more seen then on the island of Cebu. Most of the towns have Spanish names, for example Sevilla, Garcia-Hernandez, Valencia and so on. Another big difference, and probably the reason why the island of Bohol is easy-going, is its economy. Cebu is for its majority focused on the service-economy as well as export and trade while the island of Bohol is still a rather agricultural economy.We arrived in Tagbilaran, the capital of Bohol, in the late afternoon on Tuesday. When you get of the ferry immediately tricycle drivers try to win you over to take a ride with them to wherever you need to go. It is kinda annoying to be followed by like 10 to 20 people constantly asking you where you are going etc. but I guess its just something you have to except, people are just trying to make a living. We got to our hotel (Hotel La Roca), we spotted the hotel in Karin's lonely planet guide, with one of the tricycles and booked a room for one night. The hotel was pretty decent considering the low price, the rooms were more or less clean and the hotel even had a swimming pool!

On Wednesday we started our first journey. Karin came up with the idea to rent motorcycles, a great idea cause Bohol is just about the size at which motorcycles can quickly get you anywhere. We rented to motorcycles for 3 days (only 1500 pesos each! 25 euro), 2 Honda dual sport 125cc bikes. Not the biggest bikes nor the fastest but still quick dirt motorcycles/bikes with a top speed around 130 km/h (yes we tested that hehe) and definitely to big/heavy to be called a scooter. We got semi-automatic bikes, which was kinda nice since both Karin and I don't have our motor license. Semi-automatic means we still had to shift gears (N- 4) but no glutch was needed.
On our first tour we went along the coast on the south-side of Bohol towards the town of Loboc (40 km away). In Loboc we got the opportunity to do our first tourist-thing. We got on a boat around lunch time and for only 350 pesos we cruised on the Loboc-river with an excellent lunch and some cheesy country music on the background. A really great way to relax and just enjoy the scenery.

After we got back on our bikes we made our way to the chocolate hills (another 40 km). The chocolate hills are one of the top tourist attraction the Philippines has to offer or at least that's what they want the tourists to believe. The chocolate hills are really something quite extraordinary, an unusual geological formation of hills covered with green grass which turns to brown in the dry season, hence the name chocolate hills. Almost all the hills are shaped in a conical and symmetrical way which makes it really a weird sighting. The hills range between 40 meter and 120 meter in height and just popped randomly out of the ground in an area of about 50 square kilometer near a town called Carmen. After our encounter with the chocolate hills we made our way back to Tagbilaran.

On our second motorcycle day we decided to make our way to Anda which is completely on the other side of the island. However before we made our way to Anda we first went to visit the Tarsier (Spookdier) sanctuary. Which was a little more inland. The Philippine Tarsier is another extraordinary feature of the island of Bohol. The Philippine Tarsier is a tiny animal, measuring about 8 to 17 cm in length which makes it pretty hard to spot in the wild. It is an endangered species. The special feature of this smallest primate in the world is it ability to rotate its head almost 180 degrees to each side. This has to do with the fact that it's eyes are fixed in its skull, the eyes of the Philippine Tarsier cannot turn in their sockets.
After a 30 minutes video about the Philippine Tarsier in the main building of the sanctuary, we got to a small enclosed part of the forest with a local guide. We walking around and immediately spotted our first Tarsier! It really amazing to see these, kinda ugly, creatures in its wild habitat. In total we spotted 5 Tarsiers and had plenty of opportunities to take pictures, although flash was not allowed.
After our visit to the sanctuary we made our way back to the coast for a pretty long ride to Anda. While driving the coastal road on several occasions it reminded me of the 101 highway from San Fransisco to Los Angeles. Of course there are some differences, after all Bohol is part of an developing country while California is situated in the biggest and most powerful economy in the world. But both coastal roads have amazing views on the ocean while driving it.After a long day (I think we drove + 100 km) on the bike we finally got to Anda in the late afternoon. Anda seemed really like a sleepy fisherman town with hardly anything going. There are several resorts in the area and we decided to go to the Dapdap resort. A real Philippine resort for karaoke machines on the beach and a restaurant with surprising interpretations for the things we ordered. In fact when we order fried chicken with some fries we got rice and some traditional chicken dish. Nonetheless the resort was a really great get-away place to chill with a nice beach.On our last day (friday) we got up early and made our way back to Tagbilaran. We took to time to stop every once in a while to take some pictures and we had a nice lunch in one of the bigger towns of the island Jagna. Somehow our way back to Tagbilaran felt a lot shorter then our way to Anda so we were quite surprised when we got near Tagbilaran around 13:00. We decided to make a little d-tour on the Pangloa peninsula. This is in fact part of the Bohol island where most tourist come. The bigger resorts and better beaches are on this small peninsula. We wanted to catch the ferry at 16:10 but that ferry decided not to go since there were to few people around so we had to wait for the 17:30 ferry. We got back to Cebu around 19:30. Back to the reality of research.