Tarsiers and Chocolate Mountains

 January 16th – Cebu to Bohol

My alarm goes off at 4:30 and after pulling on some clothes I go next door to check on John. He has made it home and stumbles to the door and asks if he can go back to bed? I give him the bad news that we need to leave in 20 minutes and ask him if he had a good time on his date and what time he got back home?  “Yes….I had a good time and I got back about midnight; I’ll tell you about it later…please can I go back to bed?”

The Cebu Harbor at Dawn

Waiting for the Ferry

Cebu Ferry Terminal at Dawn

Our Seats on the Ferry

We catch a 5:00 A.M. taxi to the port terminal. Joe buys our tickets, regretfully buying the cheapest class seats for the two hour trip to Bohol. ($400 pesos each or about $9)  We check our luggage, go through security and listen to blind musicians perform for the waiting passengers. What is it with blind musicians and blind masseuse’s in waiting room terminals? They are reasonably talented and their favorite song seems to be John Denver’s, Take Me Home Country Road. We tip them as we board the ferry and head upstairs to find our seats; at the rear of the ship above where the diesel exhaust puffs out and across from the toilets. It’s not an ideal combination on an empty stomach. At the front of our rear section is a door leading to the enclosed business class section with cushioned reclining seats and a television. Although I wonder what the ticket price is for business class, I don’t asphyxiate on the exhaust and the two hours pass quickly as I catch up on this blog.

The ferry docks at 8:00 A.M; we disembark, collect our luggage and see a guide holding up a sign printed with Shoshuku Bobroskie.  We follow our guide, Kathy, to the waiting van and begin our tour with a stop at the Blood Compact Shrine, a memorial of the friendship between the Spaniards and the Fillipinos. We are hungry and more interested in the adjoining upscale hotel and restaurant and we ask Kathy if we can take time for breakfast before continuing on our tour? John, Joe and I order  simply; coffee, eggs and toast but Art orders an egg(s) benedict which takes a very long time to cook and although delicious and beautifully presented is egg benedict singular, not plural.

Breakfast in Bohol

Egg Benedict

We drive towards the tarsier reserve that is supposedly open 364 days a year, but for some reason it is closed today so our destination is the Tarsier conservation center instead.  Bohol Island is beautiful and pristine and not yet overrun with tourists although Joe, who visited ten years ago, tells us that most of the construction is new. We drive through secondary forests of bamboo and red mahogany and past ever so green rice fields, fringed with banana and coconut palms. The traffic is relatively light, although there are the usual scooters, jeepneys and buses frequenting the road. We arrive at the conservation center and walk a misty pathway where a dozen tarsiers are on view on their private platforms tucked into the trees. They are not chained and are solitary nocturnal creatures. We are cautioned to be quiet so as not to stress these tiny, wide eyed and alien fingered Tarsiers. 

Tarsier, Marty's Photo

Do Not Pet the Tarsiers

Tarsier, Conservation Center Photo

Tarsier, Marty's Photo

Our next stop on our tour is the Butterfly Farm. Throughout my travels, I have visited countless butterfly farms with jeweled chrysalis’s and alien looking caterpillars on view. This one is not much different except for our personable guide who allows me to hold a prickly, sticky footed caterpillar. Butterflies flit from flower to flower decorating the breeze with colorful flashes. Our guide positions me a few feet in front of a large glass pannel embossed with butterfly wings and standing on the opposite side holding my camera, he tells me to jump and snaps a photo, resulting in a photograph where I am inches off the ground and wearing gossamer butterfly wings. Quite fun! 

Caterpillar

Red Torch Flower

Picture Perfect

Marty takes Flight!

Bohol is most famous for it’s Chocolate Hills, an unusual geological formation of rounded hills, seemingly hundreds of them, extending as far as I can see like oversized gopher mounds. We drive to the visitor center and climb the crumbling cement stairway up to the view point. During the rainy season, the Chocolate Hills are “mint flavored,” covered with lush green foliage. In the summer, they are reported to be a golden brown.

Bohol Chocolate Hills

Art, John, Joe and Marty

It is lunch time and I am looking forward to our scheduled jungle river boat cruise but when we board a tourist laden barge with an electric guitarist for entertainment and a picked over buffet I am disappointed. The food is passable but I was expecting a serene commune with the river not a rockaous party boat.  The river is wide and a muted emerald green color with lush palms and ferns growing along it’s banks. To me, the color of the river seems beautiful but John leans over and tells me that water color is because of fertilizer contamination. We do not see any wildlife, except for what is on board our party boat. Half way through the “cruise” we stop at a recreated “Pilippino Village” an extremely politically incorrect presentation consisting of drumming natives and dancers in grass skirts. I take one photo but am too embarrassed to take more.

Bohol River

Art, Bohol River Cruise

Party Boat, Bohol River Cruise

Native Village Embarassment

I’m not sure that we needed to stop at the Bohol Reptile Zoo, but we do and wander the sad facility of caged reptiles. For a price, one can pay to have the 12 foot albino python wrapped over one’s shoulders, but I  decline recollecting a story my friend Tabra told me just last week. The grounds keeper at a resort hotel in Bali rushed to the screams of several guests when they spotted a large python slithering across the manicured lawn. He calmed the guests and to prove how harmless the large python was, picked it up and draped it around his neck and shoulders. The python strangled him on the spot.

Albino Python and Reticulated Boa

Art as a Tarsier

Our final stop for the day is the historic Baclayon Church and museum.

Baclayon Church Bohol

Jo and John lighting candles 

We are staying at Flushing Garden Resort Hotel, on Panglao Island and the just the name sounds promising. The hotel is a thirty minute drive from Bohol and is at the end of a gravel road overlooking a pristine beach. My first impression is hopeful but our rooms are at the back of the property behind the tennis court and they are dark and without a view. The layout of the hotel is odd with a confusing network of pathways and terraces and there are life size dinosaur sculptures on the grounds. I am mildly amused by the dinosaurs but there are no other apparent guests. (Perhaps the tyranosaurus has eaten them?) Art rests, John dives into the very pretty hotel pool and explores the beach in front of our hotel. Joe and I settle down at the open air hotel restaurant and relax. It’s been a long and full day and we are all tired and there seem to be no other restaurants or hotels in our vicinity so we have drinks and dinner as prisoners in our beach resort hotel. Mark is our waiter and gives excellent service but the food is mediocre. Dinner and drinks for the four of us come to $2600 pesos (about $35) and Art miscalculates the tip and leaves just $115 pesos. (Tomorrow, he will make amends and hand Mark an additional $200 peso tip.)

I read a troublesome e-mail from Alisha; Show Off, our sweet and funny 13 year old bearded dragon is not well. It is hard to fall asleep, worrying about Show Off and wishing I could snuggle and comfort my sick lizard. I sleep poorly.