Holiday on a motorbike

We took a week off to explore a bit more of the Philippines. After all, up to now we hadn't seen more than Coron were we only explored the wrecks under water 6 months ago, Manila and Dauin.

Since we are already renting a bike anyway, a holiday on motorbike was an easy solution. We started on Negros, the island Dauin is on and drove 180 km up to San Carlos, explored the nearby hills and then took the ferry from San Carlos to Toledo, on the is land of Cebu. From Toledo we drove to Balamban were we crossed the mountains to Cebu City. From Cebu we drove down to the ferry in Lilo-an and back to Dauin again. We drove some 500 km and only had a flat tyre twice. With a gps on the phone it is pretty easy to plan your trips and see where you are in a big city. You can always stop your bike somewhere to check were you are. All the traffic stops randomly anyway.

It is nice to tour to the country side, we were the only foreign tourists during most of the route and some people were pretty surprised to see us passing by on a motorbike. The roads were well paved, except with part of our tour through the hills in San Carlos were we drove some 30 km off road or on roads that were once paved (a very long time ago).

We admired rice paddies, the 'small' Chocolate hills near San Carlos and some wonderful mountain views on three different day trips and the Tumalog waterfalls near Oslob, as well as the many villages and views along the road.

We planned to go to Bohol as well, but in the end we decided to do that some other time and rent a moped on Bohol instead of taking it with us on the ferry. There are several ferries were you can take your bike or car, but depending on the size of the ferry there is an interesting trajectory before you can put your bike on the boat. First, there is the normal charge for passengers and bike. Already the bike is twice as expensive as a passenger. Then some police checks your id. There a helpful guy was assigned to us who showed which offices we had to visit to pay some additional fees. Harbor fee, small bribe for some person, another fee in some office at the other side of the harbor, some more fee..., pay the helpful guy who made you pay all the fees, which adds up to more than three times the price of a passenger. Interestingly enough, the other ferry from Lilo-an was much easier. You just pay once and the fee includes one person.

Riding a bike was not that hard, except in Cebu city with all the jeepneys, tricycles, trucks and normal cars. On a motorbike you weave in and out of the waiting lines and try to maneuver to the front. By now Dolf is quite an experienced driver. Driving in Manila is still a bridge too far though.

It is no problem if something is wrong with your bike during the trip. Along the road there are vulcanizers, or mechanics every few kilometers. They have an interesting way of setting up their shop. It is usually a bamboo shed and most of their tools are self made from different truck or car parts. Everything will be reused, so they throw nothing away. The tire is fixed by putting some sticky rubber on the hole and then heat that part either with a self made ironer which they put on the aluminum foil of a packet of cigarettes or they lit some oil in a big sparking plug which belonged to a truck. Then they put the whole construction under a bench screw made from the shaft of a truck and let the whole contraption stay there until the rubber is firmly attached to the tire. And they ask the shocking amount of 30 pesos (75 euro cents) for the repair, which was probably still too high.

Cebu city is much nicer than Manila, because it is smaller (800.000 people) and it is surrounded by hills on three sites and the ocean on the other site. Downtown is a bit crappy, but we had a nice hotel in the northern part of the city close to the mountains. We visited a beautiful Taoist temple in the hills, the most important basilica (devotion of Filipinos has a complete other dimension if you compare them with catholic Dutch people; they kiss and touch all important statues when they walk by) and they Yap house, a wooden house in its original state from the 17 century from a Chinese merchant.

We also bought some electronical parts for Dolf. That was quite a challenge. We knew in what neighborhood we had to be, but walking in 35 degrees, with an overpowering sewage smell in your nose and honking cars everywhere make your senses a bit overstimulated. We did find what we were looking for, so I was happy that we could mingle ourselves in the traffic once more. The traffic looks extremely chaotic as you look to it from the side, but when you're right in the middle you actually discover some system where traffic lights and advice from police offers do not necessarily have to be followed.

We were back in Dauin after 6 days, so we could join in a dive trip to Aligay, a small island before the bigger island of Mindanao (there is no main land in the Philippines, so I always have to talk in islands). We did some nice dives on pristine reefs (divers hardly come here, because it is pretty remote). We spend the night on the island. The group was pretty big (20 people), so we din't have enough tents. That would not have been a problem because we slept on a grassy area, but the weather did not agree with us. In the middle of the night it started to rain big time. We scrambled into one of our tents, were two people were sleeping and we managers to sleep in the 2 person tent with 6 people, 3 in the inner tent and 3 in the outer tent. Fortunately it stopped raining after an hour and because we were lying so nice and cozy our sleeping bags actually dried overnight. If you look on the facebook page of Bongo Bongo divers, you will see a nice picture of a sleeping Dolf with his head sticking out from under the tent (6 people was a bit too much after all).

We saw pilot whales and dolphins near the boat both on our way to the island and back.

Now it is time to do something useful again, so I am sitting outside with 35 degrees and sweating behind my laptop while a big ventilator tries to get the temperature down. As long as you just sit quietly or drive on a motorbike the temperature is ok. In these 6 days our coloring improved amazingly, even with factor 45 sunscreen.

We already have some pictures of the trip on Dolfs facebook. We'll add some more and add them to the blog as well.

Treasure hunting

We spend last week in Dauin, a village between Dumaguete (the big city) and Zamboanguita (the probable MCP location). We are renting a moped so we can see something of the surrounding and stay at Bongo Bongo Divers, a nice place close to the beach.

Of course the renting of the moped did not entirely go as planned. We drove from Dumaguete to Dauin, and after a few kilometers I started to smell burned plastic. There was nothing wrong while driving, so we just continued. In the end, it turned out that the back brake was a bit stuck and during the 15 km drive we actually achieved in demolishing part of the brake. The smell was the rubber of the brake which was totally gone. Luckily, the shop found it no problem to drive over to our place and change the moped.

Today we drove to the Siit arboretum near Zamboanguita, which is one of the options for MCP's location, together with Soren and Helle, our future 'bosses'. It was nice to visit the location. It is very green, with a lot of trees and situated on the top of a small hill. That's also the more difficult part, because the see is 1-2 km downhill and part of the road needs some construction before we will be able to drive up and down all day with the volunteers and the dive gear.

We marked out the places were the huts for the volunteers and us should be build and now we are hoping that the constructor is indeed going to build two huts in the coming two weeks as he promised to do. It would be nice if he keeps his promise so that we can officially start with MCP, but of course you never know what's going to happen. If this will be MCP future location, we will be very nicely situated. The huts are in the middle of a large garden, with lots of (fruit) trees and it is in the middle of a rural area. Along the main 'highway' are a lot of rice fields and waterbuffalos and it is less populated the further you are from Dumaguete.

Dunaguete itself is a friendly city with a 100.000 inhabitants, a movie theater, a big supermarket with all the western necessities (yoghurt, muesli, cheese) and a mall with enough American restaurants when you do not want to eat rice or noodles for a change. Luckily, Filipinos eat bread as well, so there are plenty of bakeries, although the bread is mainly sweet.

We also did some diving near Dauin. The quality of the reefs is good, except for the parts hit by the typhoon Yolanda last year. Visibility is quite good, especially in the morning and certainly much better than the usual 5m in Cambodia. There are a lot of different fish and also large fish as well, which is an indicator that there is not much overfishing. Which is good, since this is a Marine Protected Area, which means that people can only fish in a sustainable way. No dynamite or cyanide fishing, or big trawlers which destroy the bottom with their nets. Also no particluar fish or invertebrate species who is dominating the area, which is also a sign of a healthy reef. In Cambodia the bottom was crowded with diadema sea urchins, but here you see them very little.

If we want to go diving, we can just grab a tank and walk into the water. The reef is only a small swim away. We also went to Apo Island, a famous place for diving in the Philippines and in viewing distance of where we stay. Unfortunately, half of the dive sites are destroyed by the typhoon, but the other half of the reef is still intact and beautiful with coral gardens and lots of fish and green turtles. I think we have broken our turtle record on one dive, because at one point every five minutes we saw another turtle.

Yesterday we went on an interesting quest. Supposedly, between Apo Island and the big island Mindanao there is a hidden shoal, an elevation of sand in the ocean. Very few people know it exists and supposedly it is very beautiful down there. Fisherman told (of course) different stories of the location, the depth and what you can catch here. A 100 kg grouper, for instance. Two local fisherman joined us on the boat and with 15 people we went looking if we could find this secret place. Including some rough navy maps with depth data Dolf was able to collect and 50 m of rope and 40 m of anchor line but without depth finder (stuck at customs in China) we started our exploration.

The first group went down on a location which was pointed out to us by a fisherman sitting in his small boat fishing in the middle of nowhere. After 55 m of descending they saw the bottom, but it was very deep. There was a slope going up though. Group 2 went down a bit further up the slope, we were part of the third group and still could not reach the bottom, because it was at 70m. The rest of the area is 300 m deep, so maybe we did find the shoal after all. No big fish or other interesting things to see of course.

It is interesting though to go down the anchor line into the 'blue nothing'. When you look up you can see much more compared to when you look down. 50m down, we were still able to see the rope of the anchor, all the way up to the surface. When you go down, you only start to see the bottom when you're more than 30 m down. It is beautiful to look up and only see the sun and the water. The anchor was drifting above the bottom however, and not touching the ground at all.

There was hardly any current and if you just continue to hold on to the anchor line going up and down and keep an eye on your computer it is perfectly safe to go down that deep. Because the rope is near you cannot get confused which side is up or down. Usually, it is not so interesting to do that because you can only stay that deep for not even a few minutes before you have to up again. On the way back we did another dive at Apo Island, to see at least some coral and fish.

For Magnus, the owner of the place were we are staying this was already attempt 2 for the treasure hunt. To be continued...