Escape to Bohol

The Professionals

The family trip was hatched months earlier. Two days after Christmas, we finally took a boat to the province of Bohol, ending a long period of anticipation and excitement. The boat, Cebu Ferries Vessel 1, was neat, clean and cool. It has spacious corridors one of which was transformed into a playground by my two little grandsons. The crew was courteous, helpful and accommodating. The meals served in its cozy restaurant were worth their prices. The boat punctually left the port of Cagayan de Oro at about 8 in the morning, traversed the Bohol Seas in 5 hours and 30 minutes, and docked at Jagna exactly at 1:30 PM, the estimated time of arrival (ETA) printed on our passage tickets.

The disembarkation was almost like a solemn church procession. Everybody silently fell on line and was patient and amiable in waiting for his turn down the gangplank. There was no rush. There was no noise. The porters were polite in negotiating their trade with some passengers.

Outside the pier, I looked for a vehicle for hire. I found none. A vendor informed me such vehicles were not allowed at port area. They were parked at the bus terminal, some half a kilometer away. I returned inside the pier to collect the members of my family who floated leisurely towards the gate with the bulk of disembarked passengers.

I was amazed by what I observed. I marveled at the punctuality and the professional services of the vessel. I was moved by the discipline exhibited by the passengers of the ship, by the porters, by the tricycle and taxi drivers, and even by the welcoming public that patiently waited outside the gate of the port. I am in the Philippines, I told myself. I am not dreaming. This is too good to be true!

Weird Sense of History

My family is very Filipino in size: 2 sons, 4 daughters, a daughter-in-law, 2 grandchildren, my wife and I. Eleven in all. Notwithstanding our number we fitted in surprisingly inside a tricycle, which hauled us, luggage and all, to the bus terminal.

For P2, 000 we got an air-conditioned L300 van to ferry us from Jagna to Panglao Island, a distance of about 85 Km, with stopovers for sightseeing at the Baclayon Church and at the Blood Compact monument.

A wedding was in progress at the historic church when we dropped by it. While the rest of my party viewed the relics in the museum, I moved around and took some pictures of the happy couple and the interiors of the old building. The glow of the Christmas lights tempered what otherwise would have been a solemn atmosphere inside the cavernous church.

At the Blood Compact monument in Bool, Tagbilaran, tourists took turns in taking their pictures with Sikatuna, Legaspi and their consorts. The monument saddened me because it is one manifest of our weird sense of history. Like our annual celebration of the ignominious Fall of Bataan, here in Bohol we honor and immortalize with the monument the deception and betrayal of the Filipino natives by the Spaniards who declared friendship but coveted our people and our land. Meanwhile, the people in the town of Loay wanted to correct history, claiming that the true site of the blood compact is not in Bool, Tagbilaran City but in Hinawanan beach (now Villalimpia), Loay. Similar monument would be erected soon in the place.

Panglao Island

The skies were a tinge of blue and grey after a downpour and before sunset when we arrived in Panglao Island. The island is very close to mainland Bohol and connects to Tagbilaran City via a relatively short concrete bridge. It has two municipalities: Panglao and Dauis. The white beaches of the island and the rich scuba diving sites nearby made the place a tourist destination beginning in the early nineties. Resort hotels of different stars and dive shops congregate and define the economy of the island, particularly that of the municipality of Panglao.

Most of the high-ends hotels and tourist establishments are located along Alona beach. Dive and dolphin-watching boats are moored near the beach giving the area a picturesque postcard beauty. Tourists from different accommodations in the island flock to the beach at dinner time to savor foreign and local cuisines and enjoy nightlife of music, dance, chats, and wine. Alona beach is awake and alive at nighttime, busy at dawn for the dolphin-watching trips, and is asleep the rest of the day.

Alona Beach

Alona beach was Tawala beach, being located in Barangay Tawala, before Alona Alegre in her almost naked beauty frolicked on its shimmering shores in the shooting of a Fernando Poe, Jr. film “Esteban” sometime in 1973. Alona is an elder sister of action star Philip Salvador. She is the daughter of actor Lou Salvador and Inday Jalandoni.

Accordingly, life stopped in Tawala during the shooting. All eyes were on Alona. When she rolled and crawled on the sand in all her breathtaking assets, Panglao changed and was never the same again. One day on the film site, a local fan planted in the sand a makeshift poster of cement sack scribbled in pentel pen with the signs “Alona Beach.” The name stuck and since then has been used by entrepreneurs to identify their tourist establishments. So there is Alona Beach Resort, Alona Palm Beach Resort, Alona Kew Resort, and Alona Tropical Resort to name the more familiar. The barangay where Alona beach is located remains though as Tawala.

Our accommodation was in Alona Studio, located in the inner section of Tawala, which is a 15-minute walk from the beach. The hotel was undergoing expansion and its 20 or so rooms were all occupied by Europeans, mostly Swedes. It has an 80 square meter triangular pool that was religiously checked, vacuumed and sanitized every morning. We were the only Pinoy guests in the vicinity.

The following day, a van arranged earlier by the hotel management at P2, 500/day, picked up and ferried us to the famous tourist destinations of Bohol. We first went straight to the chocolate hills and then made stops in the other tour sites on our way back.

Chocolate Hills: A Geologic Wonder

The chocolate hills continued to mystify me. It was already my third time to see the geologic masterpiece and yet I remained awed by it magnificent beauty and splendor. The dome-shaped 2, 268 hills that spread evenly on a 50 square kilometers landscape are really a wonder to behold.

On the human side, one could not just leave the place without also appreciating the very orderly and systematic manner the tourism staff handled the flux and movements of tourists. The tourist vehicles, upon depositing their passengers in a designated area in the viewing station, moved immediately down to the parking area at the foot of the hill. They remained there until the guards at the viewing station informed them by radio that their passengers were ready to exit. Thus swarming and traffic jams were avoided. Despite the economic crunch I noticed that the local tourists far outnumbered the foreigners who came to view chocolate hills.

We went back to the road and tried our nerves at the Sevilla hanging bridge in Bilar. The bridge was constructed with the assistance of the Australian government through AusAid not only to connect a local community to the road but also to enhance the ecotourism program of the province. The bridge is an interlaced of wire ropes and bamboo slats. It swung from side-to-side and up and down when crossed.

The Bilar-Loboc Forest: A Man-made Miracle

Our next stop was in the man-made forest that nestles across the towns of Bilar and Loboc. The forest is a dense single species plantation of mahogany trees in 8.5 square kilometers of steep and rugged hills. Most of the trees were about half a century old planted some time in the sixties and early seventies. The trees and their saplings were evidently competing for sunlight and their branches were reaching for the skies like human hands in the act of supplication. It was cool underneath the overlapping corollas. Inside the forest you’ve got this phantom feeling that the rain would fall any moment.

The Bilar-Loboc forest, together with the biggest (1,756 ha) man-made mangrove forest in Asia, located in Banacon Island, Getafe town, is a tribute to the foresight of the people of Bohol. The forest is truly a miracle because it is a human intervention in the environment made decades before everyone talks of global warming and bio-diversity conservation.

Kan-anan sa Suba

It was past 12 noon. We rushed to the mouth of Loboc River in the town of Loay where our driver earlier reserved, via text message, lunch for us in one of those mobile river restaurants. Our “floating restaurant” was an enclosed 8 x 7 square-meter bamboo platform that was roofed with nipa shingles and mounted on top of two catamarans. A separate motorboat pushed and moved the contraption along Loboc River. Actor Cesar Montano made the Loboc River famous with the shooting there of his 2006 WW II romance film “Panaghoy sa Suba.”

The restaurant served a buffet meal at P300/head. For the picking were pork barbecue, fried chicken, grilled squid and fish, ginat-ang lambay, adobong tangkong, ginat-ang nangka, leche plan, pineapple, watermelon, and bananas.

The restaurant moved upstream. A balladeer strummed his guitar and belted some native songs and old (60s & 70s) favorites while we were eating our lunch. After some 30-45 minutes of riverbank sightseeing, we dropped anchor at an Aeta village where some members of Aeta families danced for us in a square with the beat of a drum. Some boys tried to get our attention by their stunts of diving inside a ring of fire. Tourists took pictures with the village people with their weapons, python and bayawak. For everything, the Aetas were all smiles and asked nothing. A small donation box though was visibly ensconced on a 3-foot bamboo pole at one side of the square.

The Lazy Python and the Gentle Tarsier

Upon disembarking at Loay we drove to Albur Animal Sanctuary to see “Prony,” accordingly the biggest python in captivity in the world today. Prony, named after its captor Sofronio Salibay, was only 5 feet tall and weighed 5 kilograms when captured in October 1996. After 14 years of loving care and generous feeding Prony has grown into a 7-meter and 200-kilogram + behemoth. It is fed with 40-60 kg of healthy live pig once a month during the full moon. Prony just sleeps and hardly moves at all after devouring its meal.

Despite the risk, son Eric and three of the girls – Melanie, Augie and Cecile, entered into the cage and had their pictures taken with the giant python.

On our way back to Tagbilaran and Panglao we dropped at a tarsier garden to see the tiny, gentle and friendly primate. Tarsiers are night creatures with very large round eyes. Though probably tired and sleepy a tarsier was game enough to perch one at a time on the arms of the kids for picture taking.

Thus ended the sumptuous sight-seeing for the day. The following morning the kids went dolphin watching near the Balicasag island marine sanctuary. My wife and I could no longer join them because we ferried to Cebu and took an afternoon Cebu Pacific flight to Davao City. We had to abort our gallivanting in the land of Dagohoy to celebrate life, that is, the wedding of a young friend in the city that heavenly stinks of durian.