January 8-11 2020
Alona Beach, Panglao Island, the Philippines
After Cebu, the next spot was called Alona Beach and it’s on the very southeast tip of the island of Panglao, which is just off the southwest tip of Bohol. From Cebu city, we took a taxi to the pier, and then a boat to the Tagbilaran City port on the island of Bohol, and then we packed our backpacks and ourselves into a TRICYCLE for the 40-ish minute drive from the Tagbiliran port down the middle of the island of Panglao and to the Alona Beach area where our Airbnb was.
It was hard to find a cheap place to stay here, and by cheap, I mean 30EURO per night or less, which has been our max price so far and pretty easy to keep to. This is a pretty touristy spot, we found out… very popular for scuba divers as well as general beach partying. We did eventually find an Airbnb just off the main strip, so it wasn’t as expensive. It was a cozy little place, with two small apartments each in two small separate buildings (more like cement huts) next to each other, with umbrella-covered picnic tables out front. It was about a 10 minute walk to the beach, and there were countless bars, restaurants, convenience shops and tourist shops along the beach and down the main road. Alona Beach and Cebu are like day and night. As I mentioned, it was very touristy here, so the locals are out hustling to sell their tours and rentals. We weren’t two steps out the door before someone was asking us if we need a ride. There were lots of dudes standing around with laminated picture advertisements for tourist activities asking every single person who walked by, “rent a motorbike scooter bike?” and “snorkel island hopping dolphin turtles?”, and sometimes without even looking up from their cell phones, “whale shark?…”.
Island Hopping, Snorkelling, etc Adventure!
Speaking of coral, my goodness I have never seen so much underwater beauty since EVER. The guys selling the snorkeling trips sold us on a day of island hopping and snorkeling with a bit of dolphin sighting included. Actually, it was a great deal! We paid 1700 Pesos for both of us including snorkel & mask. That’s like 30EUR or 34 USD!!! The only down-side was that we had to wake up before the sunrise and be at the beach by 6 AM (If you know me at all, you know how difficult this was!) But it was totally worth it! It was just like finding Nemo down there! I’m so sad we didn’t have an underwater camera to be able to document what we saw. I swear some of the fish we saw were bright green, neon pink, light purple, sky blue, silver, black and white (ALL OF THOSE on one fish!) and once you got close enough to the coral, you could see the bright green or pinks or purples of them and all the little teeny tiny stems of coral poking off of each one. We even saw starfish that were the brightest and most striking blue I have ever seen on a living creature!
Stopped on Balicasag Island patiently waiting for our snorkeling stuff and trying not to hit his head on the roof made for much smaller people…
Included in our snorkeling excursion was a stop on Virgin Island, which has very cool, clear shallow waters and a strip of sand with a few vendors selling fried stuff or beaded necklaces and drinks and what not.
Virgin Island is basically just a sand bar. It is famous for these mangroves and the clear water spotted with shells and starfish. I know you aren’t supposed to pick the starfish up, but I put him back in the water after only a few seconds and we watched him walk away with his hundreds of little legs. Between islands, we also got to squeeze in some dolphin sighting which was successful but they were too far away for any good pictures.
We were back at Alona Beach by about 1pm, just in time for lunch and a nap on the beach. What a day! 🙂
Chocolate Hills of Bohol
Another day on this beautiful island, we rented a scooter from our airbnb and drove over to the Chocolate Hills of Bohol. Unfortunately there is nothing to do with actual edible chocolate here. This is a natural geological formation creating something like 1500 hills which are covered in green grass, but in the dry season they turn brown, resembling chocolate pralines scattered on the horizon. This was very impressive! We took a few pictures up there, but it was so cool to just look out so far all around and see these little lumps of earth popping up. They had nothing on them but grass and a few trees. What a sight!
On the drive to the Chocolate Hills, we stopped a few times to take pictures along the way (and to give our bums a break). It was such a picturesque road with rice fields on one side and hills on another, going through little villages where some of the kids would wave at us and yell HELLO as we zoomed past!
Some of the stops we planned…
Built in 1500s out of coral stone
To conclude this post about Bohol & Panglau, here is a picture of the delicious meal that unfortunately haunted us (both) for about a week… We heard stories about the food in the Philippines giving people upset stomachs and we are believers…
There is so much more to come!! The Philippines continued to impress us more and more with every new city.
Stories of Exploration and Travel 
Dear Katie,
thank you for your interessting report and the nice pictures. I wish you a wonderful journey! Viele Grüße auch an Johannes. Es ist schön so ein bisschen an Eurer Reise teilnehmen zu können. Viele schöne Erfahrungen noch. Ich bin gespannt auf die nächsten Berichte.
Alles Liebe
Monika
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Thank you for reading! Greetings from me and Johannes both. 🙂
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