Bohol Site-seeing Tour

There are very few metered taxis in Bohol, at least so around Tagbilaran, the capital of Bohol, and Panglao Island, where we stayed, on Alona Beach, at the Lost Horizon Resort hotel. Instead of taxis there seems to be a cartel of private cars that have fixed prices for going from place to place. If you want to go someplace that is off the beaten tourist path, you’ll need to get a custom quote from one of these private car drivers, or rent a motorcycle for P500 to P600 per 8-hour day, or take a jeepney.

Fortunately, we hooked up with a good driver right away, who took us to Loon, to visit Marissa’s uncle’s family, and then reserved him the next day for the basic site-seeing tour. Alijandro Pitao’s cellphone is 0915-306-8479

Ali owns his own car and keeps it immaculately clean. He also has a motorcycle he’ll rent for the day for P500 (~$10). Ali honks the horn a LOT, which is a good thing, and is the primary safety device of all cars in The Philippines, letting other vehicles and pedestrians know you’re there.

The first stop on our tour was the Chocolate Hills. These hills are covered with grass which turns brown in the dry season, making the hills look like chocolate drops. We visited the second week of September, the beginning of the dry season, so the hills had not had a chance to dry out yet and were still very much verdant, although still easily distinguised from the surrounding country.

I was unable to find any consensus theory on what created these hills, but the main theory leaves a bit to be desired. These hills are made of limestone, and were created about 2 million years ago when this area was covered by shallow ocean. These are not lava domes. I would be interested to know if the limestone strata is tilted upwards to the center of these cones, such that gas trapped below the surface may have penetrated the coral mud. They do look like pimples, or a woman’s breasts. They also remind me of the small hills created on the surface of a cooking pancake, when bubbles rise through the dough. My theory is that a layer of water trapped below the ocean mud was heated by magma, creating a huge steam bubble that vented through soft spots in the mud, but then I’m no geologist.

Marissa, me and Marissa’s uncle Donie, her mother’s brother, who attended the wedding.

Marissa, trying to shelter herself from the sweltering heat on top of one of the chocolate hills, but oh-so-glad she’s not working the rice paddies, below.

Marissa, with her new hat, P125 (~$2.50) on the “hanging bridge” across Lobac River. I thought the bridge would be more appropriately named “swinging bridge”.

Local kids playing and swimming in the Lobac River.

After seeing the Chocolate Hills, and swinging on the hanging bridge, we took our lunch on one of the many floating restaurants that ply serene and green waters of the Lobac River.

One of the attractions on the river was a group of musicians that played for donations from a floating bamboo raft.

Marissa, nearly frightened to death by this arboreal, nocturnal insect and lizard killing tarsius syrichta, manages to smile.

The tarsier has the oldest, most consistent fossil record of all primates, going back some 45 million years. That’s occupying an ecological niche.

This smiling tarsier looks like he just swallowed a giant bug.

Also on the tour is what is billed as “The World’s largest python in captivity”. They fed this snake a goat the week before we arrived. Supposedly it only eats once a month. They had a photo of it eating a 40-50 pound pig. This snake can unhinge its jaws and spread them at least a foot. They also had a bikini for sale made from shed skin, and a pair of women’s sandals. I passed on those.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 12th, 2006 at 10:47 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.