jhaiken90

[jhaiken90]

Whale sharks

[jhaiken90]

Lagunde beach resort

[jhaiken90]

Lapu-lapu shrine, Alegre Guitar Factory, Lantaw Busay, Jesse’s house, Tabuan Market

[jhaiken90]

Cebu & Oslob

The final weekend trip I took was to the island of Cebu, which was really special because my sister had joined me by this point and we had a close family friend living in Cebu that we were going to go meet.

As usual, 6am flight out of Manila on Saturday morning arriving in Cebu City around 7:30am. A colleague of mine had a friend living in Cebu (Quennie) who generously offered to arrange a driver for us and actually spend the whole day touring around Cebu with us. It was extremely nice of her to go out of her way to make sure we had a good experience. Our first stop on the Cebu City tour was the Mactan Shrine which displayed a huge golden monument of Lapu-Lapu, who was a native Filipino leader who defeated Spanish troops led by Ferdinand Magellan in the Battle of Mactan. This region is famous for guitar making and the Alegre Guitar Factory is the best place to witness the skill it takes to build these world class guitars. The whole factory is open and they allow you to walk through and see the guitars in the various stages of construction.  After walking through the factory I spent about half an hour playing the various types in the display shop before we went to meet our family friend Jesse. Jesse is the husband of one of our pre-school teachers who we stayed in touch with over the years. When they heard we were going to the Philippines they made sure we scheduled a trip to Cebu to see Jesse.

For lunch, he took us (with our van driver and Quennie) to Lantaw Busay which is an awesome restaurant that sits atop a hill overlooking the whole city. It was nice to catch up on the past 20 years since we had last seen him and share some of the famous Cebu lechon! Back at his house we had dessert of fresh mangos and coffee before visiting the campus of the University of San Carlos.  The last stop that day with Jesse was at the Tabuan Market where we got a couple different types of dried mangoes and danggit dried fish (to be given as pasalubong when we returned to Manila). After saying our goodbyes (for now), we headed south along the east coast of the island to the city of Oslob, which is world famous for being one of the only places where you can snorkel with whale sharks.

There was a festival happening that night so while on the 4 hour drive we passed about 10 different parties with tons of people at each spilling out into the streets.  We checked into the Lagunde Beach Resort around 8:30pm. This had to be one of the coolest places I’ve stayed in. Our room, which was something like $40/night, had a back door that opened directly onto the beach. During high tide, we could basically step out of the door and into the ocean.  The water was super warm so we went for a night swim and were treated to a lantern festival about half a mile down the beach. It was pretty spectacular. Went to bed early because we were getting up at sunrise to go swim with the whale sharks. The next morning was a pretty cool experience for me because until then, growing up on the west coast, I had never seen a sunrise over the ocean, only sunsets. It was really cool watching the sun come up as fisherman went out for their morning catch. Breakfast was fresh cut mangos, couldn’t really get enough of them, and then we headed off to the whale shark beach.

Swimming with the whale sharks was something else. Despite the name, they are actually the world’s largest fish, growing to over 40 feet.  These whale sharks weren’t full grown so ranged in the 20 to 30 foot range. They are extremely docile and there were strict rules that we were not allowed to touch them at all (or face confiscation of our passports!). It was an incredible experience, but was somewhat tarnished by the fact that they were clearly being exploited for tourism purposes. We boarded these tiny boats and sailed a few hundred yards off shore before the feeder boat would glide by dropping fish off the back with all the whale sharks trailing it. When they got to the end of the line of boats they would circle back and do it again, kind of like an assembly line. Nonetheless, it was a truly memorable experience being in the water with these beasts, and it looked like the tour operators were going to great lengths to ensure they weren’t being harmed in the process.

We finished up with the sharks around 8am before making our way to the final stop which was Tumalog Waterfalls. To get there, the van took us off the main road to a parking lot with a few buko stalls and from there we could either hop on the back of a motorcycle for a fee or walk the one mile out to the falls. We saved our money and elected to walk. It’s a pretty steep grade to get down to where the falls are but was nice to stretch our legs. The falls are really beautiful. It looks like a pretty gentle river coming over the top of these cliffs because the water sort of cascades down in almost a mist before landing in a milky light blue pool at the bottom. There a lots of tiny fish in the pool and if you sit at the side with your feet dangling in they eat the dead skin off. One peculiar encounter was with a Chinese family who came up to my sister and me with their 3 or 4 year old daughter and asked if we would hold her while they took pictures of us. Couldn’t see a reason why not so we made some new friends that day.

We spent about an hour swimming in the pool and relaxing before heading back to the hotel for a real breakfast before checking out and making our way back to Cebu City. On the way back we stopped a well known sandal market and Jordan got to try out her bargaining skills. We met Quennie and Jesse at Rico’s for lunch. Rico’s is one of the most well known lechon spots in Cebu. Lechon is pork and can be prepared a number of ways, Rico’s specializes in all of them. Because the lechon from Cebu is so famous, they package it up in a special way that keeps it fresh and deliver it all over the Philippines. We picked up a few orders to bring back as more pasalubong for our friends in Manila before saying our goodbyes and heading to the airport.

[jhaiken90]

Coral reef, fish, and the makeshift bridge we crossed on the way back to Puerto Princesa

[jhaiken90]

Island hopping

[jhaiken90]

Doublegem beach resort

[jhaiken90]

Ringing rocks in Ugong rock

[jhaiken90]

Underground river