Bohol – The Wildlife Above and Below the Sea

Well, I feel a bit like a giant walking bruise, which is rather to be expected, given that I technically crashed a motorbike a couple days ago.  The true soreness actually comes a couple days after a wreck, and I certainly haven’t been lying around in the days since my little accident.  In addition to a few bruises from the scooter and the ground, I also scraped off a bit of skin – nothing like the road rash I’d have gotten if I’d crashed on asphalt, but enough to feel it, especially after I got into the ocean today!

After managing to tip my scooter on a wet, rocky hill in the rainforest in Bohol two days ago, I’d come home and immediately confessed my misdeeds to Hans, the man who was purchasing and in the process of taking over the hotel (and therefore the motorbikes).  Luckily, nothing seemed broken on the bike itself, but the paint all  along the side was pretty scraped up from the rocks.  He was pretty cool about it.   However, when I first tried to start the bike in the morning when I was heading over to the dive shop, the engine wouldn’t turn over!  I just about started to panic.  Luckily, the mechanics were already up and working on all the other bikes.  They came over and started the bike for me, and then informed me that the bike won’t start when the kickstand is down.  I felt rather foolish, but super-glad I hadn’t broken the bike.  I certainly can’t afford paying for a whole new engine!

After all the excitement, I decided to spend the next day doing something enjoyable and relaxing, rather than stressing about making it back to the tarsier sanctuary and chocolate hills.  Of course, that meant diving!  The first day I dove here, Maya (the Israeli girl) and I had talked about meeting up again and diving together at Balicasag, another island just off the coast of Bohol.  I texted Piratas (the diving company) the night before to make sure she was diving too, and made plans to join the two-dive trip the next day.

When I got to Piratas, there was a large group of people going out diving, unlike the other day when it had just been three of us.  There were many other Israelis, interestingly, as well as some Spanish people and even a guy from Minnesota!  The boat was full!  Luckily, Maya and I were still diving together and with our previous guide, Zaldy.  So we had our rhythm down already.  We went out last, and our first dive was nearly an hour long.

We dove at a place called the Black Forest, just off the coast of Balicasag Island.  Honestly, this was one of the most beautiful dives I’ve ever done!  There was great visibility, and we saw so much – one of the first things we saw was a four-legged black frogfish.  These things are crazy.  Since my GoPro broke, I didn’t get a picture, but I got this photo off the internet to give you an idea of how crazy it looked.

We saw three turtles – and they just kept getting bigger and better.  The second one was funny because I had just pointed out to Maya some little sea snake thingies that stick out of the ocean floor.  They look like periscopes, or tiny fingers that come up and curl around looking at the sea.  As soon as I showed her, Zaldy called us over and showed us the same thing!  But then, I realized that right in front of us, basically hiding in plain sight at the foot of a small bit of coral was a relatively large turtle!  It was less than two meters away!  After a minute or so, it noticed us and leisurely swam away.

I was laughing about that to myself, when I suddenly gasped and pulled up. There was a gigantic turtle!  It was literally longer than a meter and wider than one and a half of me!  It went up to a plant on the sea bottom, stuck its head in and was greedily eating.  You could almost hear him saying “Nom nom nom.”  The three of us gathered around to watch.  We were so close!  It didn’t mind.  Finally, it turned to swim away.  Zaldy came up behind it, and kissed the back of its shell, just before it left – (he loves turtles)!  Amazing.

The second dive was also around Balicasag Island, a dive spot called Marine Sanctuary.  It was also a beautiful dive, although a bit anti-climatic after the first.  It was a wall dive, and I must admit, some of the fan coral sticking out was larger than any I’ve ever seen – literally larger than I am.  We saw two white frogfish there.  The jackfish there also do a fascinating thing where the entire school swims in a tornado formation.  It was quite impressive to see, although it was a bit deeper than we were.  Zaldy had shown me a video of it from a previous dive, so I knew what it looked like, and could conceptualize it better when I did see it.  Then, we came up over the top of the wall, where the coral was spectacular and there was a large bed of giant clams.

After returning to the shore, Maya and I went to a restaurant by the dive shop that Erin had told us had good salads.  The salad was alright, but the highlight of the salad was the mozzarella and herbed cheese on top!  The restaurant is afilliated with the Bohol Bee Farm, so afterwards, we got some locally made ice cream.  I tried the honey flavor, which was okay, but ended up getting a scoop of peanut butter and a scoop of Buko.  Buko is the local name for the young coconut, or coconut water – called dhab in Kolkata, as you may remember me raving about in the past!  I never imagined I’d love any kind of coconut flavoured anything, but.  Maya and I sat at the end of the beach, in a neat spot we found nestled in some rocks to eat our ice cream and stayed until the sunset, which was spectacular.  All in all, a great day!

This morning, I got up early.  I still had the motorbike until noon, when I needed to check out of my hotel.  This was my last chance to make it to the Tarsier sanctuary,m and to be honest, I kenw that if I didn’t get on the motorbike again, I’d have some lingering fears about riding one again.  I’d even had a moment the evening before when I watched some guys walking around on some slippery rocks on the beach and began worrying that they’d slip!  They’re wet rocks, I though, like the ones I slipped with my scooter on!  This little moment of PTSD made me realize I had to get out  on the bike again before I left for a good long ride, or I’d have silly issues.  It’s the equivalent of getting back on the horse!

So I hopped on the scooter first thing in the morning and zoomed up to Corella, rather glad I knew the way from my recon trip the other day.  I made it in record time, arriving just before the Tarsier sanctuary was set to open.  I was in one of the very first groups they took in to see the tarsiers.

Tarsiers are actually the world’s smallest primates.  They’re not monkeys, they’re a bit more primitive, but they are in the same family.  They only grow to about 6 inches in length.  Nocturnal animals, their eyes are enormous, and are fixed in their heads – they have to turn their entire head to see something, and they can rotate their heads 180 degrees!  Tarsiers are actually omnivorous – they eat insects and even small bugs, and can jump up to 5 meters among the treetops while catching prey.  These little guys are actually enormously interesting!

I’m really glad I went to see them!  The tour guide took us around to some trees in the park where they knew there were some tarsiers, and let us look at them up close.  Tarsiers are mostly loners, and need a lot of space.  Interestingly, they commit suicide if in captivity, so the sanctuary is actually not like a zoo and more of a giant park.  There’s a large enclosure which only has 8 inside and there are 100 or so outside of that, within the rest of the sanctuary.  I don’t think they realize they’re in an enclosure, it’s that big.

After checking out the tarsiers, I continued on a loop around the southwestern part of the island of Bohol.  I’d hoped to make it up to see the chocolate hills, but I realized I wouldn’t have time.  I was getting picked up at my hotel at noon and needed to make it to the 2:00 ferry to Cebu.  But I went all the way to a hanging bridge in a town named Seville!  Also, from what I understand, the chocolate hills are less brown at this time of year (it’s just the end of the rainy season) and more green, so they’d have been more like grassy hills anyway.  I’ve seen green hills before.  If I had to miss one thing on Bohol, I’d rather it be some hills, and not those crazy cool tarsiers!

I raced back to the hotel in time to finish packing and take a quick shower before heading to catch the ferry in Tagbilaran.  It took 2 hours to get to Cebu, where I had to scramble to meet someone and get a paper ticket for my trip to Ilo-Ilo, a city on the island across from Boracay.  Once I get to Ilo-Ilo – and it will take 15 hours to get there (it’s an overnight ferry), I’ll have to find a van or bus to take me across that island to the place where I hop over to Boracay.  It’ll be a long journey tonight, but it’s a lot cheaper than flying to Boracay.  And if I flew, I probably wouldn’t have scheduled any dives yesterday, since you have to wait 24 hours after diving to fly.  I definitely wouldn’t have wanted to miss out on those amazing dives in Balicasag!

Crashing, diving, and then spending 4 hours on a motorbike this morning and two hours in a cramped ferry seat with half of my luggage on my lap have left me more than a bit achy!  So hopefully I can get some sleep on this ferry bunk bed, and heal up some of these bruises before my adventure of a van trip across some new island tomorrow!  Ah, adventure….