bohol on 2 wheels: tarsiers, mounds of chocolate, and suisliding

the 3 hour pumpboat ride from cebu arrived on panglao island just off the coast of bohol. panglao is a diver’s mecca and has some nice stretches of beach. i made my way into the capital and largest city on the island, tagbilaran, to find a place to stay and rent a scooter. the next morning i embarked on an adventure! is there any better feeling than setting out, on a scooter, to explore a foreign tropical island? first, i entered bohol’s rainforested interior and found a nature sanctuary that is home to some endangered tarsiers. these monkey-like creatures are the second-smallest mammals in the world, and have huge eyes that, in proportion to their bodies, are 150 times larger than human eyes. each of its eyes is substantially larger than the animal’s brain. they can also leap 15 feet despite their diminutive size (about half of size of your palm), and turn their heads a full 360 degrees. rumor has it the tarsier was the inspiration for the film e.t., which has since informed the popular conception of aliens. these animals have become exceedingly rare, and unfortunately are now found only on a couple islands in southeast asia, bohol being one of them. the sanctuary allows visitors to get a quick peek at the tarsiers in their natural habitat (sleeping, as they are nocturnal). some locals have captured tarsiers and display them in cages in the nearby town of loboc, but no tarsier has ever survived for more than a year in captivity, so it is probably best to avoid viewing them in cages.

in 2013 bohol experienced a devastating earthquake. it destroyed nearly every bridge, which are now being rebuilt. there are intriguing remains of a cathedral in the town of loboc, with only the front facade of the building standing in front of a jumble of overgrown debris.

i then scooted a bit further north to bohol’s famous chocolate hills. on a large plataeu of rice paddies in the center of the island there are dozens of large conical hills that seem to defy the laws of geology. legend suggests that 2 giants in antiquity had a disagreement and were throwing fistfulls of mud at each other, but the more logical explanation is that there were areas that eroded at different rates due to unique formations of limestone. you can climb the tallest of the mounds and look out over the spectacle.

the entire afternoon remained, so i decided to try to find a rumored adventure theme park deep in the jungles of north bohol. it took a couple hours to get there, along mostly unpaved, rutty trails. i finally found the place in the middle of nowhere, after having not seen another vehicle on the roads in quite some time. the large facility was completely abandoned except for a few staff, who were pounding back beers. i decided that i needed to patronize their zipline called the “suislide.” this is a 1/2 kilometer long zipline, one of the longest in the philippines, that takes the rider high over a huge gorge with a raging river at the bottom. i lay stomach down and head-first on a piece of fabric that had a bunch of velcro on it, and they strapped me onto the line using (thankfully more than one) rusty carabiners, and pushed me off! it was super exhilarating! on the other side of the gorge you climb a bit up another mountain and take another zipline to get back! the road home to tagbilaran took a few hours longer than expected, all in the dark. filipino roads at night on a motorcycle were just as exhilarating as the rusty zipline!

the next day evening i took a fastcraft ferry back to cebu. the journey begins with a safety video, like you’re on an airplane. then, a televized prayer for safety, during which all the passengers subconsciously cross themselves. then, an inaudible, illegally downloaded feature film is played. then, back to tacloban for a couple weeks in the hospital.

cebu city and swimming with flippin whale sharks!

i decided to take a long weekend last weekend, and it was a good one! i hopped on a $30 flight from tacloban, and 45 minutes later was in cebu city. the city is the second largest in the philippines, and is on the island of cebu, right in the middle of the country. it is considered one of the philippine’s most culturally rich cities, hosting some famous festivals and is known as a mecca for having a good time. there are ferries from cebu to pretty much every corner of the philppines, making it a melting pot of the country’s various people groups. the island’s native population have their own language called cebuano, and have an independent streak with some resentment at being under the hegmony of the big northern island of luzon. i went downtown and explored santo nino church, the oldest church in the philippines. it has been destroyed numerous times by fire, but a mannequin of the baby jesus has survived each time; the object is deemed to be miraculous. close by is magellan’s cross, a cross believed to be carried by magellan in his exploration of the philippines. cebu is famous for being the place where magellan was killed, with a spear and poison dart compliments of a local king named lapu-lapu. lapu-lapu is considered a filipno hero for his resistance. there is also a nice little spanish-built fort called san pedro in downtown cebu, and 2 massive modern shopping malls that i spent some quality time perusing.

at the southern tip of cebu island, 4 hours south of the city in a town called oslob, is a new tourist attraction that involves swimming in the sea with whale sharks! it is best to be there first thing in the morning. the experience starts with a preteen providing a memorized briefing in monotone and with a classic filipino flair for placing emphaaaasis on unexpected sylaaaaables, warning you not to get within 4 meters of the sharks and offering assurance that the operation is being constantly monitored by a marine biologist (which is, of course, not the case). then, you jump on a little rowboat with a few other tourists, and head about 50 m offshore, where the boat guys are throwing plankton to the whale sharks, who come back to the area every morning for their breakfast! whale sharks are the largest fish in the world, measuring up to 40 feet. you jump out and snorkel with them, and it is truly awe-inspiring. you basically get as close as you wish, and can touch them and get swiped by their tails as they swim by. they feed by opening their mouth and sucking in hundreds of liters of water, which is then strained for plankton before being ejected from their gills. apparently at least once a day a tourist gets inadvertently sucked in to a whale shark mouth. they let you swim with them for 30 minutes, and i must say it was one of more exhilarating things i have ever done. after that and a long run along the coast, i was lucky enough to randomly chance upon a pumpboat which was heading straight across the sea to the island of bohol, my next destination!

mayorga

i was assigned to another rural health unit for a week, this one in mayorga, 2 hours south of tacloban. the commute was a bit rough, squeezed into the back of a lurching hot, sweaty jeepney with 20 other commuters for 4 hours each day. the town is having a big push for “zero open defecation”. an obvious problem from a public health perspective is that people defecate in open areas when they don’t have anywhere else to go. so a big ngo brought in a bunch of toilets to install. now every house has a toilet, but without running water they aren’t as useful as they could be. the town actually employs inspectors who roam the villages looking for human excrement, and the villages loose out on funding if it is found. another cool public health initiative in the town are free regular zumba classes for everyone!

my commute each day brought me past the historical site of the leyte landing, which is where u.s. general macarthur first came ashore during the liberation of the philippines from the japanese at the end of world war ii. the site is commemorated with bronze statues of the americans - wearing aviators - wading onto the beach. interestingly, tacloban was actually the capital of the philippines for a few short months at the end of the war, until manila was liberated.

we were invited a birthday party feast one afternoon in mayorga, one of many feasts thus far, which has been great. the hospitality is wonderful, but i’ve got to say that the food here is as unhealthy as you can imagine. filipinos eat white rice for every single meal. if they have the money, the addition will be pork; the fattier the better. at a more impressive meal, the rice will be supplemented with other empty carbohydrates, such as white wonder bread, chow mein noodles, rice cakes, and cooked cassava (for the uninitiated, similar to a baked potato except drier and with less flavor). the fatty pork will be supplemented with an alternatively flavored selection of fatty pork, fried cicken, and fried fish. absolutely never vegetables, which is disheartening. though the fruit is amazing, it is enjoyed by the average person as a rare delicacy maybe just a couple times per year. little wonder pretty much everyone here that is middle aged and older has rampant hypertension, diabetes and kidney failure.

while on the topic of food, i will end with a couple of the few bright spots. one is halo-halo, literally “mixture.” it is shaved ice soaked in sugary milk, topped with various selections of jello, ice cream, pieces of fruit, red beans, yellow beans, taro jam, crème de leche flan, and corn flakes. another is belut, a 14 day old chicken or duck fetus that is still in the shell. the fetus is killed when the egg is bioled, and the belut tastes best immediately afterword, doused with vinegar. seriously, its delicious!