Friday, 20 February 2015

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.