First thing first, after landing at the Cebu airport, I collected my guitar that the stupid staff in LA forced me to check in.. I had objected of course but they assured me that the many “fragile” stickers would ensure careful handling, and anyways I didn’t have a choice! Well, what was bound to happen .. I got my guitar back with the body cracked open!

Anyways, more on this later.

Here we are in Asia, where the food has vegetables in it!!

It’s like a new beginning and barely 2 days here, Mary suddenly no ik j CV c overcomes her greatest fear of all! And twice in a row!!

Mary loves to be in the water. In shallow water only. As soon as there’s no floor beneath her feet, she panics.

First morning in Moalboal, we book a scuba diving initiation! Mary follows, somewhat reluctantly, and she manages!! I never thought she would ever try this, but she did!

Moalboal is famous for its schools of sardines just near the shore, and indeed it’s quite magical to swim in the swirl of sardines glittering all around you.

The next day -we’re on a roll!- we book a canyoneering excursion in the Kawasan falls. And again Mary manages to come along and jump in the water from 4 metres high! And this time she even enjoys the experience! (Ok, maybe not the jumps as such, but overall)

Knowing her fear for so long, I was very impressed that she managed to do this with us!

The next thing we did was to rent a scooter to explore a bit on our own. Indian style: the whole family on one scooter! Again, Mary was initially not reassured. But it went well, and we’ve been doing this ever since.

We found the Inambakan falls very beautiful. And the local kids showed me the scary slippery spot where you can jump from 10m high, so that was fun 🙂

---

On why waterfalls are so much better than the sea:

– it’s fresh water and not yucky sea water that makes you sticky

– there’s always shade, whereas beaches just let you burn to death

– no sticky sand all over you

– there’s always a jump spot or a cave to explore, or you can walk up the stream

---

Anyways, in the Philippines, you don’t have to choose, there’s always both within a few kilometres !

So that’s mostly what we’ve been up to: exploring waterfalls, then back on the beach for the sunset. Not a lot to write about though, which is why I’ve been running late on the blog!

Every other day, I still had to call Air China to fight and try to get a compensation for my broken guitar. They initially offered me 60usd in compensation for a guitar worth 600usd! After much arguing they raised it to 100usd. I said it was still unacceptable, they told me to check with LA to see if I can get more from them, I argued it was not my job to manage their internal communication and chase every agent in the company… etc etc… eventually I know the poor agent on which I yelled so much did everything she could. She managed to get the blame on the agent in LA who wrongfully forced me to check in a guitar in a soft case, the agent now had to pay 150usd from his own pocket!

So in the end, I get 250usd -not half the price of the guitar- the LA agent gets fined for trying to apply unclear rules, and Air China breaks luggage and gets away clean for a cheap 100 bucks!

After a few days in Moalboal, on the Cebu island, we took a ferry to Bohol, an island close by.

Bohol is most famous for its « chocolate hills », a strange geological formation with hundreds of round hillocks. The hills are very nice indeed, but they charge you to climb a few stairs up to a concrete platform overlooking the panorama, which we found a bit boring Here again we liked waterfalls better and we visited some by the Loboc river.

I had a hard time remembering the name of the main port town, Tagbilaran, so I kept calling it Tagliatelle !

From Bohol, we took another boat to Siquijor, a smaller island on the western side.

And we loooved Siquijor! Very quiet, friendly and with the most beautiful waterfalls ❤️ Unfortunately, Mary and Leo didn’t feel well for a couple of days so I went exploring on my own, and then I took them back to the spots I had found. One of the waterfalls had big swing ropes to jump in the water and that’s pretty much all we did. I even learned to do a backflip from the smaller one. It only took me 500 failed attempts where I would constantly land flat on my face! But perseverance had it eventually !

From there, we returned to Cebu city to catch a flight to Puerto Princessa, on the Palawan island, further to the east. Everyone kept telling us about the lagoons in El Nido, so we headed there. 5 hours in a van, directly after landing.

El Nido is a very touristic place, with an armada of boats leaving every morning to take hordes of tourists to the famous lagoons. We were rather put off by the crowd and felt caught in a tourist trap. But we took the tour anyway, because that’s the thing to do here, and indeed, the lagoons are mind blowing! Sharp black rocky spikes emerging straight up from clear turquoise waters. It’s very hard to render in photo (especially since i couldn’t wet my camera), none of my attempts give justice to the place. That’s typically where you need a drone.

We also went exploring some waterfalls of course. Nothing comparable to what we had in Siquijor here, but very refreshing nonetheless when it’s so hot in the day.

Last but not least, I climbed the Taraw cliff this morning. I did this alone since I had to wake up at 4am to reach the top by sunrise and neither Mary or Leo wanted to do it. It’s a very steep climb in complete darkness on razor sharp rock blades: not really a walk in the park. Of course the early morning view from the 1745m peak over the bay is stunning !

Most of the tourist crowd continues to Coron island, which is supposed to be a paradise for divers and snorkelers. But we decided to get away from the crowd this time, so we’re headed in the opposite direction : Port Barton will be more quiet.