San Juan like you
Siquijor, pronounced sickie-hoe, is impossible to make a decent song pun out of, so we’ve gone with the town we’re closest to, San Juan. Some of you may associate ‘Someone like you’ with Adele, others with Kings of Leon and some few with Van, the man, Morrison.
With pun admin out the way, we can delve into Siquijor itself. This small island paradise is the last stop on our grand tour of the Philippines and it’s such a lovely spot. If I were to live in any of the places we’ve been, which I wouldn’t, this would be it. There’s a circular road all the way around it, probably a 2 or 3 hour scoot ride, which has cafes, shops, resorts, bars and restaurants scattered along it sporadically in a very relaxing way. Every now and then there’s a small town with a few municipal buildings, a Catholic church and a slightly larger concentration of outlets. The beaches are plentiful and perfect. Your classic white sand, palm tree laden type. The snorkelling is the best we’ve done, and the falls we’ve visited: truly remarkable. Mostly I just like how chill the island is. It’s lush.
Day 15 – Travel from Bohol to Siquijor
I won’t bore you, but it’s a 2 hour ferry south-west from Bohol to Siquijor, and we arrived into Siquijor just as the sun was setting. By the time we’d hired Filipino Scooty V4, our most modern AND cheap one yet, due to my pre-organising of its hire ahead of time, it was dark. We piled all our backpacks and accoutrements onto Scooty with great difficulty and awkwardly biked the 25 mins to our accommodation which is perfectly nice and, ideally, right on the beach.
Day 16 – Diving Siquijor
We decided to do another dive, down here in Siquijor. Two, actually, but I got a great pain behind my eyes while descending and had some sort of sinus blockage that made a 2nd dive… not desirable, and the divemaster wasn’t the most circumspect so Billie decided not to dive without me the 2nd time, which was probably a good decision.
After the initial pain, I recovered and we had a fantastic dive. The coral is ridiculously beautiful – I found a new appreciation for it on this dive, and on this island. I want to learn more about the different types. We spotted a Green Turtle as well as the lovely Hawksbill Turtle, and gazillions of fish.
After lunch, we found ourselves spacing out for some reason, and decided to cocoon ourselves in our room with the curtains closed, air con blasting. An hour’s nap later, we had recovered and found an excellent beach with a relatively fancy resort that let us sit and drink mango shakes and read our books. We ended up staying till sunset which was spectacular!
Twas here we planned our adventure day for tomorrow, which was an excellent day indeed.
Day 17 – Snorkel heaven & Cambugahay Falls
So today we would adventure once more. The biggest attraction on the island is Cambugahay Falls, and whilst the wily among us may decide to get up and head straight there, Billie had a great idea to go back to the beach we’d been the previous sunset, to snorkel. We saw a fantastically hilarious Google review of it which actually sold it to us. Along with lots of odd snorkeling advice, she claims it’s the best snorkeling in SOUTH EAST ASIA, and to be fair, she may not be far off.
It was incredible, potentially better than any of the diving we’ve done in terms of marine life and visibility. The highlight had to be the Hawksbill Turtles, of which there were two, and we didn’t have to share them with anyone else as we were first out. They swam really close and I dived down to swim alongside one, less than a foot away. It didn’t mind… Amazing.
Buzzing from an excellent start to adventure day, we popped back home to change and to gather our things for the day. Scooty took us to Cambugahay Falls in about 45 mins of wonderful driving, which we passed by singing songs together. ‘Take me home, Country Road’ being a big favourite. We arrived to MANY a scooter parked up, and we were a tad worried as to what we would find.
Well, what we found was a tad busy but absolutely within the realms of acceptability. The falls are amazing and there are about four good size swimming pools at the bottom of each waterfall, with a path running alongside them. The water is a truly wild teal, opaque with rich colour. It’s cool and refreshing. We started by dipping in the top pool, where we found caves under the waterfall which were quite creepy and extremely cool. We were brave and swam in a fair bit.
Then we moved down to the main pool, which had two platforms for swing jumping in, which we both did with much joy and happiness. It was great fun.
We spent a good hour plus here, and it’s probably the best waterfall(s) we’ve visited. So, so far Siquijor has the best snorkeling we’ve ever done and the best waterfalls we’ve ever been to. Not bad work for a wee little island, not much heard of.
On our way home, we’d have been remiss not to stop at the acclaimed ‘Old Enchanted Balete Tree’, a marvelous beast of a tree over 400 years old. I’m not sure why it’s enchanted and I’m afraid I didn’t stop to find out. I assume it’s to do with witches. The best bit of this very quick stop was dipping your feet into the little pool in front of it, where fishes would swim over and start exfoliating you… very ticklish, very fun!
It wouldn’t be a day done properly if we didn’t watch sunset, which we did at our hotel bar with beers. It was quite a spectacular one with a big old sun. Then it was off to dinner at ‘Tipsy Bar’ with margaritas all round! The cocktail, not the pizza.
Day 18 – Snorkel heaven pt 2 + Lugnason Falls
Yesterday’s combination of snorkeling + waterfall worked pretty well in our estimation, and if it ain’t broke…
We were back in the best snorkeling spot in the world (upgraded from SE Asia) and today had a totally different experience. The water had way worse visibility… It was still awesome, but noticeably less clear with what I thought must be plankton. Lo and behold, this time, great beautiful shoals of fish swimming round us, silvery scales glittering in the sunlight. Unbelievable.
We got closer and noticed their faces seemed silverierer than their bodies and… their mouths were wide open! Seemingly gulping in plankton as they went. Their open jaws reflecting the sun to strange effect. I’ve since Googled this and found them to be longjawed mackerel. There were a couple of other shoals of fish in the mix too, all swirling around us. An amazing treat to rival the turtles of the previous day, no doubt.
We decided to slow our day down a bit. Less adventuring all at once in the morning. We took a trip to the coffee shop, visited the beach, and then stopped at a beach bar for lunch. There was an adorable dog who played pool with us, and view was spectacular. They even played ‘If you like pina coladas’! Fate.
Onwards, then, to Lugnason Falls. A smaller waterfall but really stupendously good. We’ve visited quite a few waterfalls in our travels and this would be a highlight in any country, though it is foreshadowed by the epic Cambuhagay Falls on Siquijor. It was fairly busy but we had plenty of space for a nice dip and cool off. People were jumping off rope swings but we did not partake as the water was not particularly deep. There were reports of broken feet and the like… not for us thanks!
To finish off our last full day of the holiday, we went to Baha Bar for dinner. We were very pleasantly surprised to be rewarded with a live band playing cover songs, with some big favourites thrown in there. They had craft beer, one of which was described a ‘Classic British Bitter’ and was absolutely nothing of the sort. The food was good, the beer went down smoothly and we lamented that it was all over.
To those of you who made it to the end, I applaud you. It has been a long blog! And what a trip it has been. We’ve had such varied landscapes (ok, there were a lot of beaches) and experiences. We’ve seen animals that literally cannot be seen elsewhere. We’ve eaten amazingly, tanned effectively and honeymooned our absolute butts off! I would 100% recommend Philippines to anyone thinking about their next trip – it’s stunning in a way we’ve not seen anywhere else and the people are incredibly smiley and friendly – at least the ones we met. I have traumatic flashbacks when I think about our journey home, which took a whopping 45 hours door to door. However, that gave us plenty of time to start planning our next trip….
Hopefully Billie’s work don’t realise that Bronson’s been covering for her this whole time….
