Diving, cliff jumping, beaches, turtles, sardines, waterfalls, sunsets and more.
MoalBoal
We started off with 3 days in MoalBoal, home to the famous sardine run (this is not our video but gives an idea of what we saw).
We spent our first day here snorkelling with the sardines, apparently over 1 Million of them just off the shore - it was an absolutely amazing experience and we also got to see turtles up close. The kids absolutely loved this, it really was a special day.
The next day we went Canyoneering, the No1 thing to do in MoalBoal. It's basically 5 hours of cliff jumping and swimming through the Badian Canyon, ending at the spectacular Kawasan Falls.
For the sake of full disclosure, I have to say, this is not my idea of fun - jumping from heights of up to 13 meters into water, I'd rather be at the dentist but Shoshi and the kids were absolutely desperate to do this so I pretended to be brave and went along. We hired a local guide, Daniel, who brought along a colleague in order to help with the kids (in the end, they helped me more!) and they absolutely made the day for us, brilliant guides.
The jumps range from 4 meters to 13 meters in spectacular scenery into turquoise blue water. Absolutely amazing to see Shoshi and the kids jump, absolutely petrifying for me!
The scores on the doors by the end of 5 hours of jumping and swimming were:
Eyal - 7 jumps, highest 13 meters
Shoshi - 7 jumps, highest 13m
Mili - 6 jumps, highest 13m
Guy - 4 jumps, highest 7m
Darren 3 jumps, highest 4m (although it felt like 50m to me when standing on the edge and looking down!)
The pictures don't really do it justice, but just to put it into perspective, 13 meters is similar to a 4 storey apartment block!
The kids and Shoshi all say this was the highlight of their entire time in the Philippines, very proud of my family of adrenaline junkies!
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| Guy jumps 7m |
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| 7m |
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| Shoshi jumps 13m |
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| Mili jumps 13m |
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| Eyal jumps 13m! |
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| Kawasan Falls |
After MoalBoal, we headed down to Dumaguete for a couple of nights, a nice University city on Negros Island. At the time, we didn't know that we would be back in Dumaguete 10 days later for a week long hospital stint but our initial time there was great with the highlight being the trek to the amazing Casaroro Waterfalls near the village of Valencia. Seeing the Falls was a real 'WOW' moment, surprisingly stunning.
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| 2 cows and 3 monkeys |
Apo Island is a tiny Island, around 30 min boat ride from Dumaguete. It has been listed as one of the world's top 100 dive sites due to its coral reef and over 100 turtles which swim in the shallow waters around the coral.
We spent 2 days here, staying at Mario's Homestay for a really brilliant experience. Mario told us that his Grandmother was the first inhabitant of Apo and actually owned the Island. He is now the Barangay Captain, basically the Mayor of Apo.
At Mario's we met other divers from all across the world and spent 2 days snorkelling with turtles and diving. Shoshi went out for a more advanced dive as she already has her PADI, while me, Mili and Eyal did our basic dive.
Swimming with turtles was a once in a lifetime experience (actually twice in a lifetime as we'd already had a taster in MoalBoal) but the turtles around the waters of Apo are quite amazing.
This was definitely one of the highlights of our time in the Philippines.
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| Mili, Eyal and Darren doing our beginners dive |
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| Shoshi, our family PADI Master |
Siquijor
After Apo, we headed off to Siquijor Island for what we thought was going to be a relaxing 10 days at the Bruce Hotel, a lovely resort right on the beach, owned by an old gentleman who left Scotland around 60 years ago but who had retained his sense of Scottishness!
Great beach bungalow, nice swimming pool kids were really enjoying it, Shoshi celebrated her birthday on 19th December, everything was going well, then on the 22nd Dec things started to go wrong, Shoshi got ill and then rest is history...
But at least for the start of our time on Siquijor, we got to relax, saw some amazing waterfalls, breathtaking sunsets and more...
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| Happy Birthday to Shoshi |
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| Natural fish spa |
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| 400 year old tree with 'mystical' properties |
So that was our final blog of our time in the Philippines, great country but a bittersweet experience for us in the end. Hopefully in a few weeks we'll look back and the memories of illness and hospital will have faded, leaving us just with all the good stuff.
We've now moved on to Siem Reap in Cambodia for the next leg of the trip, where I managed to lose/ have stolen my wallet within 1 hour of landing. Things can only get better...
