Oslob, Cebu. (Oslob to Moalboal by bus)

The taxi picked us up from our mountain retreat which this time was a car to our relief and dropped us off at the port. The 2 hour boat ride back to Cebu was uneventful and pleasant enough at 500 pesos each. At Cebu we stole someone else's Grab Taxi (the driver encouraged us to do this!) who took us to the southern bus terminal where an air-con bus was waiting and left straight away. The bus journey was good with movies being shown and a couple of episodes of Mr Bean thrown in for good measure. After 3.5 hours we arrived at Oslob which was a tiny town and our hotel was only a 3 minute walk from the bus stop called Luna house hostel. The hotel was a new build and our room was good, if a tad smaller than we were used to but had air-con, big flat screen with American T.V. and breakfast included on the roof overlooking the jungle.  We quickly hired a scooter off some woman who was hanging about. Not sure who she was but lived next door in what looked like a squat and did not ask for any deposit for her brand new bike. It had not even done 1000km’s yet. Very trusting!

Help! Get me out. It's frigging freezing in here.

We went out to explore and ended up at Tumalog Falls waterfall. There was a 20 peso entry after a walk down a steep hill. The falls were O.K. and the bottom had a nice pale blue pool where you could swim and stand under the falling water to get pummelled although they call it a massage. It wasn’t that enjoyable….more painful really.  The water was icy cold as well even though it was a hot day so after 5 minutes you want to get out. I gave it a go but Kathy decided it was too cold for her. We avoided the suicide bike riders that whisk you to the top at breakneck speed and walked back up to the car park. Here we jumped on the bike to check out whale shark watching. We arrived about mid-day and it was closed to new comers as they were packing up for the day, so we pumped them for info and decided to do it the next day.
  Needing to get more cash as the Philippines was proving more expensive than we expected we tried in Oslob but the only ATM would not accept our cards. We then drove 17km down to a town called Santander to try another ATM which also proved fruitless. Now we were in a position where we had limited money for the next 3 days as could not get any out. Times like this makes you realise just where you are in the world and how cut off you are without access to money. To make matters worse there was no internet at the hotel due to some technical issue. To save some money we bought some food at the shop and cooked back at the hotel as they had a fully kitted out kitchen. There were not many choices in town anyway with the usual burnt fish stands and a pizza place that was always full up with tourists.

The great white only nibbled our toes.

  An early start(ish)and we arrived at the whale shark centre next day at about 7.30. Luckily a tour guide we spoke to the day before told us not to get there before that time as the light would not be good for photos. After paying our fees and getting briefed on how to react in the water with the whale sharks, being told we would receive big fines or even jail if we tried to touch the whale sharks, we grabbed our snorkel gear, life jackets and Go Pro camera that we hired on the beach. We were put clumsily into a boat with some other random tourists and rowed out to the spot where they feed the whale sharks to encourage them to stay in that spot. As soon as we got off the boat and put our masks on, we looked under the water to see this massive wide open mouth of a whale shark coming straight at us. Got to admit, we did panic as we were not prepared on how big these fish were and were definitely not prepared on how close they came to us. It was all we could do to avoid contact with them, scrabbling back to the safety of the boat outriggers for protection so we did not get accused of touching them and bunged in jail. The boat crew were really good, taking all the photos for us and getting in the water to point out where the whale sharks were coming from. To be honest to start with it was a bit overwhelming as they seemed to be coming at us from all angles but we soon  got a good position and settled down to a half hour interaction which was as incredible as you would expect. The time went really quickly and next thing we knew we were back on the beach and being pressured by boat pirates to go off to Sumilon Island to go diving with them. Having limited money we declined and headed back to the hotel for breakfast and to get our phone which we forgot to take to get our photos loaded onto. They put them on a CD but we had nothing to view them on. After breakfast we headed back with a memory stick and the chap at the photo centre kindly transferred them for us so we could view them on the computer. We then went off to another set of waterfalls on the other side of the island called Aguinid falls. When we arrived they informed us we needed a guide and a wet bag among other stuff which we had not prepared for so just had a coconut to drink from and headed back to the hotel. This time we cut across the top of the island which was spectacular in the mountains, with cloud forest and great views, the road twisting through the jungle, washed away in places and totally unpopulated.

I couldn't fall because Kathy said she would kill me if I got the camera wet.

  Next day we decided we did not have enough money to go visiting the island for a snorkel so went back to the waterfall at Aguinid, this time prepared for adventure. Kathy decided it might not be her thing when we were briefed so sat it out at level 1. I went for it and had two guides to myself. I also hired some wet shoes which were recommended to climb the falls. There were 5 levels where you could walk up the face of the water falls with the help of a rope. There was no health a safety here. If you fell….than it’s tough luck. Some of it was very dodgy, having to scramble up using tree roots and then they told me to dive into a pool off a cliff which turned out only to be 6ft deep and I ended up with my back hitting the bottom stones. Ouch! The top level was the highest and the best as it had a secret cave behind the waterfall curtain of water that you go into. Another fresh coconut after and a mass of mosquitoes to boot, we headed back to town and actually got a place at the pizza restaurant but after such a long wait the pizza was below average.

Don't you just hate back seat drivers.

  One of the standout moments of our stay here were some of the freaks staying at the hotel. In particular were a couple of Russian men, about 50-60 years old, sharing a room on the roof top (one double bed!). Every morning at breakfast they would arrive, grab a glass and fill it up with strong beer before their breakfast even arrived. Sometimes they had some brandy to wash it down and by lunchtime the Brandy was empty (big bottle!) so they wobbled off down to the shop and came back with more brandy, a nice bottle of wine to go with their further bottles of Colt 45 beer. That’s what I call a cocktail. They mostly walked around in their underpants looking dishevelled on the roof top smoking fags and boozing.

Oslob was a cool place to hang out, people mostly stay 1 night and move on but we are glad we stayed 4 nights to experience the backwater of Cebano life. Kids rolling tyres down dusty streets having a race, school kids in their immaculate uniforms pigging out on junk food from the local 7-11 after school, random Karaoke breakouts (no one can sing here but it is bad manners to give disparaging remarks to the singer), every Cebano owns a cock which they use for cock fighting (it’s a major pastime here, even being shown on T.V. for the big fights). The streets are riddled with stray dogs all shagging each other non stop and barking at anything that walks past, mostly at 4am in the morning outside your hotel window. That and the chorus of 100 local roosters in the morning it was not hard to get out of bed early to start the day. No wonder breakfast started at 6am! With the dusty streets, unpredictable weather, noisy tricycles whizzing about, smoke bellowing BBQ stalls, suicide bus drivers it was certainly not boring.

How considerate.

 Our next stop is a shortish bus ride to the other side of the island to a place called Moalboal where we hope there is an ATM as we have no money left so may have to get our begging caps out.