Island Hopping

If you cannot afford a hotel room!
Alona beach

The submarine

From the island of Negros to the island of Bohol, and apart from the getting between places my trip is all about diving at the moment. Sorry for those that prefer broken down bus tales and all about the colourful life here but for now I am spending most of my time under the water - which is great :-) I thought I might be going under the water in a very different way when I turned up for my ferry between Negros and Bohol as the ferry looked very much like a submarine. But no, it was a passenger ferry, no fish on board, quite fast and even had a big screen tv playing videos for the 1.5hour crossing. Arriving in Bohol and I am whisked via tricycle, through the mango trees of Pangaloa island, to Alona Beach. (Like bananas the mangos are covered in paper when they are ripening to avoid insects so the tree looks like a big tree growing newspaper!). There isn't much to say in favour of Alona beach I am sorry to say, it has obviously grown up for the tourist and the diver and there is nothing Filipino about the place, which is a shame. There are just a mass of hotels and dive shops spread along the beach, all with their boats out on the water with their lines tied up along the beach so it is a bit of an assault course to take a stroll. And while you are avoiding the boat lines you are being accosted for a massage or a boat tour or a tour of the chocolate hills. Not my favourite place I have stayed but if you like a cocktail after diving and a big choice of places to eat then it is not so bad. And talking of cocktails my highlight for the visit was to meet up for drinks with Michelle, who was traveling through the Philippines from Denver, on a whirlwind tour of the dive sights around the area - a trip sponsored by the Philippine's department of tourism to promote the diving to the American market.

The diving was nice and made much better by the enthusiasm of my dive guides - an Italian lady, who put my faith back into Italian divers (they have a bad reputation for touching and standing on coral) and her Dutch boyfriend. The diving was slow and relaxed and the corals are healthy and plentiful and there is a variety of small fish and critters, plenty to keep me entertained for a few dives. I took a trip over to dive nearby Balicasag which offered a very picturesque and shear wall dive and, with the sun shining, the top of the wall at 6 meters was very pretty.