The many islands of the Visayas

After leaving Palawan, we headed for the beautiful Visayas. The many islands were too numerous to conquer in one trip, so maybe I will have to go back at some point to get to the others, but the four islands I made it to were wonderful.

Cebu
I only spent one night in Cebu city. I used it (as I assume most people do) as a hub to get around the rest of Visayas. Cebu City was a pretty large city from what I saw. They had a lot of good shopping and a bunch of good food. (I had some wonderful chorizo there!) Lots of friendly places to stay, which is good, since that's about all I did there.

Negros
I spent most of my time in the Visayas between Negros and Negros Occidental. Landing in Dumaguete from Cebu, I got a nice place at OK Pension. It was more than OK though, it was pretty darn nice, and cheap too! Dumaguete had a lot of great places to eat including Filipino food and others like Italian and British. I also got to eat my fill at the local bakeries. I probably ate a whole cake or pie by myself in the week I was there. A lot more sweet foods than I am used to now.

One of the first days I was in Dumaguete, I headed to Twin Lakes, which are two beautiful lakes up in the mountains. They are 300 fathoms deep at one point (which I later learned was about 1800 feet). Lily and I kayaked around and enjoyed the flooded forest that surrounded it. Being flooded, we were unable to hike around the lake which was the real reason for going, but the kayaking was good anyways.

A different day, we headed up to Mabinay to go Caving with Jeffry, a local guide and mountaineer. He was a lot of fun to talk to and knew everything about the area (born there and grew up there). The cave experience was the best I have had so far. We were at points crawling on our bellies in a stream, looking up at thousands of two inch long stalactites and puckering our lips above the water and below the cave roof to get a little bit of air. It was a great time. I came out soaked and very, very muddy (I don't think that shirt will ever get clean), but I had a ton of fun!

Negros Occidental
After Dumaguete, we headed to Langub (Sugar) beach on the East coast. The beach only has about 4 resorts on it, so we were forced to go to our last resort in terms of rooms, but we were close enough to get to the other resorts that it didn't really matter. We hung out with fellow travelers Chris and Larry (Canadians), Emai and Wilfried (Dutch), Dave (Californian), and Paddy (Irish). We had a lot of fun chatting around with them during dinner and after. We also went snorkeling here. The reefs weren't as nice as some I have been to, but there was a lot of wildlife to look at besides the coral.

Panay
After leaving Negros, we took a boat to Iloilo City on Panay. We stayed there for a couple of days, but were disappointed. We had gone there to do some climbing, but the indoor gym was closed (moved to America) and the National Park was "dangerous" because the militia was supposedly hiding out there. We did explore the city though and found a nice restaurant or two to eat at. Not a total loss.

Guimaras
Since we didn't do the climbing, we had time to visit the small island of Guimaras. There was a great waterfall near San Miguel that the local kids were using as a swimming hole/diving board. It was fun to watch them for a while. Even our tricycle driver came and watched with us. It looked like fun, but I hadn't brought my swimsuit and only had one clean pair of shorts left.

We also went to the Mango Research Facility. This wasn't much more than an orchard with a couple scientist, but I did learn about the growing of mangos and I did pet a cow. What more can you ask for from a fruit lab?

Next, we are headed back to Manila to get to Donsol to go swimming with the whale sharks. Hopefully, they won't be too hungry.