At five in the morning we were somewhere in Manila, in a taxi, circling around the city, the driver stopping at several bus stations to ask if they had a bus going south soon. Finally we found one that was just leaving and quickly stuffed our backpacks on the passenger seats and jumped in. We were tired but happy to be out of Manila before the famously horrible traffic got too crazy. Didn't really sound like an attractive city to us, so we decided from the beginning to avoid it if we could. Success.
In a few hours we were in a city called Tagaytay, where you can see the Taal volcano from a viewpoint. We hadn't planned to climb it or do a boat cruise around it (which about half of the city's population seemed to want to sell us one way or another), so we thought we'd just stop on the way, sit down, have a look, and keep going again. It was the weekend before the Catholic Holy week, so trying to find a place to stay so close to Manila didn't sound too appealing. So we got a tricycle which took us to the viewpoint. After resting a while, enjoying the view and a cup of coffee we drove back and tried to find a bus to Batangas. A friendly guy standing at the bus stop threw us into some bus, and it still is a mystery to us how we managed to change buses in the right place and get a minivan which took us right to the Batangas pier. Somehow we were where we wanted to be. We had had no food all day, no sleep last night and we were happy to be so close to our final destination. So we went in and got our tickets out of Luzon island to Mindoro.
Ready for bed already, our day wasn't over. After two hours on a bangka (Filipino type of boat) we arrived in Mindoro island's White Beach. It looked horrible. Bars, loud music and too many people is not what we are looking for on an island. So we had to find a quieter place. We took a tricycle to Talipanan beach, which, according to our guidebook, "is for people looking for real solitude". Sounded good. As soon as we arrived we knew that it was our kind of place. After a bit of walking around and comparing prices we half accidentally managed to haggle a family house with a kitchen and tv on the beach for 800 pesos a night from Mountain Beach Resort! That was a bargain, especially over the easter. Finally it was time for food and sleep! Oh no, first shopping and cooking... It had indeed been a long, long day. If only we'd known then how many days like that we would have in the Philippines.
We were really happy that we had found our easter hideaway. We spent the days snorkeling off Talipanan beach, where we found a nice coral reef. We did a couple of dives as well with Badladz dive company, which we would recommend. Nice people and small groups, just the two of us with a divemaster. We got to dive the Sabang wrecks, which consist of 3 tiny wrecks shattered on the ocean bottom, 1 of them being more or less in recognisable shape and you can even swim through if the current isn't to much for you, as it was for us. Great dive though, because there we saw our first ever frogfish! Crazy creatures! We also did a dive at Monkey beach, which was absolutely clear water, beautiful colors and thousands of fish! Water was freezing though. Every time after snorkeling or diving we were shivering! Not what we had expected with these hot days.
Our mission for Easter was also to extend our visa. We found out that there was an immigraton office in Puerto Galera, 20-minute tricycle drive away from Talipanan. So we got that done. This time it was no hassle like in the embassy in Singapore, no dress codes or anything, and the whole thing took about 20 minutes. So we had another 5 weeks in the Philippines. Great!
Ready to keep moving again, we left Mindoro and took a bangka back to Batangas on Luzon island. From there we had to change minivans and buses and tricycles several times, but in the evening after about 10 hours of travelling we made it to Bagasbas beach, close to Daet. It is a place famous for surfers and everything there is indeed about surfing. We found a room for 500 pesos from a nice guesthouse called Surfer's Dine Inn, where we stayed for four days, mostly swimming, bodyboarding and surfing (or trying to, to be honest). It was suddenly low season and the experienced surfers were somewhere else catching the big waves and the whole beach was left mostly to beginners like us. Which was great! No pressure, just rent a board and off you go! Good fun. We managed to catch some waves and stand on the board. We had done a surfing lesson 7 years ago in Australia but that was about it. The waves here were perfect and easy to catch even as a beginner. And the best thing was that the water temperature was good again! We had been freezing on Mindoro, but apparently the change from the South China sea to the Pacific side made all the difference. The water was almost too warm, but that's not really a reason to complain, is it?
From Bagasbas we went to what was supposed to be the highlight of our trip: swimming with whale sharks in Donsol, which has the highest concentration of whale sharks in the world. Or had, we should say. We arrived in Donsol after another long day in the bus just to find out that there had barely been any sightings in the last two months! 4 sharks a day over the Easter but barely any since then. The boat hire would be expensive and there were at least 30 boats going at a time, more than 90 a day. Only one boat is allowed to approach the whale shark at a time, which is good though, but that means that with even one sighting a day the chances of actually getting anywhere near it are very, very low. We stayed in a homestay, a place called Santiago. There we talked to other people who had tried it and everyone came back disappointed. There were no whale sharks. For a moment we thought about doing it anyway, but then we abandoned the idea. There just didn't seem to be a point for going. Very disappointed, we packed our bags to leave the next day. It was time to leave Luzon island for good.
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