According to the guidebook Sibuyan island is supposed to be an amazing place for snorkeling and diving with nice beaches and beautiful reefs. It isn't. The island itself is beautiful with Mount Guiting Guiting in the middle and quite a big forest coverage. The beaches we saw were rocky or muddy between mangroves and for snorkeling you have to go far to find reefs. We did exactly that one day, the owner of the place we stayed invited us to join him on a speedboat (everything that floats, has an engine and doesn't look like a bangka is a speedboat) to do a daytrip to the Isla de Gallo some 45 minutes away. We agreed after some hard haggling together with a fellow traveller and spent some nice hours on the uninhabited island which consists of sand and some bushes. He also brought some meat to barbecue (for free he kept repeating. Not really, we paid quite a sum for this trip...) and a bottle of brandy. Also off this island there were no corals so on the way back we stopped at the surrounding reef and had some good snorkeling. In the end we saw some fishes and he was drunk and happy.
San Fernando isn't touristy. Absolutely not. There's a homestay straight ahead from the pier and the place we stayed "Sea breeze", at the western end of town. There are two small "restaurants" whose opening hours we couldn't figure out and a market. And you are a sight there if you're white. We soon saw that there wasn't much for us to do (no, we don't want to climb that mountain, thank you) and the food options were really, really bad for a vegetarian, so we tried to figure out how to leave the island. The book says there's a ferry everyday from San Fernando to Romblon island. There isn't. It's from Magdiwang on the north coast. We missed the jeepney that left 5am because we had no clue that day that there is one and after we were accused by the owner of being too lazy to get up early we got ourselves a tricycle for 600 pesos all the way to Magdiwang. It took 1.5 hours along the east coast and was very scenic and bumpy, exactly how it should be. Happy to be on the way again we checked the boat schedule at the pier and got some guesthouses pointed out by a lady in a stall. We picked one of them, "Beach house", and got a room for 150 each. That night the parking lot suddenly started to fill up with tricycles and pick ups, people everywhere. The guy who checked in next to us solved the mystery, he was the personal security chief of the governor of Romblon province and this night was big election party (free beers = free votes?). He also invited us to go to Romblon island the next day aboard the yacht of the governor. We accepted.
The next morning we got up early enough to catch the regular ferry (our backup plan) because we didn't really think it would work out with the yacht and it didn't in the end. And we thought this yacht will probably be a big, nice bangka but no, it was a shiny white yacht and probably the reason the ring road around Sibuyan is only half concrete before the money run out... (our point of view). Instead we left aboard a big Montenegro Lines ferry and we were happy to be finally in an area where the services don't only consist of bangkas.
Arriving in Romblon town on Romblon island is quite impressive. First the ferry navigates around several islands and then enters the natural harbour of Romblon town. The guide book says it's one of the prettiest towns in the Philippines. Well that's just crap. We followed our guide book again and ended up in a place surrounded by 8 angry dogs where once a guesthouse was. Several years ago. So we kept going along the road for about 7 kms until we arrived at San Pedro resort on Talipasak beach where we hoped to find a cheapie on an unspoiled beach. Sounds impossible? We found it! Thanks to the guide book, I have to say, we got ourselves a big bungalow a bit above the water in a forest for 700 pesos. And the beach was world class! The snorkeling was decent, also a lot of signs of dynamite fishing but the area is protected now and happily there are still corals left. The rock formations at the left end of the beach were quite impressive under water. Also there was some improvement, loads of concrete structures have been sunk as basis for new corals and they also destroy the nets of fishermen who are not allowed to fish there. We enjoyed four days there and then decided to keep moving, our time was running out. Only 3 weeks left in the Philippines!
Again, a bangka brought us over to Tablas island to a town called San Agustin. From there we rode a jeepney roof to Looc, mostly along the coast with some priceless views. In Looc we stayed over night because the bangka only leaves in the morning to our next goal, Carabao island. In the morning we first had to catch a jeepney to Santa Fe from where the bangka was leaving. No one knew exactly when the jeepney was supposed to leave Looc, 07:00 or 08:00 was mostly the answer. We thought 07:00 is the better bet and the jeepney was indeed already filling up. We got seats inside this time but we didn't leave until all 12'657 passengers were aboard. Then we left to fill up the tank. Then we went back to Looc to pick up more people and cargo, mostly rice. I calculated that at least 2'000kg of rice were loaded onto the roof which was only made of some leftover steel bars and tin. How can that work? No one knows but it does (I think it's the paint that gives that extra stability). 20 minutes before our bankga was due to leave we left Looc for a journey that takes at least an hour. But the bankga won't leave without all this passengers, the driver said. Good!
The 1.5 hours to Carabao were easy enough and a guy we met on the boat gave us a ride on his and his nephew's bike to a resort on the west coast. "Is this your aunt working here"?, I asked. "No, my nephew's sister". "So everyone is somehow related to everyone here on Carabao"? "Basically, yes". And true enough in all the conversations with the staff in the resort there were all the time people referred to "uncle" or "grandfather" or "sister-in-law" and so on. The beach was again brillant but the snorkeling that the guide book mentions as terrific and all the people that come here from Boracay only because of that wasn't true again. Nothing terrific and no one from Boracay. Not one boat. The reef looked like Hiroshima 60 years ago, all nice levelled out. We still managed to keep ourselves busy with snorkeling and always found new stuff. We also did a beach dive with a Swiss divemaster. There we could clearly see that all the corals a bit deeper were in ok condition whereas the ones in dynamiting distance weren't. Climate change and tsunamis were the normal explanations for the destroyed reefs. Sure, this all doesn't help and also does a lot of damage but it doesn't make big holes in reefs, does it? Even the government says that 40% of Philippine's reefs are in poor condition. That's truly shocking! What surprised us the most was that the further away from tourism you go, the worse the reef conditions are. It's probably not the best when the police or national park officer is related to everyone on the island... (our opinion).
Then came the question whether to visit Boracay, the next island, or not. Since we started our travels in the Philippines, the question we heard the most, was "have you been to Boracay yet?". Every local that works there or worked there says it's horrible, overcrowded and expensive. We could maybe deal with one but that didn't sound good. But we also thought that all these tourists don't probably go there for nothing. In the end we voted for no. An early morning bangka (sounds repetitive?) brought as straight to Caticlan on Panay island. On the way we drove past Boracay and it's white beach, it does look amazing! But everything also looks so clean and man made that it doesn't quite seem to be a place for two penny pinchers like us. From Caticlan it took us 5 hours in a minivan to Iloilo. There we got dropped off at the pier where we were able to catch the next ferry to Bacolod on Negros island. The ferry felt like a spaceship out of the 80's compared to our usual bangka.
In Bacolod we found a decent place to sleep (with aircon an tv!) and after 2 hours of walking through the city for a vegetarian place we crashed in front of the tv and got a good night's sleep. Ceres liner brought us to Dumaguete in one of their buses in about 6 hours. The whole island seems to be planted with sugar cane, they even call it sugarlandia. Dumaguete we found quite nice, it's also an important port at Negros east coast. There are ferries to Cebu, Bohol and Siquijor as well as bangkas to Apo island. We thought about doing some diving there from Dumaguete as the prices are the same as on the island but we do love snorkeling and needed some time out from traveling. The next day we hopped on a bus to Malatapay from where the bangkas leave to Apo island. The guys in charge of the boats try to persuade tourists to charter a private bangka, because the next regular and cheaper one leaves in several hours, they say. But after so long on the road and in the Philippines in particular we knew the games already and after an hour wait we got a cheap ride on a tiny bangka. Pretty soaked we arrived on Apo island which was bigger than we expected. There's no pier, everyone has to walk over the slippery rocks covered in sea urchins and one of us did quite a dance on the slippery stuff. The only affordable option for people like us is a homestay, ours was called Ronor's, bright orange and a bit back in the village. Before the sun disappeared we had to go and see how the snorkeling is on this highly prized island. We barely managed to swim out, it was low, low, low tide but what we saw in the disappearing light was just enough to bring wet dreams upon a snorkeler!
