Room Service breakfast! We originally planned to play at the beach today. We called to make arrangements at the White Sands Beach Resort Hotel, but when we arrived, it was a very muddy, small, pitiful little beach. Thankfully, the desk immediately refunded our day payment, and we called our friend, Alan Augusto, from our first boat-trip, who promised a trip to Bohol for 3000 PHP. The desk managers were so kind to help us make the phone calls (we had to pay for the calls but it was still nice that they were not too upset about our requested refund to help us). Alan was a bit wary of the time, since it was after 7am, but then he said he could come get us anyway. We felt so blessed that he came right away, and off we went to the port. He explained that since it was already so late in the day, we wouldn't have enough time to take a slower private boat, so we took the ferry across. That seemed more economical, and if it can get us across quickly enough to still enjoy our day, I'm all for saving him money and still giving him his fee for all the help.
A breadsticks/lightsaber duel to pass the time.
The ferry took almost 1.5 hours. When we got off, Alan hired us a cab driver, we picked out our favorite spots on the island to visit, and we drove, and drove, and drove. On the way, Ella wanted to take lots of pictures of the sky.
This is the Tarsier Sanctuary: a small dome “monkey” habitat. Really small, but fun to have a not-monkey on our arm. The guy placed him on us, snapped pictures, and the monkey jumped off. That was that, but hey, here are the cute pictures!
Jared was stoked he was going to get to hold his “second favorite kind of animal, almost.”
The Chocolate Hills were just like yummy dollops of chocolate ice cream, and the experience reminded me of the Candy-Land game. Fun!
There was a ledge for taking pictures. Most of the posted pics showed people jumping, so it looked like they were flying over the Chocolate Hills. Ella and Jared attempted to do the same.
We didn’t.
It was a tiny, but fun hike. The kids enjoyed their freedom to run ahead a little.
I made our driver stop to take this gorgeous pic. I think it was an animal habitat visitor center.
Panglao Beach
We love our tent for consolidation of stuff. We weren’t there long enough to rest much inside, but it was nice to see everything safely behind a few zippers while we played in the water….
… with a LONGBOARD (and inner tube)!!
Breaking camp.
Apparently we played hard!
------------ Read ahead for boring details perhaps helpful if you intend to book something similar--------- We were apparently very misinformed about the price. Instead of only being 3000 PHP, Alan said that was the price of the boat, only. I asked him on the phone, earlier, about other fees, and he reassured me that he would cover the fees for us, so we were very uncomfortable with this new price tag (12,000 PHP). We broke it down, and it started to make sense: He hired a driver for 5000 PHP for the day. The driver should have cost closer to 2500, not 5000, according to this website: http://www.boholtraveltours.com/boholcountrysidetour_a.php Our ferry tickets were 200 per person per way, so 200 x 5 people x 2 ways= 2000 for the day
Daytime access to the beach was 10 per person = 10*6 people (we now had a driver)=60
Showers ~ 100
Monkeys ~ 150
Chocolate Hills = 50 adult, 10 child = 50 x 4 adults + 10 x 2 children =220
Tube rental Alan paid for = 75 If they didn’t take any payment for the day, it would come to:
2000+60+100+150+220+75=2605 If our half-day driver got 5000 (generous=$120), that's 2605+5000= 7605
That left our tour-guide (services for 10 hours) with 12000-7605=4395 ($105)
We’ve got some great memories, and we’ve learned a bit from our experience.
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