We left Moalboal early in the morning and a driver brought us safely the 4-5 hours up to the Northern end of Cebu Island. He dropped us at a small harbour with a large pier with several “Bangkas”, the typical Philippine wooden double-outrigger boats, but not many people waiting for a transfer to Moalboal.
The ticket office and waiting room were rather basic and it was unclear how much to pay and when the boat would be leaving. A strange guy, who turned out to be the captain of our bangka, approached people and asked to pay 200 instead of 100 PHP (3,50 instead of 1,70 Euro), arguing that otherwise they would not leave and wait for more passengers.
The other tourists and we paid, so we were asked to board one of the bangkas. This was quite adventurous as despite the fact that there was this long and newly built pier, there were no boarding facilities. So we had to balance over a narrow timber plank on board. We did not dare to carry our suitcases in that way ourselves, but a couple of men were already waiting on the peer to earn a few pesos by carrying the tourists’ luggage and other goods on board of the vessel. We paid and all was safely brought on board.
It was just a 30-minute boat ride to arrive at the island which has one main local village and some minor settlements around the island. There are no cars, just a few mopeds on the island. The main beach is in the south of the island and most hotels, hostels and diving centres are along the beach. Contrary to Moalboal, there was a sandy walkway between the buildings and the beach which made it a pleasant place to walk along the beach, in particular in the evenings.
Our hotel, the “Tepanee Beach Resort”, was located at the western end of the beach on a small cliff with its own beach and house reef in front which was the favourite snorkelling area of the island due to the many juvenile black-tip sharks hunting there in the shallow waters. We had a marvellous view over that bay and the islet in front, as well as the sunset. The downside was that we had to take many stairs before reaching our room and it was a 5-10 minute walk to the main beach, our dive center and the restaurants – so walking kept us active.
We had chosen the “Thresher Shark Dive Center” (TSD), a 5-Star PADI center which operates there for many years and also has an informative website as regards diving with the famous Thresher Sharks (Fuchshaie) of Malapascua. It is actually the only place in the world where you have more or less a guarantee to meet them. They have, however, moved from their previous location called “Monad Shoal” to another place closer to Leyte Island called “Kimud Shoal”, because their previous cleaning station seems to be taken over by others, including Tiger Sharks.
So we went to Monad Shoal right the next morning, and were lucky enough to see several of these beautiful and elegant sharks moving along the rim of the underwater bommie (“shoal”). We did two dives there so had plenty of time to admire these exceptional and rare sharks. We met on the tour another longterm traveller, Vanessa (www.chamaekatze.de), who is as crazy as us with diving and we had a lot of fun.
The next days we explored more of the dive spots around Malapascua with TSD and found many wonderful sea creatures. The final day we joined for a longer tour which started at Monad Shoal to watch out for a tiger sharks, and indeed we saw one passing by in some distance. It was close enough for us, as tiger sharks can be more aggressive than other species we had seen so far and we were not keen to test it out.
The other two dives took place at “Gato Island” which is known for its fabulous cave and tunnel to swim through and its variety of sea life. We saw two sea snakes in the cave, an amazing red frogfish, and many nudibranchs and shrimps. There can be heavy currents at Gato Island, but it was calm for us, which also meant that there were not many larger fishes and hunters like tuna or jacks around. Still two awesome dives there.
When we were not diving, we enjoyed the relaxed island and the good food, be it in our favourite restaurant, the “Hippocampus” or at “Avrill’s”, a local BBQ at the main square of the town. we had spent five nights on the island, and could have stayed longer as it is a really cool place.
So if you plan to go to the Philippines, we can recommend both Moalboal and Malapascua or a combination of both as we did. If you have more time, also the other islands around most be great for a relaxed holiday and exciting diving, like Paglao and Anda on Bohol, Dumaguete and Apo Island on Negros, and many more places on the Visayas.
It was then time to leave Malapascua, again with a Bangka and the same procedure as on the way to the island. We had again pre-booked a car which brought us to Cebu City. However, we did not go directly to the airport, but had booked an additional two hours to visit the highlights of Cebu City, one of the biggest and oldest cities of the Philippines, as actually the Spanish colonialisation had started there.
Not much is left to visit from the Spanish times as the old buildings were destroyed by fires, wars and to make place for newer buildings. But we could visit two colonial villas, one had been turned into a modern museum of the city history, while the other was rather a collection of curiosities in the oldest house of the town.
We also visited the cathedral and the “Minor Basilica of the Holy Child” which is one of the most important pilgrim places of the Philippines, hosting a Christ child statue (Santo Niño) which had allegedly been brought to Cebu by great Magellan himself before he was killed on a neighbouring island before he could finalise completely his travelling around the world.
The Spanish and Western historians claim that it was his deputy. Juan Sebastian Elcano, who completed the circumvention on one journey, while in Asia historians give the honour to Magellan’s Malay slave, Enrique, who had accompanied Magellan on previous voyages and in that way had travelled around-the-world during multiple voyages.
We closed the sightseeing by visiting the huge local “Carbon Market” which was a colourful and exotic experience, which must be even more exciting later in the evening when the night market is in full swing. We then met our driver again and went to the airport.
We arrived pretty late at Manila Airport, but our hotel was in walking distance. We had some time the next morning to sleep long, have a breakfast (which was not so exciting as we had hoped for), a long swim in the roof-top pool, and off we went to catch our flight to Colombo via Kuala Lumpur.
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