Hello again! Let me continue sharing our adventures in Bohol, and this time, it was our island hopping experience. We used the same company, Seashine Travel and Tours.
The fee for the tour was PHP900 each, and that included the entrance fees and the rental for the snorkeling gear. We readily agreed as we wanted to do everything fun while we were in Bohol.
They also picked us up from our accommodation, and this time they came not with a van, but two motorcycles! Me and my sister were out of our wits as we have not done back riding in a motorcycle before, so they assured as it was gonna be safe, and that they will not go fast. Us middle aged women reluctantly agreed, and found out later that it was quite fun actually. :-)
Again our group was multinational, and it was quite a large group, but unlike the land tour, everybody kept to themselves. We left Alona Beach around 9 AM.
The first activity was dolphin watching, and we asked the success rate of seeing dolphins, and we were given the answer that it was 95% most of the time. True enough, we saw a school of dolphins, but they were moving so fast!
You never know when and where they were going to spring up from so I was lucky I had video mode on and I just took a screen shot of the video I took. Back to when I was in Thailand the dolphins were practically just beside our boat!
After the dolphin watching we traveled on to Balicasag island. In this place we were gonna snorkel. Since I do not have an underwater camera, I have nothing to show for the wonderful and beautiful creatures of the sea that I saw!
We got off from our motorized boat, changed into our swimsuits and we took paddled boats to go to the place where we can see sea turtles.
My poor sister who cannot swim well, ended up drinking a lot of seawater because she did not know how to use the equipment no matter how many times I tried to show her. Meanwhile, I was marveling at the big sea turtles and one came within reach to my fingers but I did not want to touch it for fear that it will get startled.
After swimming with the turtles for a while, we moved to the marine sanctuary, which was on the other side of the island.
My sister said she was just gonna take pictures of me from the boat since she no longer wanted to drink more saltwater. Ah, the joy of seeing so many kinds of fish! How I wish I had a waterproof camera just so I could show you what I saw!
The boatman who paddled for us coaxed my sister to get on the water again, and said he will help her. This time I slowly showed her again, how to use the equipment, and she held on to the side of the boat and was able to enjoy the view down below as well.
There were garoupas, there were big and small fish, colorful ones, even the corals were so beautiful. It was a whole new world down there. and I was glad my sister also got to see it, otherwise she would have wasted her money.
I even swam to the part where it was 20 meters deep, where the diving site was. The color of the water is very different from the snorkeling area, it was a deep blue where it was deep, and the temperature was a lot colder. It was such an amazing experience, and we were so grateful that we got to experience it.
After about half an hour on each site, we left Balicasag and traveled on to Virgin Island. Virgin Island is like a big sandbar, and the water is thigh deep in most areas.
There were so many boats docked to enjoy the area. The water was very clear, and by this time it was almost midday so the sun was super hot.
We took several pictures of the area, but we were doing it so fast as we were burning because the sun was blazing hot.
We saw several sea creatures, and since the water was very clear, I was able to take some pictures with my phone.
It looked so big in the water but when my sister took it our briefly to take a picture, it was much smaller. We quickly put it back after taking a picture of it.
We also saw some sea cucumbers, but after my sister saw these, she got freaked out and wanted to get out of the water quickly. Scaredy cat, ha ha.
There were some small fish as well, too small compared to the ones at the marine sanctuary, but at least I got to take a picture of them above water.
There were also quite a lot of sea urchins so we had to be careful where we were stepping on and we were barefoot as well.
I briefly took off my shirt to take this picture but I immediately put it back on so as not to get sunburned.
Don't know what kind of plant this is, maybe a marsh plant, that's why it can survive in saltwater?
We went back to the boat and took some pictures before the rest of the group came back.
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