Far away - Philippines, a country with more than 7000 islands

Siargao – Our first stop was the surfer island Siargao with its famous spot cloud 9. We lived next to the little village General Luna from where you can easily discover the island by renting a scooter and just driving around. This is anyway the best way to get around because its cheap, you can go anywhere you like and are independent. There are many things to discover on this island like low tide pools, cave pools, some coconut monocultures, beautiful beaches all around the island and of course some good surfing. Most of the spots we discovered were only accessible by boat. General Luna has the best infrastructure for tourists with bars clubs and a lot of shops. Live here is really laidback and you can also just stay here and spend your time. There are some very interesting environmental awareness projects going on on this island. Before it suffered a lot from plastic pollution and now there are educational and cleaning programs.

Siquijor the island of witches is what some people call it. We wanted to see for ourselves what it meant and for sure it had some high energetical places. Also there were some people who sold themselves as shamans but we never tried as we weren’t sure if it was true or just commercial. We stayed at a beautiful hostel in the south at a cliff. To the next town we swam in the ocean philippino style – flip flops used as webs to give you more power, which is way better than walking on the street with all the reefs, plants and fish underneath you. We visited the old enchanted tree, the Cantabon cave and some waterfalls. In the Philippines you always need a guide to go everywhere which was a little weird in the first place but on the other hand you support the local population.

Apo island was a one day trip from negros. Apo is famous for snorkelling with turtles and for not having any traffic. So we took a boat in the morning to go snorkelling and reached the island half an our later. Coming to the island we needed to pay an entrance fee for the island a guide for snorkelling and swim wests. They were really insistent on the swim wests but we could convince them that we don’t need them for snorkelling. Why we would need a guide was also quite strange because the zone is right in front of the beach but we saw later why. Whilst we were snorkelling and being amazed about the turtles being not fearful at all there are other tourists that hold on to the lifesaver and let them drag around the zone by the guide also touching the turtles. After that we were wandering around the island a bit and taking the boat back to negros. This time the ride was a bit bumpier because the wind is getting stronger in the afternoon, fun time