Philippines above and underwater

Philippines above and underwater

Sightseeings of Iligan

In the first place we went to the main sightseeing of Iligan – Maria Cristina waterfalls. What do i say, the waterfall is just incredible! Downstream there’s a power-plant supplying Iligan with electricity,it’s a sensitive site taking into account terrorist problem the cars entering the territory are checked severely, all the visitors are registered in the journal-book. The entrance is fee-paying but the price is ridiculous (75 php i suppose). A small zoo is located near-by, but there is nothing remarkble in there just ostrich, crocodiles and some kinds of lizards. There’s a small park of butterflies and a garden of orchids. Well that’s a small additional to the the waterfalls.

Having riden the main road our guides proposed to stop for a lunch and came to a small motorway restaurant. A huge roasted whole pig were on a table right by the side of the road! Sakes alive! We came to a Moslem’s lair and they regale us with roasted pig? 😕

While i was taking pictures with my camera, a woman was cutting off a fat piece of a pig with her hatchet and laid it on plates. On the side she served bakes bananas, rice and batata. Our guides began to crunch the roasted pig crust, inviting to join them and telling us how tasty it was. But we couldn’t understand what was the pleasure eating fat roasted pig -skin and lard in 35 degrees heat. But we tasted some out of regard and even said that it was delicious. Well just not to hurt them… :whistling:

The second place of destination of our trip was Tinago waterfalls. The road to the waterfalls was not that well-troden so we had to ride up hill and finally pass into the unsurface road. We left our car and walked. There on the conventional entrance was a box notifying that the entrance was free of charge but anyone could donate any amount of money for the site improvement.

On the way to the waterfalls we overpassed the ruins of abandoned resort thick-set with tropical vegetation. This could become movie set for some movie about a city lost in the jungle.

Tinago – means «hidden» in Filipino. And it completely pays off it’s name – some hundreds of steps lead to it along the overgrown rainforest cleve. This waterfall is not that powerful and high, but very photogenic and manipulating the shutter speed it’s easy to take great pictures. There’s a a pretty large lake with clear water under the waterfall – having swum enough in the lake we made our way back. On the way back i found a marvelous spider in the ruins of the abandoned resort, that was busy devouring it’s prey. Later i even managed to speciate it: Nephila pilipes.

The last waterwalls we visited was Mimbalut Falls. Despite it’s considerable dimentions and vigour it didn’t look that photogenic and no matter how i jumped all over it, taking pictures of it in different camera angles it didn’t work out well. 😐

The afternoon was well along and three waterfalls were more than enough for us (actually there are 23 waterfalls in Iligan) so we decided to move back. On our way back we stopped by to see a local sightseeing – a house where 2 presidents of Philippines lived at different times. Just an ordinary house. Nothing remarkable about it.

The conclusion of our trip was a visit of a district that was annihilated by a typhoon just two months before our trip. The sight was quite dramatic:the entire blocks of tumble-down houses, people had the key of the street and lived in boxes. The propical storm “Washi” battering Mindanao two months before our trip claimed lives of more than our thousand people, hundreds of people are still missing…

Iligan — Cagayan de Oro

Next morning we finally decided to get enough sleep and go to Cagayan de Oro by bus, where we planned a ferry to Bohol island. Buses to Cagayan de Oro go very often – every hour or sometimes even more often. Bus ticket costs 140 php, it takes about two hours to get there.

The road didn’t have anything remarkable save one moment when about halfway the bus stopped and the driver asked all the passangers to leave the bus and tread on a duster soaked in some delution. When we asked why should we do this they said: «desinfected». What kind of desinfection it was it remained an inigma for us. :-]

Cagayan de Oro

In Cagayan de Oro we stayed Nature’s Pension hotel. Triple room with air-conditioner, hot tub but without wi-fi costed us about 900 php. Well there was neither wi-fi in the room, nor in the hotel. That was the only disadvantage of this hotel. But on the other hand as the night falls a huge night market opens with different asian lumber and eatables around the corner.

Next morning we planned to go to Superferry, but when we came to the sea terminal we were in for a surprise. As it turned out there was no ferry to Bohol today. But not only today there was no ferry to Bohol at all. As we found out this later this itinerary has just been called off. Now the weirdest thing was that they didn’t even informed us about it – not even by e-mail. Luckily for us we found out that a ferry of another company went to Jagna in an hour so we ran to buy new tickets. In general, despite the fact that we had a narrow squeak, everything went according to the plan! :ninja:

While we were waiting for the ferry we found a poster «wanted». It came out to be that there were serial killers on Philippines and lots of them! 😯 The reward for the most rabid maniac was 10 billions php! :rightful:

Ferry from Cagayan de Oro goes with one stop on Camiguin island and if we had more time we could get off the ferry and live a couple of days there and then go further to Bohol island on the same ferry. Camiguin island has something to see underwater.

Author: Vladimir

Traveler, photographer, author of the reports.

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