Leaving our quiet corner of Moalboal

We woke up excited for the day ahead. We had breakfast, packed our bags and hopped on the boat with 3 others for the trip. The plan was to first see Dolphins, then to snorkel and possibly find sea turtles, then finally to see schools of sardines, all in the space of 3-4 hours. We were sceptical about seeing everything but excited all the same. To our surprise it worked out perfectly. Within half an hour there must have been about 10 dolphins swimming along side the boat. Something so simple, but still so nice to see. Not long after, we then pulled up to a small island and went snorkelling, then we moved on to another location to look for the sea turtles. It took awhile but before we knew it there was a huge one right on the edge of the reef. We quickly swam over and managed to get a picture before it swam off into the blue. Unfortunately it didn't hang around for long. The last stop we made was to see the sardines. We were all pretty tired by this point, so some of us jumped in to have a quick look. There wasn't much to see so we all returned to the boat until the driver then said there was a bigger school nearby. Reluctantly Sean went in and was surprised to see what must have been hundreds of thousands of sardines swimming about. He got some shots and then it was time to return.

A couple we had met on the boat, who were on holiday from Japan, were going to the same area we were for dinner so we shared a tricycle with them, and ate together. I had a huge Cajun burger whilst Alex had her usual pizza. To be honest we are making an effort to try the local food when we can but sometimes you just need a little piece of home.

We were having to get up early the next day in order to get the busses up to Malapascua, so we packed our bags and had an earlyish night.

At 6.30 we were up and ready waiting for the tricycle we'd booked to take us to the bus stop to Cebu City. When we got on and sat down our hearts sank when we realised that the bus wasn't air conditioned, but luckily all the windows were open and we got 2 seats together so both got a nice breeze. The only down side was that there were no curtains and we'd picked the side where the sun was but Alex's very large hat quickly came to use.

The first stop was Cebu city south bus terminal so we then had to get a taxi to the north terminal. There, was got straight on the bus to Maya. A total of about 8 hours later we got to the port where we then got the boat across to Malapascua Island which took another hour.

We'd got quite used to the tricycles now so we expected for it to be the same here until we were then informed there are only single motorcycles. We had our huge rucksacks and were then told there aren't any roads on the island, just narrow sandy lanes, so we were a little bit apprehensive but it was actually fine as it was only a 5 minute journey.

The accommodation is nice. It turned out we didn't book the air con room that we thought we had, so that was a bit disheartening but so far it's been ok.

:)