Let's Go To Tubigon
Hi there my dear readerists, I have been wanting to share with you our trip to Tubigon last Sunday but I was very busy I couldn't get to finish this draft plus, the images were still on my phone, I needed to upload them to this article before I could get to start writing because this is a photoblog which means you have to brace yourself for picture overload.
So last Sunday, we traveled to Cebu City but a day before that, we had checked which one was the best option because the shipping barge in Loon was damaged by the Typhoon Odette last December so we have no other choice but to go to Cebu City first then to Oslob.
Upon checking, there's a barge ship that travels at different times a day, Fastcat and it is in Tubigon. So Tubigon it is. By 1:30 in the afternoon, we started our land trip journey.
Matti asked for milk at the start of the trip. Like it was still five minutes on the road. We were seated at the front and then decided to transfer to the back because the sun's really hot.
We stopped by a gasoline station to get our tanks full. From Guindulman, we reached Candijay and then Lungsod Daan which is still part of Candijay though but it has its own market, Lungsod Daan means old town. We were headed to Alicia, we'll turn left to Sierra Bullones at the fork.
It was such a fine day, the skies were blue with clouds, the sun was beaming high and bright and the road was clear, only a few cars running, we were glad that the map displayed we will reach our destination in just two hours! This was surely a faster route than in Loon.
In just a few minutes, we had reached Alicia. Back when I was in grade school, as early as fourth grade, I had been used to riding a public bus all by myself and traveling to Alicia, to my cousin's house. My landmark is when I see this spot down here:
The straight road, the mountains of Alicia at the back, and some old Acacia trees on the side, my heart would go pounding because it's almost time for me to shout "lugar lang" or to tell the driver to stop.
Anyway, I was young back then. Now that I am older and literally bigger, it makes me giggle remembering those days.
Now back to the road, there's a spot in Alicia that I love to really look at whenever we pass by their ricefield, the mountain ridges, there's the panoramic view of Alicia. I had been wanting to go visit that but its just hard to do it at this point because of the baby. Soon, we will surely climb that mountain.
This below is another view of the mountains of Alicia:
From Alicia, we reached the fork where we will have to turn left to Sierra Bullones. It brought some memories to us because we had gone the same route before when we were younger, we love to go on road trips on motorcycles and we had gone to the Chocolate Hills before using an old Honda XRM. My husband and I were talking about it that I forgot to take photos of the road.
It was only when we reached Pilar that I thought of taking pictures again. The road here looks really nice and I am glad the street lamps were not destroyed by the typhoon.
After passing by this area here, we had now a view of the lake. There's a dam in here which is quite famous, a lot of Boholanos would go here to chill in the afternoon. The lake is also romantic that the local government unit here made a park for those who want to spend their afternoons here.
Here's the view of the lake:
And then the dam below:
It's my first time to see the water getting into the dam. I had been here quite a few times before but all of those times, the dam was empty and dry. It has been raining for a few days and this was the result. It looked really nice seeing the waters just running down into the reservoir.
Our route goes as follows:
So after reaching Pilar, we passed by Sierra Bullones, and then we reached Carmen. This is the heart of Bohol and where the famous Chocolate Hills is located. It was sprinkling when we were on the road but it stopped immediately as well.
It's obvious when we reached Carmen because of the presence of mini chocolate mountains, they turn brown during summer which is why they are called as such. There are so many hills surrounding Carmen and Sagbayan. The viewing point is in Carmen.
And then we passed by this area which looked like Bilar's man-made forest but this one is shorter and lesser number of trees, this is still a result of the numerous tree planting activity drive made before, years ago.
We now had reached Sagbayan! This town is known for the Sagbayan Peak, a nature park which offers a good view as well of the Chocolate Hills, some huge dinosaur figures and all.
In Sagbayan, there are also many areas where chocolate hills can be seen from the road. This one here below, I was attracted to the grazing buffalos and the hills look really nice in the background.
My husband had a full-speed now because the road was straight and there were no other cars around.
We passed by Clarin and we found a nice viewing deck where Cebu Island can be seen and some other neighboring tiny islands, I told my husband we must check it out but he didn't stop saying we will stop by when we return next week.
It's just saddening to see the coconut trees here which were all affected by the recent typhoon.
The good thing here is that they are still alive, they'll soon grow new branches and leaves. There were far worse cases where the coconut trees were all blown out from the ground.
We were now on our last stretch as we enter Tubigon. It took us less than an hour to reach the town but unfortunately, we didn't know that we have to get tickets at the cultural center and not from the port.
It was a Sunday so there were so many people around, most were passengers going to Cebu as well. The line was long and my husband parked the car opposite the park. There's McDonald's too so we already planned on buying dinner here as the boat undocks at 5:30 PM and the travel time will be 1 and half hours.
It took almost two hours of waiting in line before James could get our tickets. The fee for the car was at Php 2700+ while passengers were priced at Php 200+. We headed to the port right away after buying the meals and getting the tickets.
We were delighted to see the waters were really calm and peaceful. It was our first time to ride a Fastcat via Tubigon, we had ridden one when we went to Bacolod before via Toledo to San Carlos. But this was the first time with a car and since the passenger's area was full, we were just in our car the entire travel time.
I'll share with you the experience whilst in the boat in the next article!
xoxo,
momentswithmatti
Mother | Boholana | Cebu | Philippines | Travel | Photography Enthusiast | Calligraphy | Art | Crypto Noob
Oh sis, that's a nice ride and adventure with you. Lovely places there, and your shots are amazing as always.