Bohol, more Tarsiers, half successful hike, Baclayon Church

Getting up at a far more respectable time than yesterday we headed off for an active day finding tarsiers and hiking through the forest, hopefully with some food thrown in for good measure. We managed to hail our first tricycle down (basically a motorbike and sidecar) and got to the tarsier sanctuary by 11ish (late because we faffed around a lot this morning). Unlike the tarsiers we saw yesterday, this sanctuary is a globally recognised conservation area run for the rehabilitation of the tarsier. It’s the only place on the earth where they’ve successfully restored a tarsiers natural numbers. The park works similarly to Semanggol in Borneo (the semi-wild orangutan place): There’s an enclosure, just a relatively low wall so the tarsiers can come and go as they please through the trees but be protected from cats and other predators, and the tarsiers tend to sleep here in the day (they’re nocturnal, hence the massive eyes), so we can view them. There was 5 in total on the windy walk through the forest. All of them very still and shaded by leaves overhead. It must be a difficult job finding them first thing every morning as they really are tiny and very well camouflaged in the shade underneath the leaves up in the branches. 

We’d intended to then do a 15km hike called the tarsier trail which I’d read about, however it’s closed, however they mentioned there’s hikes at the neighbouring Sikatuna Tree Park (an excellent name for a forest) so we headed over there. After a limited hike over very slippery roots and rocks akin to those in Borneo we arrived at a watchtower, just in time to catch a very heavy rainstorm. The views were surprisingly good from here and we ate some disappointing baked goods from the bakery just around the corner from our hotel, including one oddity which was sold as a fig roll but also mentioned onion in its description. It basically looked like a fig roll, had sweet pastry but a savoury onion filling. Weird, not good, thrown away. We braved the rain to get back over to the main road, the hike in total probably actually took a couple of hours (to the road and back) so actually not too bad. By the time we got back on the road the weather had flipped the other way and was brilliant sunshine, in which we frantically reapplied our sun cream in the shade of a tree with an onlooking cow for company. 

As the tarsier trail was closed and we didn’t really know what was around us we headed back towards Tagbiliran to the Baclayon Church. It’s on all the tours so must be worth a look, and sort of on the way back into the city where we could indulge in a lunch (again to be very late). Working out how to get in the church took a while, but once inside it was actually very impressive. A relatively plain whitewashed exterior hides a very colourfully painted ceiling and multicoloured stain glass windows. Surprising and very impressive. A short and relatively uninteresting (to us) wander through the museum took us back out into the sunlight where we began the 5km walk into Tagbiliran itself. 

We stumbled across the blood compact shrine, an odd statue commemorating a pack made to end the tribal bloodshed of yesteryear (keeping it vague as not entirely sure and I don’t currently have internet to check the facts). Just beyond this we came across Chido’s Cafe, which rang a bell to me when I looked at the best restaurants in Bohol. I thought it was number one, however was wrong as is in fact number 3. That, however, didn’t matter as it was brilliant. We both had massive sandwiches, in a very nicely finished interior, on a balcony overlooking Panglao Island and the sea beyond. They even had a very beautiful dog. Checks all my boxes. I must add this ‘lunch’ was at around 4ish, so we were hungry, very hungry. 

Further on our walk we found Moira’s Cafe, number one on tripadvisor, however it is very small with only boutique looking cakes on offer. Very glad we stopped at number 3. From here we were very tired from the surprising amount of walking we had done so headed into Tagbiliran to catch a jeepney back up to the Hotel, where we just crashed and went to bed. Another exhausting but pretty fun day, even though it didn’t entirely go to plan (at all).