Trip to Alona Beach, Panglao, Bohol

December 29, 2012

Here we go again on another pump boat ride leaving from Hilongos.
CR is Comfort Room, what they call the bathroom.

 I’ve been looking forward to my first little vacation, New Year’s rendezvous with other PCVs and  headed out for the trip to the resort town of Alona Beach on the island of Panglao. Panglao Island is connected to the island of Bohol by bridge. It’s not that far as the crow flies but getting around this archipelago is time consuming. I caught a van from here at 9:00 AM for the 45 minute ride to Hilongos wanting to make sure I got there an hour before the boat to Bohol was scheduled to leave.

Bigger boats leave from Hilongos for Cebu

11:00 departure time became 11:45 and I was on my way to Ubay on the NE end of Bohol. From there I caught a jeepney for the 2 ½ hour ride to Tagbilaran on the SW end of the island. Tagbliaran is good sized and has a mall and a transportation center. PCV Yara Sullivan met me at the mall where the first desperate need was a bathroom and then a yummy coffee frappacino.

We continued on together, catching a jeepney for the last leg of the trip, crossing over a bridge to the island of Panglao and the hour ride to Alona Beach. I was finally there 11 ½ hours after I started. Getting a flat tire a few kilometers out of Alona contributed an hour to the travel time.

Flat tire

The Citadel Inn www.citadelalona.com was fantastic for Ph800/night. Yara and I shared the room so it cost only Ph400= US$10. It was clean, had big windows we could open and look out onto the street below, nice communal bathroom/showers, a nice communal kitchen with refer, stove and all the dishes and pots you need for cooking your own meals, a very nice outside eating/congregating area where you can order breakfast for a couple bucks and use the wifi. It was 8:30 and we needed to eat dinner; so many choices. We opted for Chinese, enjoyed each others’ company and crashed. The rest of the group would be arriving at different times.

At the beach with Yara

Yara gets stared at alot because of her beautiful color

Beach to the left and right very nice, and some cloud cover

Amelia's the first PCV I met when we spotted each other at SeaTac airport. She's from Everett.

 Amelia Kent, from Everett, WA, and Melissa Innskeep arrived the next morning. They didn’t have far to travel being sited in Bohol and Candice Gibson flew in from Manila. We all headed for the beach, a five minute walk. It was awesome to visit my first ‘resort’ town. The beach is very nice, a long expanse of white sand lined with palms and lots of trendy and not so trendy places to get food and drink. The water was clean and clear AND refreshing. I like to stress the refreshing part because often the water is so warm it’s not refreshing. One time in Sabang the water was hot like a hot spring or bath water. I’d been looking forward to mixing with an international crowd and Alona Beach definitely was that, especially for the New Year’s weekend. The weather was perfect for spending all day at the beach. By this I mean it was overcast a lot and not too hot and didn’t have to worry so much about sunburn.

Candice and Melissa arrived and this is on the Citadel's balcony before we went to the beach for a fabulous Thai dinner

Now we're all here with Chai and Victoria too and the drummers

It's Christmas in the Philippines

 Victoria Carberry, sited in Bohol, and Chai Mendoza, my CRM Technical trainer, arrived latter and we all went for a fabulous Thai dinner seated a few feet from the lapping waves of the sea. With lanterns hanging from the trees and candles on the table and a clear starry night it was so much fun and made even more perfect when I met the first drummers I’ve seen here in the Ppines. Perfect.