Moalboal's sardine run

Moalboal is a peculiar place. Located only a few hours away from Cebu city, on the western side of the island, it sees quite many tourists. Moalboal itself is actually a town further inland and most tourists stay by the Panagsama beach. They just call it Moalboal. Anyhow, there’s kind of a beach boulevard sort of thing where all the restaurants, dive shops, bars and hotels, resorts etc. are concentrated. It’s all set up for tourism with very little to do with local life. Still, for some reason I was surprised to find so many people and such a diverse group of foreigners. It looked like quite many non-diver backpacker party people had gotten lost and found themselves accidentally in Chilli bar in Moalboal.

So the thing in Moalboal is diving. Surprise! There’s also some canyoning etc. but we didn’t look much into that. Sardine run is the main attraction when it comes to diving. It means that only a few metres off shore there is a school of sardines, that are chased by jackfish. The sardines make a spectacular spectacle by creating crazy shapes and endless rivers of...well just millions of sardines. There’s other stuff too: sea turtles and fishes right by the shallow waters on the shore and then there’s of course the Pescador island which is supposedly a great dive site.

Chris and I were staying a bit outside the main hassle in a very pretty place called Sister’s inn. Since Chris’ ear was not too good, he decided to skip diving. I wasn’t sure, on the one hand I had heard that Malapascua and Apo diving was a lot better and the sardines one could just see by snorkelling as well. On the other hand seeing the sardine run from below could be really nice and very easily organized. Hmmm. I decided to check out the snorkelling first and only then decide.

Sister's inn and our balcony

Moalboal shore

In the evening we met with a French guy, Sebastien, who was our neighbor in Malapascua. With him was Clara, a young German girl who had the same route in mind as us so we made some plans to travel together to Apo island after a few days. Sebastien would be there too, although he’d stop in Oslob before.

After breakfast we decided to snorkel a bit, then do some hangboarding by the beach and after lunch snorkel a bit more. Chris had his own mask and snorkel with him so I decided to buy one for myself aswell. We only needed to rent fins and we were ready!

On the first snorkelling tour we didn’t quite find the sardines but stumbled into a huge turtle - right next to the beach! There it was, minding its own business, eating seaweed and having a wash by some cleaner fish. We were staring at this big beauty, slowly moving closer but being at respectful distance. It couldn’t have cared less about us. It just floated around munching away and almost swam into us.

Christmas deco seems so out of place

Snorkels up!

And afterwards some mango shakes and coffee. Perfecto.

After a really nice hangboarding session and a delicious lunch by the sea we went for another try and finally found the endless school of sardines! What a sight. It was more like a swarm though, these smallish silvery fish were everywhere around us, creating incredible shapes and holes and flooding the whole view. Their scales would glimmer in the sun and every now and then they would suddenly move, all of them so well coordinated, to a new direction. Really beautiful.

Hanging again in pretty views

Afterwards hopping in the clear water felt awesome

Hitting yourself with a carabiner might cause additional bumps on the forehead

For dinner we found something exceptional! We didn’t want to eat at the beach restaurants which all seemed to share a collective menu of pasta, pizza and seafood. To find something else we wondered off the beach street just some 50 meters and stumbled into Ven’s kitchen. The menu, unlike others in Moalboal, included really interesting sounding local foods from around the Philippines. The restaurant didn’t look like much but Ven, one of the owners and the chef, was so enthusiastic and proud of her fairly new restaurant and the dishes so we just had to try. And she should be proud! The food was delicious and for once it was easy to order these exotic dishes, Ven would explain us exactly what they contained and how everything was cooked. The definite star dish was the dessert: a classic halo-halo which obviously has as many forms as makers. Ven’s was great: pure ingredients, no gelatin, no bullsh*t. She said it was the third revision...perhaps the last too ;)?

You know how sometimes travelling can be a nightmare? If you don’t, you can read the post before the last one. But sometimes it’s the complete opposite and everything goes exactly according to the plan. So was our trip to Apo. We had written instructions from a kind lady in Moalboal with the amounts that we should pay for each ride. The rides included: 1) a tricycle to the bus stop in Moalboal 2) a bus to Bato 3) a tricycle to the ferry 4) the ferry to Sibulan 5) a tricycle to Dumaguete’s jeepney station 6) a jeepney to Malatapay 7) a ferry to Apo. Without much haggling we ended up paying the exact amounts and each bus, boat and jeepney would leave straight away after we got in.

Due to the easypeasy trip we found ourselves from another diver's paradise called Apo island.

Halo-halo

Oh yes it was yammee