Spellbounding Siquijor

Day 2

I woke up early to catch the sunrise. I am a sunrise-sunset person. I don’t know, but I really felt connected to the universe when I watch them. I always feel a deeper appreciation of life as I watch them unfold. I’m weird that way. So I took my early morning walk at the beach while waiting for the sun to rise.

a placid morning

i love how the skies reflect on the water

a fisherman with his early catch

Ate Lorna arranged a tour for US the night before. I’m no longer alone weee! :) She asked me if I’m okay to join another group since I’m just one. I told her that would be great because that would mean I have people to split the tour cost with and I have someone to talk and share experiences with. My tour buddies turned out to be three siblings from Bacolod, KKK - Kenneth, Karen and Kristine. They were staying in one of the rooms downstairs. They were all nice and friendly, so we got along well.

We had our driver/tour guide fetch us early, around 6:00 am. My tour mates we’re leaving that afternoon and will try to catch the 2:00 pm ferry bound to Dumaguete that’s why.

the famous old balete tree

Our first stop was the century-old balete tree. I really didn’t see it as creepy. In fact, I find it pretty. :)

fish spa: fail!

There are so many fishes in the pond there that we attempted for a “fish spa”. But they didn’t seem to like it. Haha! They totally ignored our feet. When we feed them some crushed biscuits, they went gaga over it.

fish feeding: success! :)

Then we passed by the Lazi Church and Convent. We decided to just go back after visiting the falls hoping that the mass will end after we’re done swimming. We went straight ahead to Cambugahay Falls. Seeing the dark blue green water from the stairs made us very excited so we hurried up on our way down to the falls.

Cambugahay Falls

It was beautiful. We were so happy to be her first visitors for the day. The falls was all ours! Woohoo! We took so many photos before giving in to the call of the falls. I had no photos in the waterfalls, my waterproof camera is still broken. Sob sob :(

the second layer of the falls

and the third :)

We went back to the Church and Convent. Still, we were not able to enter the church and check it out because we were wearing shorts err and there was an on-going mass.

Lazi Church

Luckily, the elders manning the former convent let us in despite of our soaking wet clothes. It was a lovely structure. It has nice interiors. It could have been nicer if it was very well-maintained like the ones you see in Ilocos.

Lazi Convent

where the choir used to sing... very nostalgic

i just have to take a photo of this

After this, we went to Salagdoong Beach in the town of Maria. The forest reserve on our way to the beach is already quite a scenery. I wanted to take photos but it seems that my tour mates were not interested so we went straight to the beach.

the captivating Salagdoong Beach

We were greeted by the same aquamarine crystal clear waters that I saw at the port. It was splendid. Again we took pictures first before we get into the water. Haha!

what's not to love?

I did not “swim” for long. Gosh, the water is too deep for a non-swimmer like me! Without a life-jacket and with strong waves, it was definitely a risk to take. So I just bummed around and watched a few who were brave enough to cliff dive. One of my tour mates, Karen was the only one in our group who had the courage to do it.

Karen doing the jump of her life :)

I don’t fear heights, what I fear is drowning because I don’t know how to swim. One of so many things I can’t do because I can’t swim. :(

After this, we didn’t go to Cang Isok’s or the oldest house in Siquijor anymore. My companions were pressed for time and that’s fine with me. I saw it in photos and it doesn’t interest me that much anyway. We dropped them off to Larena Pier and wished them well. As for me, I went back to San Juan. We dropped by at San Juan Church for a top-view of the Capilay Spring Park.

San Juan Church

Capilay Spring Park view from San Juan Church Patio

Then we went down to the park itself. I did not take a dip anymore because it looked dirty. I’m not really maarte (sensitive). It was just really dirty (I mean literally, there are floating trashes in the water). According to Kuya Pampi (our driver), there had been a party last night and it seemed like nobody did the cleaning afterwards. I felt really sad about it. Sigh.

wished it was clean enough for me to swim

That was my last stop for the day. After a refreshing hot-shower and an early dinner, I once again lazed around the beach.

this is life :)

I waited for the sunset and for the stars to come out one by one while listening to the sound of crashing waves. That’s what I call a sweet life. Mi dolce vita.


Beach Rating: ♥♥♥

This is Part 3 of my Siquijor travel series.