Today I want to see "The Chocolate Hills". They are 1268 hills, uniform in shape that turn brown in the dry season. I also want to see the "Tarsier". The little animal is small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. If it gets upset it will commit suicide by banging it's head against something until it dies. It resembles a small monkey with a long rat-like tail. In fact it is often described as "The World's Smallest Monkey". But it is not a monkey. Actually, classifying it has been a real problem. With it's small size and huge eyes, it is a cute and cuddly thing to see as it clings to it's tree limb!

THE LOCAL BUS
In order to reach the Chocolate Hills, I take the local bus from Tagbilaran . It is a 2 hour trip into the countryside. We will pass through a small place called Loboc. When I see it, I wish I had stayed there a night or two. 

The bus does not have windows. It has places where windows might be, but because of the tropical climate here I guess there is no need for glass windows. There is also no air condition and, like is common in Asia, people jump on and off as the bus rolls. You pay after you get seated or find a place to stand if no more seats are left. A person comes around, finds out where you are going and tells you the price. The price for my 2 hour journey is 65 pesos, less than a dollar. Usually there is someone hanging out the open doors of the bus as it travels along.

THE CHOCOLATE HILLS!
On the island of Bohol, the Chocolate hills are one of the most famous attractions. They look like small mole hills. They are 30 to 50 meters high (50 to 165 ft). They are covered with green grass that, at the end of the dry season, turn a chocolate brown .

How did these uniform hills come into existence? Two giants threw stones and sand at each other in a fight that lasted for many days. When they were finally exhausted, they made friends and left the island, but left the big mess they had made during the fight. The Chocolate Hills!

Okay, so that is the legend of the hills they tell here in the Philippines. But, geologist cannot reach an agreement on what caused these hills to be formed. So, I go with the giant story!

I also wonder about there being 1268 of the hills. Did someone actually count them?

Once you get off the bus, you have to get up to the top of the mountain to be able to get the view of the hills. You can motorbike up or hike. Of course, I hike. Two Chinese boys took a motorbike. By the time they paid the driver and the bike went slowly up the mountain, I reached the top about the same time they did . We hiked the stairs leading the rest of the way up together.

We take photos of each other once at the top and then I head back down the mountain. I wait for the bus to come down the road so I can wave it down to go back toward Tagbilaran. The 2 Chinese boys get there just as the bus comes along.

CUTE!
I get off after an hour or so. I want to see the 'smallest primate in the world', the loveable Tarsier. I wave goodbye to the Chinese friends as I get off the bus.

The Tarsiers are nocturnal, coming out at night to eat. They eat live prey, mainly insects like cockroaches and crickets. Sometimes they may also eat reptiles, birds or bats!
 
The are small, they will fit in the palm of your hand. They weight about 4 ounces, but the male is a little larger. But, it has these extremely BIG eyes. The eye socket is larger than their brain size and also larger than their stomach. (A real case of eyes being bigger than the stomach!) But, they are sleeping during the day when I am there, so I found a photo on the web of one with it's eyes open .

They can rotate their head 180 degrees, like an owl, and have a tail almost 10 inches long. The tail is hairless except right on the end there is a little tuft of hair.

They leap about from tree to tree and can leap for about 3 feet. Their leap is similar to a frog's leap.

I enter the rescue center, walk into the hills, and look in the trees. But I cannot see any of the little animals. Then, a worker starts to point them out as they see them, clinging to the tree limb, fast asleep. They are the color of the tree and so small they look like knots on the tree! If the worker did not point them out it would have taken us a long time to spot one.

The worker is very quiet as she speaks. Loud noises or even the flash on a camera can stress the little guys out. When stressed they will ram their head against a tree limb or other object until they kill themselves!

I take photos (no flash) and watch these little animals sleep . Then, quietly (I don't want to cause a tragedy), I hike out of the wooded forest downhill to find a bus.

BUS TO TOWN!
A bus comes along the road and I wave and it slows down. I grab a hold of the door bar and jump onboard as the bus moves slowly along. I check to make sure this goes to Tagbilaran. This will be my last trip on the bus for today. The worker comes around and I pay him the few pesos he wants for the rest of the bus ride.

I hear my name called. I look around, and a few seats ahead of me are my Chinese friends. They stayed on the bus when I got off to see the Tarsiers and I thought they were headed back to Tagbilaran, but I guess they got off to visit the pretty little town of Loboc for a while! And, now here we are, back on the same bus again!

Once back in Tagbilaran, my Chinese friends (I could not pronounce their names) and I got off the bus and looked for a way to get to where we were staying . We get different trikes to go to where we are staying, because neither of us recognize where the other needs to go. We say goodbye again and I jump into a sidecar for a trip to my hostel.

Later, while I was walking around Tagbilaran to get my fried chicken fix, I saw my friends getting out of their sidecar! We could have come together after all, and saved some transport money!

FOOD
The food here is very "Americanized". There are fast food places everywhere. They like everything fatty and fried here. Sweets! My goodness they love their sweets. I don't eat any of it. I search for the typical Asian dishes, usually at roadside family eateries. Also, they don't use chopsticks here like in other Asian countries. They use the same fork and spoons as Americans. I have gotten use to using the chopsticks while in SE Asia and I kind of miss not having them.

They also eat strange things like liver cooked in blood and chicken feet! They eat intestines or congealed blood chunks on skewers cooked over a fire .

GUARDS WITH GUNS!
And every place has security guards! This is in every place in the Philippines I have been to so far. I understand if it is a bank or money exchange business, but guards at a donut shop? There are guards at grocery stores, clothing stores, drug stores, bakeries, anything you can think of. And, often they are armed! I have been warned several times not to go to a certain island in the Philippines. There are rebels fighting there and they are notorious for taking foreign hostages for ransome. They especially like to get Americans as hostages. I take note of the name of the island. I have no intention of going. Maybe that unrest is why there are so many armed guards around all the cities?

MARRIAGE
I passed a life-size cut out of a guard at a place, like a western union. There were two of them. Then I took a double take. One of them moved. I went back and laughed at the real guard and told him I thought he was a cut-out also . 

He laughed and asked me a few questions. The first question will be "Where are you from?" The second question will be "Are you married?". It's always like that! 

If you are not they will want to find you a Filipino girl. "Filipino girls are very pretty" they will always say. The guard wants me to go inside and look at their girls. I guess I will walk up and down the counter and pick one out! Someone staying at my hostel said he met lots of girls that wanted him to find an American for them to marry. One 18 year old only wanted a foreigner over 50! But, I cannot marry a Filipno. A woman in Vietnam two years ago asked first. If I marry I will have to give her first chance! http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/usatexan/1/1368365847/tpod.html

NEXT: I Tackle "The Concrete Jungle"!