After our less than savoury experience in Oslob we were off to Dumaguete on Negros Island feeling ready for an adventure we could feel good about. Dumaguete City has been a university town for 114 years and has the cleanliness and young population to prove it. The city's waterfront Roxas Boulevard was packed full of people on Sunday night, complete with a visiting Korean Highschool Band preparing to serenade the masses. We signed up for a tour of some of the surrounding area's natural delights for the following day at the hostel and headed out for some happy hour drinks, where we eavesdropped on some european ex-pats who had some pretty controversial things to say about.. well, just about everything. However, they treated us to a round of "Austrian wine," which ended up being no wine at all. We went to bed feeling refreshed and ready for the following day's adventure.
We got up early to discover our tour had been cancelled, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because the hostel clerk offered to arrange for us to rent a motorcycle so we could give ourselves the tour. My first time driving a motorcycle, or anything with a manual transmission, got off to a jumpy start (sorry Mom and Dad), but being in an Asian city I had no choice but to get the hang of things pretty quickly, which I did. Soon enough we were cruising along a beautiful coastal highway on our way to Twin Lakes Natural Park.
Awwww, yeah.
At Twin Lakes we got our first dose of the jungle minus any civilization, and were surrounded by nothing but the sounds of nature; nature, that was beautiful to some, and, well, terrifying to others...
The mist was rolling in over the mountaintops as we hiked, providing us with some well-needed respite from the sun. We hiked for a short time up a mountain path... until we ran into the weird looking dude below.
"You shall not pass!"
Every time we heard a sound in the forest Claire would get a little worried to which my constant reply was, "don't worry it's just a lizard."
We also saw this funky-looking butterfly, who was flying backwards at times...
A fine vessel resting on the shores of the second of the twin lakes.
After the lakes we hopped back on the bike, had a well-deserved meal at McDonalds, and headed out to find Casaroro Falls.
After walking down into the river valley leading to the falls we noticed all the plant life was massive and the whole place had a real "lost world" feel to it. Here's Claire with some giant bamboo.
Whatever paths used to exist had mostly crumbled, adding to the "lost world" feel and putting all of our prime boulder hopping experience from back home to good use.
All in all, it was a very nice hike.
And it offered many good opportunities to photograph the river.
The waterfall was a welcome, and very impressive sight.
On our way through the town of Valencia to the waterfall I spotted a sign that read "Cata-al WW2 Museum," and on our way back from the falls we stopped in to check it out. This hidden gem proved to be one of the coolest experiences I have had so far on this trip. So cool that I plan to return there before we leave this region so I can photograph the exhibit and ask the very knowledgeable "curator" some more questions. I will be making a dedicated blog post about this garage-museum, worth a visit from anyone who plans to visit the province of Negros Oriental. Among the things we learned was that the Island's name Negros comes from the fact that the mountain tribes have black skin and are more comparable to the native Papuans than any ethnic Filipino groups (we had originally guessed it was because of the black sand on the beaches). We also learned that Negros was the location that the Japanese Army surrendered during the Second World War, which was a triumphantly uplifting piece of historical knowledge to obtain.
This day gave us a proper dose of insight into the area's history and inspired us to spend more time than we originally planned on this island to which there is very much more than meets the eye at first glance. What was originally envisioned as a stopping point before heading to Apo Island for more diving turned into an adventure in and of its own, and I would recommend to anyone intending on visiting the Philippines to include Negros in their plans.
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