Pronounced Seek-ee-hor, this up-and-coming island resort on the tourist trail was to be our destination for 6 nights and our most ambitious travel plan so far in The Philippines. Originally we were aiming to take a trike to Moalboal town, a 2 hour bus ride to Bato, another trike to Liloan Port (on the Southern tip of Cebu island), half hour ferry across to Sibulan on the huge island of Negros, trike to Damaguete Port, 1-2 hour (depending on vessel) ferry to Siquijor and finally tuk tuk to our accommodation. It was going to be a pretty full day so we agreed to splurge and replace the first 3 legs with a transfer in our hotel van directly to Liloan Port. We left at 0900 and the stars aligned – a ferry was about to depart at 1100 just as we arrived at the port, a luggage porter on the other side got us quickly off the boat, through the crowd and into a trike (we could’ve got a shared Jeepney for a fraction of the £5 cost for the 15 minute journey but hey ho), and there was a fast ferry departing for Siquijor at 1230. So instead of arrival sometime after dark, perhaps in time for dinner or perhaps not, we were at our accommodation by 1400 and it had all been rather straightforward.

Other than our first night and accommodation for Easter in Malapascua we’d deliberately not booked any other lodgings in advance of our arrival in The Philippines, preferring to give ourselves flexibility to go with the flow a little. We’re not sure why, as we pretty much knew where we would be and when, and some internal flights had been booked months ago, and it turned out to be a bit of an error of judgement as the weeks after Easter and into May are peak holiday season for Filipinos – the last of the good weather before the rains and typhoon season arrive. When searching Agoda and Booking.com a week or so earlier we found VERY little available in Siquijor and even less so in our preferred area of San Juan, so we settled for the best we could find without throwing stupid money at it and booked a room at Gubat Apartelle which appeared to be new and perhaps not quite finished. A pleasant surprise – it was a lovely little place with 4 apartments (5 by the time we left – we were right, it wasn’t finished!), each with a well equipped outside kitchen & eating area and a decent bedroom with good aircon and fast wifi. Just off the ‘main’ road, a 1 minute walk from a dive centre, beach and bar, and less than 5 minutes walk from a few restaurants – perfect, especially at just over £40/night. Having arranged with the super helpful property manager Lory for a 125cc scooter to be delivered the following morning we set off in search of food, having eaten nothing all day found the Tipsy Bar a few minutes walk away. A 3-6pm happy hour with cocktails at PHP 99 (about £1.30) was most welcome, and it was perhaps a little wrong to have a Mojito before any food but hey ho. With reasonable food (we’ve not yet had GOOD food in The Philippines but had expected that), cheap booze and board games, unsurprisingly we spent quite a bit of time there during our time on Siquijor, with Debbie trying to improve at Scrabble but failing miserably.

Once we had our scooter, we set about finding a supermarket and checking out the dive centres. There are no big shops in the San Juan part of the island but we found a relatively large convenience store to stock up on breakfast supplies (well we did have a kitchen, so a fry up was possible), sandwich stuff, snacks and beer – and it turns out that it’s far cheaper to eat in restaurants than to buy food here. But Steve appreciated his streaky bacon, egg and hash brown sarnies, Debbie enjoyed the cornflakes she’d been craving and we took jam & cheese sandwiches with us when we left to use up our supplies.

Diving turned out to be an unexpected challenge – a 3 day diving ban follows the full moon each month to allow the fish to spawn in peace, and it was coming into force the following day in the San Juan area (29 April – 1 May inclusive). As we were leaving on 3 May that’d only give us one day of diving. The first dive centre we tried could go to another part of the island during the ban but the diving isn’t as good and they needed a minimum of 5 people to sign up. The far more expensive German-owned Apo Divers opposite our hotel were more accomodating and could fit us on a trip the following day to the South of the island. Steve’s ears were playing up after the Moalboal dives so we booked a 3-dive trip for April 30th to give him more time to recover, with a plan to also dive locally on 2 May after the ban. We headed to the pharmacy to get Steve some ear drops but they didn’t have any and even struggled when we asked for Aspirin. This wasn’t going to be like India where you can get just about any prescription drug over the counter! Luckily a 2nd pharmacy had steroid and anti-fungal ear drops so we crossed our fingers that they would do the trick in a couple of days. But his ears still weren’t clear for diving on our booked day so we moved our pre-paid dives out to 2nd May, resigned to the fact that we would only get one day of diving on Siquijor, and then only if Steve’s ears were OK.

So instead of diving in those first few days we explored Siquijor on our scooter, swam, relaxed, drank cheap cocktails at Tipsy Bar, played Scrabble, and Debbie watched one episode of the god-awful Meghan Marble crap on Netflix in our apartment. Not exactly a hardship – Siquijor is a lovely place.

Siquijor is known as an island of mystery and black magic, with superstitious Filipinos being wary of visiting in the past, but other than voodoo-themed bars there was no sign of any witchcraft or sorcery. The beaches have blindingly white powdery sand and crystal clear blue waters – up there with some of the best we’ve seen – no sun loungers or umbrellas, just folk sheltering from the sun under palm trees. Snorkelling directly from the beach at the Tubod Marine Sanctuary was spectacular if a little too shallow at low tide. Steve needed some new swim shorts and found just the thing at a stall near the beach – priced at ‘one-five-oh’ which couldn’t possibly be PHP 150 as that’s only £2, so perhaps the smallholder meant PHP 1050 (£14) or PHP 1500 (£20, a bit pricey)? No, she did mean PHP 150 – for a proper pair of swim shorts, imported from Bangladesh, with a label and bag for just 2 quid!

Waterfalls are a highlight of the island and we visited the Cambugahay Falls in the South of the island about half an hour from San Juan – gorgeous, with 4 levels of the most vivid blue pools with water flowing between them. A very busy tourist destination with foreigners and Filipinos alike swimming/bathing, swinging from ropes or having Tik Tok pictures & videos taken in all sorts of comedy poses. Debbie’s mistake was wearing flip flops instead of proper sandals, so getting across some of the slippy stones was a bit tricky, but she didn’t come to any harm and managed the 100+ steps back up to the road in bare feet.

Dolce Amore was an Italian restaurant recommended by every guide book and blog so we had to try it – maybe this would be our first truly good meal. A little too far to walk so we had to take the scooter, which meant Coke for Steve while Debbie was able to have a couple of beers . With genuine Italian stuff available she was tempted by an Aperol Spritz but simply couldn’t bring herself to pay £7.50 for one – that’s the price of 6 happy hour cocktails or a couple of drinks and dinner in the Tipsy Bar! Pizzas were impressive but a little soggy – disappointing – and expensive. Back to Tipsy Bar tomorrow!

As May 2nd approached it was looking doubtful that Steve’s ears would recover so Debbie suggested cancelling our dive trip and trying to get a refund. Surely a 5* PADI centre (or any dive centre for that matter) would not allow someone to dive with dodgy ears and wouldn’t quibble about returning Steve’s prepayment at least. Debbie had never dived without Steve so was unsure whether she would go if he couldn’t, but she’d consider it – it’d be a shame to miss diving in Siquijor when she’d already been unable to dive in Malapascua. But Steve was reasonably confident that he’d be OK, and when the dive centre checked his progress the day before we were due to dive Debbie responded positively but with the caveat that ‘he won’t really know until he tries to descend’ – leaving the door open for a partial refund if necessary.

On diving day Steve was feeling OK-ish, we got up early and walked the 1 minute the the dive centre for an 0830 start. Our French Divemaster Julie sorted out our kit before we boarded the bangka with 6 other divers and a second Divemaster. We were waiting quite a while for one other diver who was just finishing his breakfast apparently – that’s OK mate, don’t rush yourself! Outside the 3 day diving ban we could get to the nearby dive sites in just a few minutes, and we experienced 3 spectacular dive locations in the same vicinity. The first dive was Pailton Wall – just off Pailton Beach where we’d spent a couple of relaxing days. On surfacing, a bit of a squall was coming in so we headed into the beach for our surface interval, coffee and cake before heading back out for the second dive – Pailton Sanctuary. Debbie thought this was one of the nicest dives she’s done. After a trip back to the dive centre for lunch, we headed out for our 3rd dive at Glamping Reef. This was apparently Julie’s favourite dive site – no pressure Julie, but Pailton Sanctuary is a very hard act to follow. Across the 3 dives we saw some wonderful marine life – a beautiful coral garden, a couple of elusive octupi and 2 massive turtles, lots of clownfish (nemos) including a spectacular group and host their anemone located inside a bright blue coral bulb, a shoal of batfish, a colourful ribbon eel, and a plethora of other tropical fish. It really was like swimming through an aquarium 🙂

A brilliant day of diving and Apo Divers were a slick operation. We felt sad that we were leaving the next morning as a couple more days like this would’ve been fabulous – but we had ferries, accommodation and flights booked so there was no option to stay without totally screwing up our plans.

On the way back from our final happy hour and Scrabble challenge at Tipsy Bar we found the road outside our apartment to be jam packed with scooter, cars and trikes – the 3-day weekend party at JJ’s Backpackers Village opposite had started but we were probably 30 years too old and anyway had an early start for a tuk tuk ride back to Siquijor Port and ferry onwards to Bohol Island……