Chasing Summer –

October 5-7th

On September 30th, a 6.9 earthquake struck Bogo City in Cebu. There was a lot of damage throughout the island and over 3000 aftershooks. It was our last port of call in the Philipines and we were concerned about wether or not we would be able to dock there.

Villa Vie Odyssey Docks in Cebu Amid Quake Recovery

Cebu City was not damaged and was excited to have the Odyssey visit, letting others know that Cebu is open for business. We also raised 16,000 dollars for relief efforts. Several residents also volunteered their time with a local organization. A few of our own workers’ families were affected by the quake, and separate funds were given to them to help their families recover.

Cebu earthquake: Cruise passengers raise P900K for victims | Cebu Daily News

Cebu welcomed us warmly, with dancers and live music, and even the Minister of Tourism came to greet residents as we disembarked the ship. I had arranged for a local tour, Cebu Tours, to bring a small group of us into the mountains.

Because Cebu Port is an active container port, residents were not allowed to walk to the dock, and we needed to rely on shuttles that departed every half hour. To make it to our tour on time, my group needed to be on the very first shuttle. It was scheduled to depart at 9:30 AM, so by 9, my group of six was standing in line.

Now, what I don’t understand is people who also need to be off on the first shuttle waiting until the scheduled departure time to arrive at the line, and then proceeding to panic that they might not make it on the shuttle. We had one that needed to catch a flight, and the mom just kept saying he needs to get on 1st shuttle, he needs to get on 1st one, like we’re all supposed to go, “Oh, here, he can cut in the line because you guys are poor planners.” In my mind, I was like, then why weren’t you here half an hour ago? Is this your first day on the boat?

Luckily for everyone, it was a large shuttle bus, so everyone who needed to got on the first shuttle. It brought us to a nearby mall where we could exchange money if we didn’t have enough pesos and also get picked up by our tour guide. The tour was on a sliding scale tour, so with 6 of us, it was 1600 pesos for an eight-hour tour and another 500 pesos for lunch. Not bad for approximately $40 US.

The tour itself included five stops. The first location was Leah’s Temple. now, I didn’t look too hard into the things I’m going to go to see before I go to see them, so I was a little bit surprised once we got to this stop. I knew it was a more European, Greco-Roman style architecture temple, but that was it.

It is a 7-room mansion that has been converted into a museum for a rich family’s history and a memorial to the business owner’s wife. it is basically the Taj Mahal of Cebu. It was the most expensive stop of the tour at 150 pesos a person. Everything else was 100 pesos each.

Our second stop was just a few kilometers away, called Tops. Tops is a 360 viewpoint of Cebu City. It cost 100 pesos to enter, but if you wanted to go up to the top floor and see the back half of the 360 view, it would have been another 50 pesos, making it the tie as the most expensive stop.

After leaving these two spots, we headed further into the mountains for about half an hour until we got to Sirao Pictorial Gardens. This stop was the whole purpose or the catalyst of this adventure. If you look up things to do in Cebu online, you will often come across pictures of people standing in a giant hand, either one hand or two. Our group saw those and were determined to go stand in the hands.

This pictorial garden is an Instagram social media lover’s paradise. There are over 40 different places to take an Instagram-worthy photo. If you’re expecting a botanical garden, you’d be sadly disappointed, and I think people in the past have been because there’s a sign out front saying that there are no refunds for any reason, even if you haven’t taken a picture.

These gardens have become so popular in Cebu that there are three other gardens that have been made just like this one.

A person could spend a great deal of time going through all of the different positions and taking pictures, making sure everything looks great, but I was with the group that moved fairly quickly, so we were in and out of there in not too long of time.

The last two spots of the tour are further into the mountains, and one is an adventure park and the other is another garden. I could tell a couple of the people on the tour would have been just fine going back to the city and having lunch, but I had seen some pictures of the next garden, and I also really wanted to go there. So we said no to the adventure ’cause we weren’t gonna zip line for extra, but yes to the next garden, which was another 20-minute drive.

The second garden was called Buwaka ni Alejandra, and it was more of a garden than Sirao, but still great for pictures. Here, interestingly enough, most of the flowers were grouped all together so that in your pictures there are just patches of different colours with the mountains in the background. It’s visually stunning.

By the time we finish this, we need to go back into town to have our lunch at the House of Lechon. Lechon is a famous regional dish of barbecued pork. At the restaurant, we had the lechon, a noodle dish, stir-fried veggies, veggie rolls, and a roasted squash eggplant dish. It was all delicious.

By the time we were done, we still had a couple of hours of the eight hours that we had booked the car for, so we asked our driver to bring us to the Cross of Magellan. Now the story is that Magellan brought this cross with him in his explorations to bring Christianity with him and left it. Of course, it’s a wooden cross, so over time it became eroded as people would take splinters with them for good luck, etc., so it needed to be protected, and a new wooden cross was put over top of the original pieces. It sits outside the Basilica Minore del Santo Niño in the centre of town.

Sadly for my group, the rules of no shorts meant that we could not enter the basilica or cathedral. So instead, we returned to the mall so we could catch the shuttle back to the ship.

The second day, I woke up feeling a little bit lazy and a little bit off, so I really didn’t want to do too much and just went back to the mall. I spent the morning there wandering around. They did have some different shops than the last two islands that we had been to.

That afternoon, I went back out again with a couple of residents to check out the local brewery, Turning Wheels. This is one of my favorite breweries in the Philippines because they actually have sampler flights, and you can put as many samples as you want on there.

On our final morning, Becky, Jeff, and I went to see the Cebu Taoist Temple. This temple is up in the hills, ironically in a section called Beverly Hills. The temple itself is big and ornate. There are certain areas you can’t take photos, such as inside the praying rooms or with an altar as a background, but there’s plenty to see on the outside.

Dragons definitely play an important role and are everywhere as protection against the evil spirits for evilness. After a little walk around, we returned to the mall to spend what little money we had left before we left the Philippines.

Now the boat will be coming back next year to the Philippines in what was supposed to be the China Section, but I have not signed up for that, so I will not be returning with the ship.