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of Oct. – Wednesday
Another night at the homestay and off we went down south. It was a exhausting ride – again – because of the scorching sun above us. It’s actually best to start the day much earlier but we could get out of bed before 8 am and up and driving until 9 am. It was a rather long ride, because it’s about 220 kms away from Bacolod and it’s safe to ride in these hemispheres with about 50km and plenty of pauses. Luckily, we had no issues with the motorbike except the occasional gas out, which is my fault and based on me overestimating the gas mileage you get from this bike. Even though it’s a 200 cc motocross, it’s as thirsty as a much bigger bike.
Arriving in Sipalay, we stayed at Sealyn’s Inn which is rather small but n inexpensive site.
We only visitied the beach on that night and had dinner by the seaside, which was rather nice.
I was surprised by the beauty of Sipalay, the beach and the surrounding coast are beautiful and look so untouched, unsullied of human influence. There is no garbage on the beach and people respect it that way. The sunset was incredible, I don’t know whether it’s that beautiful in that place or at others alike but it felt special to me.
Place name was Island Adventures INN in Sipalay
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of Oct – Thursday
We started late on that journey, woke up at the city hotel which was better than our latter place, just more modern and spacious. On that day, we headed for the famous Sugar Beach which is a bike ride and and a very short ferry away. We started pretty late on that day, not only because we slept in, but also because something on my motorbike was broken. The local mechanic fixed it after an hour or so. It was again an issue with the carburator as well as something with the breaks.
Once we started for sugar beach, it all went its way rather smoothly. We found the road to the place and took the ferry which was 20 pesos (double to that for locals) per person. Arriving on sugar beach we found it to be dead empty, there was not one person around, which was rather nice, I found. Eventually, some people came out for the sunset and we were not alone.
Again the filippinos that encountered us on our way seemed so nice. Especially the mechanic, who had a broader vocabulary than many other mechanics I’ve met before.
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of Oct – Friday
A French guy named Francois stopped us on Thursday and told us about Sugar Beach but also about Hiyophiyop which had -according to him- one of the best waterfalls in the whole country. He also warned us of the inaccesability of that place. Lucky for me, my current motorcycle is 200cc strong ATV so I took up the challenge. We first drove out (X insert pic) and made a little detour into some remote valley, at which we haven’t seen anyone for 30 minutes straight. After coming up again we found the correct road to the falls, but it turned out to be very difficult to get on.
After another 30 minutes riding down the valley we finally arrived at the river which culminated from the falls. We were told that it’s another 20 minutes hike to the falls themselves. My girlfriend and I didn’t find access through the surrounding wood and didn’t venture to walk in the river as the rain picked up.
Nevertheless, the beauty of the site and the ride itself were quite rewarding to us.
On the way back, we had another problem with the carburator so we had to stop in a remote village, where a farmer, who claimed to be a mechanic cleaned my spark plug and drained water from the carburator.
We carried on and arrived back in Sipalay at nightfall.