Philippines Photo Tour: Bohol, Tarsiers & The Chocolate Hills

Since leading my annual Philippines photo tour back in June, I’ve returned several times for different NGO shoots. With the Philippines on my mind, I was reminded that I never took the time to post the last few “photo tour” entries. This post about our time on the island of Bohol, has been sitting in my “drafts folder”, so rather than let it linger there indefinitely, I’ll go ahead and post it.

Out of the way, and off the beaten track, the island of Bohol has so much to offer, especially in terms of the photo opportunities.  On my Philippines photo tour, the first morning in Bohol, we rose early and left our beautiful hotel near Alona Beach in Panglao and headed to the Tarsier Research and Development Center to photograph the Tarsier, a strange, tiny, nocturnal primate with unusually large eyes.

The Tarsier measures only about 3 to 6 inches in height, making it one of the smallest primates. The small size makes it difficult to spot. The average adult is about the size of a human fist and will fit very comfortably in the human hand. The Tarsier’s eyes are fixed in its skull; they cannot turn in their sockets. Instead, a special adaptation in the neck allows its round head to be rotated 180 degrees.

The eyes of the Tarsier are disproportionately large, having the largest eye-to-body size ratio of all mammals. These huge eyes provide this nocturnal animal with excellent night vision.

Wikipedia named the new Tarsier genus after the environmentalist Carlito Pizarras, who dedicated his life as field manager and wildlife sanctuary man in Bohol. While visiting the research facility, we were lucky enough to meet Carlito and even got a group photo with him.

After photographing Tarsiers, we take a short drive farther into the interior of Bohol to photograph the Chocolate Hills. The Chocolate Hills is a rolling terrain of haycock hills – mounds of general shape which are conical and almost symmetrical. The mounds are made of grass-covered limestone. The domes vary in sizes from 98 to 160 ft high with the largest being 390 ft in height. During the dry season, the grass-covered hills dry up and turn chocolate brown. This transforms the area into seemingly endless rows of “chocolate kisses”.

No visit to the Chocolate Hills would be complete without the quintessential Philippines “jumpshot”.

After visiting the Chocolate Hills, we take a typical Filipino “lunch cruise” down the Loboc river. Basically the boat is a large barge on which there is a lunch buffet, and musical entertainment. We dine on typical Filipino food and listen to the small music combo belt out American rock ballads with a Philippine twist. I know it sounds kinda’ cheesy and childish and it is, but that’s the whole point….to eat, unwind, relax and enjoy being a kid for a few hours.

No visit to the Philippines, much less, to Bohol, would be complete without visiting and photographing a fish market. We make several stops at various fish markets but the ones in Bohol almost always yield some of the best photos  due to the unusual variety of seldom seen species of fish and other sea creatures.

We also do a bit of unscheduled, spontaneous “street photography” and as usual the local population are always keen to interact and happy to be photographed.

While visiting Bohol we always take about an hour to visit a local school, where the principal, who’s gotten to know us, allows our groups to disrupt several classes as we interact and photograph the students.

I’ll be making one final blog post for the 2012 Philippines Photo tour, so please stay tuned. Cheers, Karl