I decided to stay overnight in Tagbilaran, and early the day after (the 12th) I started my journey to Padre Burgos (PB) on Leyte. I didn't know much about the bus and ferry connections to go from Bohol to Leyte, but figured that I probably would need 2 days, one to travel through Bohol, and one on Leyte. After 3 months in Asia I've learned to leave plenty of time for travels, you never know when the bus might break down, or you'll have to wait 3 h for the minivan to fill up etc etc. This time though everything went very smoothly, the bus from Tagbilaran to Ubay left 15 min after I arrived by tricyle to the bus terminal, the bangka boat from Ubay to Bato on Leyte left 30 min after I arrived to Ubay etc. So 4 tricycles, 2 buses and 1 boat later I arrived late afternoon in Maasin on Leyte, where I decided to stay the night before continuing down to PB as I needed some rest and also to stock up on more cash. You can hardly pay by credit card anywhere in the Philippines so usually you need to carry quite a lot of cash, especially when heading to smaller places like PB that won't have any cash machines. It can be quite a challenge to get enough cash, as some cash machines have a limit of 4000 pesos (ca 60 GBP), or might have connection problems and therefore refuse all your cards...
Anyhow, I arrived in PB the morning after, on Friday the 13th. And this time Friday the 13th really was bad luck for some, as a typhoon came in over Cebu and therefore all boat connections to Leyte were cancelled. If I hadn't been so lucky with all my connections the day before, I would have been stranded in Ubay... The weather in PB was not too bad, some rain and wind (I'm certainly getting more use of my rain poncho than I thought....) but definitely no storm.
On Valentine's day I got roses from the sweet staff at the resort I stayed in :) Actually might be one of the few times ever in my life I got flowers on Valentine's.... Rest of the day was less romantic though with a nice dive. Unfortunately my one and only dive in PB as I got a bit of a cold the day after :(
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