Negros and CebuNegros a Cebu

Cycling in the Philippines brings many challenges, but perhaps the biggest is the local weather. The dry season here runs from December to May and is split into two parts. December to February is the cool dry season (and by "cool," think 26-30 degrees), while March to May is the hot dry season (think temperatures above 40 degrees).

Even though we're technically in the official cool dry season, it's really hot here and it pours every single day.

We accepted rain as our daily companion long ago, and usually it's enough to just wait out a 10-minute shower before we can keep pedaling. What's worse is the constant near-100% humidity, which keeps us soaked even when it's not actually raining. On top of that, it's genuinely hard to dry out damp, sweaty clothes in these conditions. Realistically, the only thing that works is finding a laundry service with a dryer, every other method we've tried has been nowhere near effective enough.

When it's not raining and it's not even cloudy, the Philippine sun is merciless. Being this close to the equator means that even with SPF 50 sunscreen, it can still burn us red. Then in the evening back at our lodging, we slather ourselves in aloe vera extract.

We've had days where we alternated between running from a storm and running from the scorching sun. What's worked well for us is riding right along the edge of the clouds, or on the border of storms, where it's not (yet) raining but the sun is still (or already) hidden behind clouds. It's not exactly easy, but with a bit of luck it's doable.

In this mode, we've cycled across several Philippine islands. And we really can't complain too much, because if we were here in, say, October or November, we'd be dealing with a typhoon instead. So actually, we've got pretty great weather and everything's tutti frutti 😃

Our first lodging after the island of Negros was right in the port town of Toledo, where the ferry dropped us off in the evening. We apparently picked a local hourly-rate hotel, judging by the various warning signs about weapons and the auntie at the front desk who's clearly seen it all.

In the morning we set off to explore a new island called Cebu, home to the sixth-largest city in the Philippines, also called Cebu. That was our destination for the day, and for a while also the last place we planned to arrive at with our bikes. Our plan was to leave the bikes in Cebu and spend a few days with just our backpacks on the nearby island of Bohol, which is supposedly very beautiful. And since we already had a flight planned from Cebu to the Philippine island of Palawan with our bikes, the simplest thing was to leave the bikes already boxed up in luggage storage at the airport.

Finding boxes in Cebu to pack the bikes into turned out to be trickier than expected. Despite how big the city is (almost a million people), we went through several bike shops before finding anything remotely suitable. The next challenge was getting the boxes to the airport. After 500 meters of cycling with loaded bikes and boxes in tow, we decided this really wasn't going to work. In the end, though, we managed to find a taxi that loaded up the boxes, and we followed it all the way to the airport. There we packed up the bikes, dropped them off in their boxes at the storage counter, and quickly grabbed another taxi to the port to catch the last boat to Bohol.

I wouldn't recommend the port in Cebu to anyone. Since it's a big city with a lot of tourists passing through, it's practically swarming with scammers offering tickets for boats that don't exist. Up until now we'd spent most of our time in the countryside, where being on bikes made us an interesting curiosity to the locals. Suddenly, without our bikes and in a port full of tourists, we were a target for scams and a potential payday for local vendors and beggars. Since we've traveled a fair amount by now, we managed to get our bearings in the local ecosystem and buy tickets from an official vendor, and around 10pm we finally board the ferry heading for Bohol.

After 70km on the bike, searching the whole city for boxes, packing up the bikes at the airport, and constantly fending off pushy scammers at the port, we're totally exhausted. Luckily our ferry has sleeper berths, so we can at least get a bit of sleep over the next 4 hours on the way to Bohol.