1. Catch the sunset at Sunset Boulevard

This seaside boulevard was named after it’s beautiful sunset.

Jose Rizal helped design the altar of this centennial church.

With two caves to navigate, expect to get dirty and bruised in this activity.

Dubbed as the bottled sardines capital of the Philippines, these goods are the perfect pasalubongs(souvenirs).

inside the cathedral in Dapitan

How to go there

The cathedral is walking distance from Dipolog’s city hall.

Check out the complete itinerary for our  Dapitan-Dipolog tour here: Dapitan-Dipolog itinerary

What to see

At the time we went there, the front exterior of the church was being renovated. We made a quick visita iglesia in the church and also a c.r. break.

The altar of this church was designed by Jose Rizal during his exile in Dapitan. The church which is over a 100 years old was being renovate when we came there. The interiors of the church was re-designed from it’s light blue and white colors to the color combination of brown and cream.

More pictures of the Cathedral and Dipolog here:

(click on the picture to view the album)

How to go there

We made Dapitan as our base in touring Dapitan and Dipolog, where we stayed at Villa Pillar pension house. We rode a van going to Dipolog city from Dapitan to go here. The van ride costs 25.00 each.

What to See

Sunset boulevard is more lively in the afternoon, it is like our Baywalk in Roxas boulevard.

Where to eat

The ‘barbecuehans’ in the area are frequented by the people having a stroll in Sunset Boulevard. This is also where we ate for our Day 2 dinner. Barbecues costs from 5 to 15 pesos. The rice, also called as ‘puso’ costs about 6 pesos.

Fees and Fares of this tour

Tricycle ride from Villa pillar pension house to Van terminal : P28.00

Van ride to Dipolog:  P25.00/person

Dinner at Sunset Boulevard: P128.00 (four pax)

Check out the complete itinerary for our  Dapitan-Dipolog tour here: Dapitan-Dipolog itinerary

More pictures of Dipolog here:

(click on the picture to view the album:)

Montano sardines and Zaragoza Bagoong from Dipolog

We met some policemen in the bus terminal of Dipolog, who advised us what to buy on each store. We were tipped with this info: Sardines==Montano, Bagoong==Zaragoza. We were also informed that the sardines are cheaper on the main branch of Montano’s unlike those sold in malls. So our next stop was the  subdivision where the owner has a store, right in their front yard.

I don’t have the exact address of the subdivision, but since tricycle is the only transportation (aside from private vehicle) available there, you can ask a tricycle driver to take you there. It’s quite popular in Dipolog, they know where it is.

Montaño’s Sardines

Initially, our plan was to buy the famous spanish sardines of the Montano’s, unfortunately, there were no stocks left. We opted to buy the bangus sardines which tasted much better than their regular spanish sardines.

I recommend getting the bangus sardines rather than the regular ones. But take both just to be sure. Cost of bangus sardines, is about 65  pesos.

During our trip, we also ran into an azucarera owner from Bacolod who told us how to cook the sardines. Here is the recipe for cooking the sardines…

Cooking Montaño’s Sardines

Ingredients:

garlic

onion

egg

Montano’s sardines

How to cook:

1. Saute garlic and onion in the pan.

2. Put in the sardines.

3. Break egg into pan and mix the egg with the sardines.

We bought 6 pieces each of the sardines. You have to pay for the box container in Montano, so we decided to get 1 dozen/per box and share it with each other.

Zaragoza’s Ginisang Bagoong

We didn’t go to the main store of Zaragoza in Dipolog. We visited the Tourist Information Office in Dipolog’s city hall, and to our luck, a few steps away from the city hall is a Zaragoza store.  The store is quite unnoticeable, so keep your eye’s peeled for the name ‘Zaragoza‘ in the stores, better yet, ask the tourist information office the exact location of this store.

Zaragoza’s bagoong costs about 55 pesos for the smallest bottle, depending on your bargaining skills. It’s one of the best bagoong’s I’ve ever tasted. I’m still saving the one I bought up until now.

Inside the store, they also sell sardines and other delicacies.

inside Libuton cave

While travelling, there are circumstances that we cannot control no matter how much we prepare and anticipate all the possible outcomes. In such cases, one should be creative enough for possible solutions. Luck is very helpful too. Just hope that you have lots of it.

We started our day early. I think our call time was 6am. Our planned itinerary was to tour Libuton cave and if there’s enough time, tour a Dipolog waterfall. We should be back by 4pm to catch a ferry going to Dumaguete. Our plan B was to get a ferry at 7pm in case there were mishaps.

We headed back to the Dipolog terminal, and then ride a bus(from the terminal) to Manukan which is about 1 hour away from the city. From Manukan, we hired two Habal-habals that would take us to the cave proper. The ride was rough because of the rocky, mountain road. The caves we’ve seen so far were something that can be traversed easily, so we thought Libuton cave was the same… Boy, were we wrong….

When we got to Libuton, we asked the Habal-habal drivers where the tourist guides for the caves were. It turned out that there were no guides in the area and that we need to contact a travel agent that would guide us in the cave. Their office was in Dipolog City, which meant that we need to wait for at least an hour if there were any guides at all. We asked if there were anybody that could guide us in the cave, but there were none. The locals don’t have any flashlights as well. This proved that they haven’t done any touring to unsuspecting victims, I mean tourists like us. We even asked the Bgy chairman to grant us permission to tour the cave to no avail. Some locals even tried to call the travel agency for us but cellphone signal was bad in that area.

Just when we’re about to give up, our lady luck came to our rescue… 2 vans suddenly appeared. Our knight in shining armor suddenly came to view. Armed with flashlights and helmets, Kuya Basil approached us and said he’s willing to tour us. He said that we’re lucky. The passengers of the 2 vans were Cebuano tourist agents who like to explore the cave for business purposes. But before we can proceed, there should be enough helmets/flashlights remaining, the Cebuanos should approve our sudden entries, and we should be willing to have no lunch as they haven’t prepared extra lunch for us “pasaways”. Hehe. One of the Cebuanos, was “concerned” at us and told us that we should be booking tours instead of backpacking. We fought the urge to talk back at her for the sake of the tour. I think we can be called professional backpackers by now.haha

lessons about caving

The tour was divided into 2 parts, 1 for each cave. Each cave took 1 hour to navigate. Before we could get to the cave, we need to hike 30mins from our current location. We opted to be at the back of the pack since we were the outsiders. Our guides dubbed us as “Manila Girls”, with X called as the “Camay lady” because of her flawless, white skin.haha. The first cave was easy to navigate.

I’m not sure if the spelunkers know that they’re going inside a cave. Why? Some of them wore maong pants and rubber shoes. I guess they’re not aware that they might get wet inside a cave. The guides commend us because we wore shorts and sandals for this trip. They said that we’ll definitely get dirty and wet later on.

The first cave was easy to navigate that even children could do it. However there was this one annoying lady that was so sloowwww and so unathletic she’s pulling all of us down. The guides always help her in almost every stone path. It probably took us 30 mins longer to get out of the first cave because of her.

It was lunch time when we got out of the cave. They kept asking us if we want some lunch. We only brought some cupcakes and an almost empty bottle of water while they have chicken Inasal, and I forgot what else. We almost gave in to the temptation. We’re so hungry that we decided to eat something good when we arrive in Dumaguete that evening.

duck-walking inside the cave

crawling inside the cave

We’re relieved that the annoying lady decided to be left behind. That’s also good for her because the 2nd cave was harder to navigate. The guides even prohibited the use of cameras because of its level of difficulty. We even need to crawl and duck-walk to enter it. Here, there’s a path that had almost waist-deep water so those who wore maong pants and rubber shoes probably cursed themselves for wearing such outfits. There was another path where you need to cross a water-filled basin that’s deep enough to drown a non-swimmer. In order to get past that obstacle, one must have long arms and legs and be athletic enough to traverse the cave walls and stones just like spider man or else you’ll fall in the basin. It’s really hard to describe. I’d say one should be at least 5’0 because he’d really need long arms and legs. Getting out of the cave was the trickiest. Here, the guides set up ropes because it was dangerous. There was this big hole on the other side that once you fall, you’d probably be dead on the spot. In order to get out of the cave, we use the rope to get to the other side of the wall, and then pushed ourselves upward in a tiny hole above us.

spider inside the cave

It was past 2pm when we returned back to Kap’s home. We thanked her and donated some money for the cave. We thanked Kuya Basil for the adventurous spelunking trip. He wanted us to join them back to Dipolog using their vans. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough room for 4 so we head back to Dapitan without them. We were dirty after the trip. But since we were racing for time, we didn’t care much. A Dapitan porter even asked us where we’ve been and why we wore dirty clothes.haha. Well at least we cleanse ourselves using wet wipes.

We immediately went back to Manukan, then back to Dipolog, then to Dapitan port only to find out that the last ftrip to Dumaguete already left. There was no 7pm ferry departing to Dumaguete City. We convene and then replaced our itinerary because of this incident. We bought tickets for a 5am ferry going to Dumaguete early next morning.

Navigating Libuton cave was worth it. I’d recommend it to any adventurous soul out there.

Here was our expense breakdown for Day 3:

More pics here: