Canyoneering, Whale Shark Watching and More in Cebu

I’ve been to Cebu many times before. But there seems to always be something new for me every time I visit.

For this visit, the Cebu Mactan airport looked more world-class compared to before. What’s more, there were more resorts and mall establishments to choose from and new activities that include the ones I got to do this time around.

We arrived on Christmas day and there were no tours allowed to run on that day so we just visited the Ayala Cebu mall which has gotten bigger over time. The next day, we left the hotel at 4 am to watch whale sharks.

The drive to Tan-Awan from Cebu City took a little over an hour. We were told to come this early since the whale sharks only stay very early morning then swim out to sea by late morning, to return the next day.

The gentle whale sharks were big and gentle. It astounded me that they would swim quite aggressively after the boatmen for food but never hit any of the tourist boats by accident. We were allowed to snorkel by the boats to see and sometimes touch a passing whale shark. All 6 whale sharks that we saw pretty much stayed there and were not afraid of people.

20191226_070700 — The whale sharks we saw were not bashful. They aggressively swim up to the boatmen and even gently nudge their boats to ask for food.

20191226_071223 — View of the whale shark from the boat.

Oslob-Whale-Shark-Encounter — It’s pretty hard to get a good photo of the whale shark underwater so showing this photo from the Travel Cebu website.

After that, we hied off to go and do what I’d been looking forward to… canyoneering!

The canyoneering experience was 5 hours long and really needs a lot of endurance. There’s a lot of swimming through various river currents and courageous jumping off high rocks involved…. really exciting! And the entire trek through the woods and streams was quite picturesque. One of the best adventures ever!

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