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Summer in the Philippines

Mike

Maximum Pace
Sep 24, 2007
1,066
9
I was lucky enough to spend the summer of 2009 in Moalboal, Cebu, a sleepy little diving resort about 3hrs south of Cebu city.

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I rented a mountain bike the entire time and had a ball exploring the surrounding hills and coastal roads. Cost me about 5000 yen / week, but had to bring my own pedals. It was the first time for me to really try off road riding and I gotta say I enjoyed it a lot, even though the roads in the mountains were pretty bad (very rocky and unbelievably steep). My computer was working overtime trying to calculate the gradient of some of the slopes and I think it almost overheated one more than one occasion. Seriously, I was getting readings of 20% plus on most of my rides, and to add to this pain, the heat was pretty bad midday. I learned very quickly to only head out after 2pm. I'm sure you're thinking why not early morning, but my night time activities i.e. boozing it up, prevented this pretty much every day!

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By the last week I started to head back to the coastal roads, which are bitumen and offered stunning ocean views and the odd motorized tricycle that I could draft, picking me up to speeds around 40km/h. I think I'm a roadie at heart coz I couldn't wipe the smile off my face at those times.

Managed to do a bit of diving, snorkeling and swimming too. They also have canyoning, river hiking trips etc. but I was enjoying riding too much to join any of those activities.

The locals are so friendly there and almost everyone shouts hello as you cruise by. Climbing I often heard the word 'Capoi' and something else, which I later learned means, 'aren't you tired dude?' Indeed I was, but unfortunately I couldn't muster up the energy to respond most of the time. Even smiling was a strain on those hills.

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All in all a magical trip and some fantastic riding. I reckon we should organize a TCC training camp there!


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Here's a link to the place I rented the bike, and they also do adventure tours such as canyoning, hiking, horse riding etc.

http://www.action-philippines.com/biking.htm

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Lovely pics, thanks for sharing! I'm all for a TCC training camp, let's ask our directeur sportif. :)
 
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