With only an hour of sleep, I nevertheless made it to our early morning flight to Davao (I swear I'll never book a flight this early again!) CebuPacific, to be fair, was on time. Too bad, one of my officemates who was supposed to go with us on the same flight did not make it. She came in 35 minutes before the actual flight, with no check-in baggage. Lesson learned: Abide by the rules, no compromising.
Anyway, we checked in first at Bagobo House Hotel where we have reserved for a room a month before our trip. The room was spacious, but nothing is so special about it. We immediately proceeded to the first stop in our itinerary: Eden Nature Park.
We promised ourselves that we will be going to the places we plan to visit using public transportation as much as possible: no taxis. So relying on directions we take along the way (and from pieces of information we got from travel forums), we headed on to Eden Nature Park. It amazed us how far our first 20 peso jeepney ride got us. It was a looooooonng ride. After getting off at Toril, we rode a payong-payong a local tricycle with a big umbrella to protect the passengers from the sun's merciless heat.
We arrived at the park just in time for lunch. The park offers a buffet lunch (P 400) but we have read somewhere that we can take our lunch somewhere else because it was not worth the price. We instead took the plated snacks (P 200) and decided to eat out after our tour. The plated snack is a set made up of spaghetti, garlic bread, a mini banana muffin and a drink of your choice:
It was a good choice skipping the 400 peso lumch, when they can't even entice you with a simple snack. Jollibee spaghetti tastes waaay better than this. The garlic bread reeks of butter, it was like you were licking butter off the bread.
We availed of the guided tour shuttle:
Here are some pictures from our tour of the park:
to the Aviary
the framed dead insects
a fountain near the butterfly sanctuary
flowers in the butterfly sanctuary
St. Francis of Assissi
the Mickey Mouse flower
the park's ampitheater
traditional houses
mayumi's wishing well
It was an incredible first day. We were planning to visit the Crocodile Park after Eden,. We got lost looking for it, the pedicab driver apparently has pointed us to go to the Philippine Eagle Center instead. The latter was scheduled on our second day, thus we had to call it a day
How to Get There:
From downtown Davao, get to Crossing-Bayabas by riding jeepneys bound to Toril. Once there, you can find motorcycles (habal-habal) or tricycles for the wimps (like us, haha!). The payong-payong cost us P125 each getting there, more expensive than the ride back (P80) since it was an uphill ride.