9 Incredible Bohol experiences to make the whole family happy
With literally thousands of different islands spread across the Philippines, choosing a specific island or group of islands to visit can be a daunting task. And, unfortunately, I can’t tell you for certain which one will be the best fit for your family. But what I can say is that the island of Bohol, Philippines is filled with fun and unique nature-based trips that make it a great place to start!
From the famed Chocolate Hills to tarsier sanctuaries where you can see the world’s smallest primate, Bohol has a lot to offer for families looking for an unforgettable adventure in the Philippines!
Chocolate Hills
Covering around 20 square miles of Bohol’s land area (50km²), the Chocolate Hills are probably the best-known attraction on the island! There are around 1776 of these rounded hills, which are actually geological uprisings on ancient coral that have since been worn down by the elements. They range in height, but the largest ones can be nearly 400ft tall.
Individually, they aren’t all that impressive. However, with so many of them spread out across the horizon, they become a beautiful sight that continues to delight island explorers year after year!
While the hills are worth checking out no matter what time of year you visit the island, it’s best to visit them near the end of dry season (between March and June) when the green plants on the hill fade to their namesake chocolate brown.
I have this tour linked for the Chocolate hills, but it actually covers a few other spots around Bohol, as well. These include:
- The Baclayon Church
- The Man-made Forest
- The Loboc River Lunch Cruise
- and more!
If you're wanting to see a lot of what Bohol has to offer without joining a bunch of different guided tours, this could be a good "see it all" option!
Tarsier Sanctuary (x2!)
I love taking my kids on field trips of all kinds, but, if I’m being honest, the places where I get the chance to see unusual animals in their natural habitats are always my favorite trips. Which is why I was ecstatic to find that Bohol is one of the only places in the world where you can find tarsiers!
If you aren’t familiar with them, tarsiers are the world’s second smallest primates! They were thought to be the world’s smallest primate for years, though, as it turns out, that’s actually Madagascar’s pygmy mouse lemur. They don’t do well in captivity, only surviving a couple months, so the tarsier sanctuaries on Bohol are incredibly important for the continued survival of these tiny animals.
During our time on the island, we chose to visit the Philippine Tarsier Sanctuary, and found it very easy to do on our own, without a tour. On arrival, guests watch a short educational video on tarsiers and are then taken by a guide to see them in person.
Since the tarsiers are nocturnal, you have to be quiet during the walk so you don’t wake them up, but they’ll probably still stir a bit and give you a sleepy glare before rolling over and continuing to sleep.
We also drove by a second place on the island, the Bohol Tarsier Conservation Area, which looked a little more tourism focused. Where the one we visited was hidden down a side road, this place was right on the main road, and there were several small restaurants located just outside.
Loboc River Lunch Cruise
The other major attraction on Bohol is the Loboc River Cruise, which typically includes lunch or dinner and a traditional dance show.
The Loboc river is known for its emerald green water, and the cruise takes its passengers down a stretch of the river that’s surrounded by all sorts of palm trees and greenery. The beautiful surroundings make an excellent backdrop for the buffet and show, and I’ve heard a lot of people speak very highly of it. The food, in particular, is supposed to be pretty good!
However, our family decided to skip this particular attraction in favor of exploring a bit more on our own. Ultimately, we decided that the show seemed like it could be a bit of a sensory overload for our kids and food is plentiful enough on the island that spending an hour on the boat just didn’t make sense for us on this particular trip.
However, if dinner and a show on a boat floating through a tropical paradise sounds interesting to you, you should definitely check it out! (And let me know how it goes!)
You can get tickets in advance via Klook.
Cruise down Bohol's beautiful green Loboc river!
This river cruise includes a leisurely float down the Loboc river, on board entertainment, and lunch on the boat!
Note: Tickets via Klook were available when we were in Bohol, but looking at my app today, it says it's not available. Let me know if you successfully buy tickets!
Waterfall Swimming Spots
Bohol is home to a number of different waterfalls, to the point that there are entire blog posts dedicated to choosing which ones to visit! We, unfortunately, were not able to explore them all during our stay, but we did manage to visit two, and they were both big hits with the kids!
Interested in checking out as many beautiful waterfalls as possible while on Bohol? This hidden waterfalls tour takes you around the island to explore some of the lesser known, but still beautiful, waterfalls on Bohol!
Pangas Waterfalls
The Pangas Waterfalls were the first falls that we visited on Bohol, and, while they were definitely beautiful, they were also a bit difficult for us to get to!
Mostly, that’s because we chose to rent a car and drive ourselves. The roads out to the falls were rough, with deep ruts in the mud that made us a bit nervous that we’d get stuck. Alternatively, there was a raised concrete road that ran right next to the muddy road, but it was super narrow, and made us worried that we would drive off it and drop back into the mud.
Tip: While we loved driving around the island in our rental car, many of the more adventurous locations are easier to get to by scooter or tuk-tuk. You can always hire a driver to take you to any of these locations to avoid the stress of driving there yourself!
Honestly, if there had been enough space to turn around, we probably would have done so, and chosen a different set of waterfalls. But we made it, and I have to say, the falls were definitely worth the road!
Pangas Falls are a set of small waterfalls, wider than they are tall. The pool below the falls is deep enough for diving into, and it’s common to see local kids swimming and diving off the rocks bordering the pool. There are also two small huts that offer a shady nook for picnicking, if you choose to bring food along with you, though there aren’t any convenient spots for buying food at the falls.
Unfortunately, we hadn’t planned on visiting any waterfalls on the day we went, so we came without swim suits and missed out on swimming. But it looked like a great place for it!
Can-umantad Waterfalls
We visited the Can-umantad falls the very next day. And this time, we came prepared for a swim!
Getting to the Can-umantad falls was a bit simpler than the Pangas Falls, which we appreciated. Visitors can park their car at the main road, and either walk down the path to the falls or hire a bike to take you down for 100 pesos. We chose to hire a bike, and were glad that we did, as the trail down was steep. I was very happy not to have to walk it.
At the bottom of the trail, there is a place to pay your entry fee (30 pesos/person) and hire your mandatory guide. I think we paid our guide 100 pesos, but I don’t remember there being a set price.
The Can-umantad Falls themselves were beautiful! It’s a 79-meter tall set of falls with a pool underneath. You can swim in the pool, and can even go under the falls into a small, hidden cave behind them, which the kids thought was super cool! It was a perfect spot for taking pictures, though I found the rocky ground beneath the falls to be rough on my feet. If you have water shoes, it’s worth bringing them.
A short distance down stream, a second, much shorter, set of falls lead to a deeper pool that is better for jumping into. This ended up being a favorite activity for our kids, and we spent a good chunk of time there.
After we finished having our fun, we decided to stop by a restaurant we had noticed just off the main road called Eleuterio’s Restaurant and Rice Terraces, and we were glad we did! Not only did they serve some of the best chicken that we had during our entire stay in Bohol, but they also have an overlook with a beautiful view of the area’s rice paddies that almost made me feel like I was back in Sapa. It made the perfect ending to our trip to the falls!
Tip: Eleuterio’s also has an access path down to the waterfalls on their property. It’s a bit longer than the main route, and it’s only for walking, not biking, but it’s possible to park your car there instead of along the road, if you prefer that.
Caves you can explore
Just like with the waterfalls, there are far too many caves on Bohol to be able to explore them all! Some of the caves are little more than a single chamber, while others run deep into the island’s interior. As with the waterfalls, we chose to visit two different caves during our stay in the area, and they turned out to be entirely different experiences!
Hinagdanan Cave
The Hinagdanan Cave is technically not on Bohol, but rather on the island of Panglao just to the south, not far from where we stayed during our trip. It was suggested as a stop for us to check out by our driver on the way back from the Tarsier Sanctuary. We hadn’t planned on doing a cave trip that day, but we also weren’t ready to head back to the house, so we went with it!
As it turns out, Hinagdanan Cave is little more than a single cave chamber with a large underground pool where you can swim. there are stairs cut into the ground to make getting to the pool easier, and it was well-lit both y electric lights and gaps in the ground above that allow sunlight to filter down. The cave reminded me a lot of the cenotes that you can find scattered around Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.
If you aren’t planning on swimming, I don’t think Hinagdanan is worth a visit. However, if you’re looking for a unique place to take a dip, it’s a great spot. Just be aware that the water is quite a bit cooler than what you find at the surface.
Back at the surface, there’s a small tourist market outside the caves where you can buy shirts, hats, souvenirs, and snacks. We ended up spending as much time walking around the different market stalls as we did exploring the cave.
Overall, this felt more like a tourist trap than a spelunking visit, but it was still a fun stop!
Princess Manan-aw Cave
There are quite a few wet caves that you can visit on Bohol, ranging from single cavern swimming spots to longer caves with river and lake systems that take hours to explore. However, the Princess Manan-aw Cave is one of the dry caves on Bohol that is open for tourists, which makes it a great spot for families looking to get in some spelunking!
Our family was only allowed to explore the frontmost section of the Princess Manan-aw Cave, which still took about an hour. There were paths headed further into the cave, but the guides insisted that the deeper areas weren’t safe for kids, so we weren’t able to check them out.
Even so, the paths we did explore featured some absolutely beautiful stalactite and stalagmite formations, numerous bats, and several other creepy crawly cave critters, so we definitely got our money’s worth!
The entry fee was 100 pesos/person and there was an additional 200 peso guide fee that we paid directly to our guides. Those fees included helmet and flashlight rental, so all we had to do was show up!
Right: Come cool bats that were hanging around
Bohol’s Man-made forest
While not what I would usually consider to be worth a trip on its own, Bohol’s man-made forest is one of those places that gets added on to every tour itinerary as a side-stop that many tourists enjoy. The forest itself is a dense grove of mahogany trees that were all planted as part of a reforestation effort that dates back to the 1950s.
Today, the mahogany trees line both sides of the road way and are undeniably beautiful, making it a popular stop for tourists wanting to take a nice picture. We stopped just inside the forest on our trip and spent about 10 minutes taking family pictures and buying snacks from a roadside merchant.
Again, not worth making a trip just for the forest, but a nice stop nonetheless!
Rajah Sikatuna National Park
Rajah Sikatuna National Park contains the largest stretch of uninterrupted natural forest on the island of Bohol, making it an ideal location for animal enthusiasts looking to spot some wildlife. Birdwatching tours are one of the main activities in the park, and there are several different hiking trails that you can check out as well.
However, the main activity that draws in many tourists is the chance to feed wild macaques out of your hand.
In general, macaque monkeys are some of my least favorite monkeys worldwide. They don’t mind living around humans and so can be found in parks across Southeast Asia, but they can also be territorial and aggressive, especially if there’s food involved. So, I was a bit surprised to learn that tourists are encouraged to buy peanuts to feed to the macaques here.
I normally don’t condone feeding the wildlife, but I admit that I broke down and allowed my kids to each buy a packet of peanuts from the park guides here. When we reached the feeding area, the guides showed us how to offer the peanuts to the macaques one at a time, since the monkeys would other wise grab the whole handful and run off.
And, I have to admit, it was fun to have the monkeys pick the food out of the palms of our hands. However, since I’ve seen how aggressive they can be in other places, like at the Batu Caves in Malaysia, I didn’t quite feel comfortable the entire time, even though everything went fine here.
Ultimately, whether you choose to feed the macaques or not is up to you, but it’s worth knowing that the park guides will encourage you to do so.
Alicia Schist Hike
The Alicia Schist formation is a huge area of mountainous grasslands in the north of the island that is absolutely gorgeous. As soon as we saw the pictures, we knew that this was a hike that we wanted to do. However, it ended up being one of our biggest travel fails during our exploration of Bohol!
Do you know how sometimes, when you put in a location such as a park on Google Maps, it try to take you to the center point of that location rather than the entry point? Well, it was sorta like that. We navigated to a total of 5 different locations to try to begin this hike based on maps from different people’s blogs, and, while we definitely drove through some beautiful scenery, we never actually ended up finding the trail we were looking for.
As someone who has been traveling the world for over a decade, this is somewhat embarrassing. But it does lead me to confidently say that rather than trying to drive to the Alicia Schist hiking point yourself, you should probably hire a driver to drop you off or choose to go on a guided tour.
This tour includes a hike through the Alicia region of Bohol, which dates back to the Cretaceous period. This makes it the oldest geological region of Bohol!
Finish off the day with a trip to the Can-umantad Waterfalls for a quick dip in the water!
Take a Day Trip to Panglao
My family did our trip a bit differently, staying in Panglao and taking multiple day-trip visits up to Bohol. However, if you’re planning on staying on Bohol, be sure not to skip taking a day or two to visit Panglao!
The main draws for Panglao are the beaches and the ocean. From scuba trips and freediving at Napaling on the north coast of the island, to sandy beaches on the south side, there are plenty of ocean oriented trips on Panglao to keep you busy!
Just want to see the best of the best on your trip to Panglao? Be sure to take the full-day boat trip to Balicasag for world-class snorkeling and dolphin watching!
This is a full-day (8 hour) boat and snorkeling trip. From watching wild dolphins playing in the waves, to swimming with turtles and tropical reef fish in the Balicasag Marine Sanctuary, this trip takes you to all the major wildlife spots so you can see the best of the best of what Balicasag has to offer.
