We had a pretty light day on Day 07. The morning was free for us to sleep in — the missus and kids at least, as I got up early to do aerial videos of Alona Beach at sunrise — followed by a leisurely breakfast at the resort. Our driver for Days 07 and 08 turned out to be a different chap indeed, and he was an experienced guide who ran his own tour business and also did independent gigs. He was familiar with the rich history of Bohol and the involvement of the Spanish in it, and shared many insights about places we drove past on our way to the only activity we had on Day 07’s itinerary: a Loboc River cruise with Rio Verde Floating Restaurant.
The starting point of the cruise was about a 45-minute drive that took us out of Panglao Island onto the main island of Bohol itself, and the journey was smooth with relatively light traffic in the late morning. I’d initially thought that the river cruise only sailed a few times each day during lunch hours, but the company apparently runs what looks like at least half a dozen boats. They leave and return, disembark one group of guests, restock, then board the next group, with each roundabout cruise taking about an hour.
Prior to the cruise, we read Google reviews that were full of glowing praise, with many commenting on how smooth the operation is, that the food was sumptuous and more than what guests could finish, the great live music by onboard musicians, and the beautiful view of the mangrove forest on either side of the river.
Well, our evaluation after the cruise is: it’s a smooth operation, the food was passable and certainly plentiful, the live music mostly stayed in the background with few apparently paying attention to it, and the full beauty of the mangrove forest is hard to appreciate from the boat — unless you get an aerial view, and more on that in a sec!
The thing is: all things considered, it’s an OK activity to do if you’re in Bohol, on account that it’s not too pricey, the location is accessible and easy to get to, and it’s a chop-chop operation that runs like clockwork. But I think you’d only really want to do this cruise if it’s convenient for you and/or part of your itinerary package with a tour operator. The cruise doesn’t ultimately involve anything you can’t see or experience elsewhere.
And as for the aerial part: I really wanted to try to get some aerial videos of Loboc River, but this was going to be difficult at best, if not outright impossible, since the boat would be constantly moving — except for a very small window of about eight minutes when the boat would stop by a traditional village where the villagers perform a tribal dance. That was the only opportunity I would have to try capturing aerial footage.
As it turned out, I had substantially less than eight minutes, as guests took their time to disembark and several stayed on board taking pictures at the small open-air deck — the only area I had to launch the drone from. So, in five minutes, I started up the drone, gauged the lighting and mounted the correct ND filter, connected the RC-N2 controller, confirmed safety and camera settings, took off from a tiny 0.7m by 0.6m launch area at the front of the boat, immediately cleared the deck, gained altitude, captured two short aerial clips totaling about two minutes, then navigated back while maintaining safe clearance from people still jockeying for photos and wefies on the deck. This was the fastest start-up + launch + fly + return + landing sequence I’ve ever done. I’m definitely not going to try this again!
Continued in the next post onto Day 08!