Siquijor

As darkness falls, a macabre statue of the Virgin Mary, clad in a black gown, and carrying a skull in her arms reputedly leaves her church and wanders abroad into the night. This spooky legend seems almost commonplace here on Siquijor, where, deep in the hills around the village of San Antonio, wizened old men and women crouch around hissing cauldrons brewing potions containing, amongst other things, wax from the island’s churches and earth from the local cemeteries. If that’s not enough, a trip round the island reveals gruesome collections of human skulls and bones adorning the center of the cemeteries.

Set in the Visayas region of the Philippines, Siquijor has long had a reputation as the center of black magic in the republic and this certainly provides an interesting distraction from the warm shallow sea and palm lined beaches that make up its coastline. While the truth behind this spooky reputation seems to be a little more mundane (the focus, certainly on the surface, is definitely on healing), some practitioners also brew up supposedly potent love potions and there are rumors of those able to cast curses and the like.

Apo Island

“How long is this going to take?” I ask the two boatmen as we roll our trousers up above the knees and wade gingerly towards the boat. “Oh just about 25 minutes” says Romero, our captain for the voyage.

After the longest 25 minutes of my life and soaked to the skin, we cruise into the calmer waters of one of Apo’s small bays, marking our entry to the island and its surrounding marine reserve. 

Apo island is a 72 hectare volcanic island in the Visayas region of the Philippines where the majority of the island’s residents are fishermen. It’s perhaps surprising then that in 1985 the island authorities, after urging from a local university, agreed to make much of the island’s waters a marine reserve, and a portion of them a fish sanctuary. In this reserve, which stretches from the shoreline to 500 meters offshore, the island’s barangay, or local council, allow only traditional methods of fishing, and in the fish sanctuary itself, no fishing of any kind. This has meant superb diving and snorkeling opportunities for tourists as well as increased  catches  for local  fishermen.