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It's hard to imagine that Bohol , a two-hour hop south of Cebu by fast ferry, has a bloody past. The only reminder of the unpleasantness is a memorial stone in the barrio of Bool, denoting the spot where Rajah Sikatuna and Miguel Lopez de Legaspi concluded an early round of hostilities in 1565 by signing a compact in blood. Even before Legaspi arrived and brought Catholicism with him from Spain, members of the indigenous Bool tribe were using the coves around Panglao and Tagbiliran to hide from vicious Muslim marauders who swept north through the Visayan islands from their bases in Mindanao. These days, however, apart from some mercantile activity in the capital, Tagbiliran , Bohol is a dozy sort of place. The only sign of what in other cultures might pass for frenzied activity, is on the beautiful beaches of Panglao Island , where scuba divers gather in their incongruous neon wetsuits. Everywhere else, Bohol is on Filipino time and runs at Filipino pace. Even the carabao chew slowly. For most visitors the only obligatory sortie away from Panglao's beaches is to see the island's most iconoclastic tourist attraction, the Chocolate Hills . Some geologists believe that these unique forty-meter mounds were formed from deposits of coral and limestone sculpted by centuries of erosion. The locals, however, will tell you the hills are the calcified tears of a giant, whose heart was broken by the death of a mortal lover. The best time to see the Chocolate Hills - there are allegedly 1268 of them - is at dawn, when the rising sun plays spectacular tricks with light, shadow and color. Aficionados recommend the end of the dry season (April or May), when the grass has turned brown, and with a short stretch of the imagination, the hills really do resemble chocolate drops. More and more people are visiting Bohol for its world-class scuba diving - not only at Panglao, but at the lesser-known islands of Pamilacan, Cabilao, Ajo, Mahanay and Lapinin off the northern coast. Away from the water you can visit Antequera a twenty-minute bus ride from Tagbilaran, where there's a handicrafts market twice a week on Thursdays and Saturdays. The barrio of Corolla , easily accesible by bus, is the start of the Tarsier Trail, a fifteen-kilometre pathway that meanders through the habitat of the Philippine tarsier - tarsius syrichta - the world's smallest primate. This area is a tarsier sanctuary, home to about five hundred of the hand-sized beasts, whose eyes weigh more than their brains. There are a handful of interesting churches in Bohol, also reachable by bus. Baclayon Church , built in 1595 in the baroque Jesuit style typical of the central Philippines, is believed to have been the first church in the country. And if you've got half a day to spare you can run out by jeepney to the old Spanish watchtower at Punta Cruz , where colonizing garrisons kept their muskets aimed facing west across the Bohol Strait.
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