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Cebu

Cebu City at street level in March 2023: a tartanilla clopping past old shopfronts, a chrome-nosed jeepney at dusk, a sunrise down the coast.

We gave Cebu a few days in March 2023 and spent most of them at street level, which is where this city actually happens.

A horse-drawn tartanilla with yellow-spoked wheels passing shuttered shopfronts under a dense tangle of overhead cables in Cebu City
A tartanilla doing its rounds beneath Cebu's legendary spaghetti wiring. The horse has seen it all.
A city canal between old houses with a raft of plastic waste floating on the green water
The photo the brochures skip: a canal wearing far too much plastic. We show it because it is part of the picture too.
A red jeepney with a chrome nose and the route board Apas Lahug Jones Carbon collecting passengers at dusk in Cebu City
Chrome, decals, guardian angels: a jeepney gathering its evening crowd at dusk.
Inga and Dileep standing on a sea wall at sunrise with a mirror-calm sea and small fishing boats behind them
A few days later, down Cebu's south coast: a mirror-flat sea at sunrise, the morning before we crossed to Bohol.

From here we caught the boat across to Bohol, with tarsiers and Chocolate Hills ahead.