Chocolate Hills: Come for the Hills, Stay for 43 Seconds

Some destinations demand hours.

Some require hiking boots, questionable transportation and a concerning disregard for personal safety.

The Chocolate Hills of Bohol require approximately 43 seconds.

Walk up to the viewpoint.

Look at hills.

Say, “Yep. Those are definitely fucking hills, and they’re brown.”

Take a few pictures.

And haul ass somewhere more interesting.

The Chocolate Hills are basically Bohol’s version of my visit to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris: incredibly famous, absolutely worth seeing once, and remarkably efficient at completing its entire tourism experience before you’ve finished deciding where to eat lunch.

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DESTINATION: CHOCOLATE HILLS BOHOL

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SOMEONE COPY-PASTED 1,700 HILLS

To be fair, the Chocolate Hills are genuinely weird.

More than 1,700 cone-shaped limestone hills are scattered across central Bohol, generally rising about 30 to 125 meters above the surrounding landscape.

During the dry season, the grass covering them turns brown, creating the supposedly chocolate-colored landscape that gave the place its name.

Personally, I don’t see chocolate.

They look more like somebody opened SimCity, selected the HILL tool and clicked the mouse 1,700 fucking times.

But Chocolate Hills sounds significantly better on a tourism brochure than Bohol’s Enormous Collection of Identical Dirt Mounds, so here we are.

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YOU HAVE NOW SEEN THE CHOCOLATE HILLS

The main viewpoint delivers exactly what you’re expecting.

Hills.

Lots and lots of hills.

And the first look across them is actually pretty damn cool.

Hill #1? Fantastic.

Hill #37? Still interesting.

Hill #684?

Starting to understand the concept.

Hill #1,426?

Copy. Paste. Paste. Paste. Paste.

This isn’t like swimming with the Oslob whale sharks, where a supposedly adolescent fish the size of a fucking school bus suddenly cruises past your face and makes your brain briefly stop functioning.

Nothing is going to happen here.

The hills aren’t going anywhere.

Take the obligatory pictures, admire one of the strangest geological landscapes in the Philippines and resist the urge to turn this into a three-hour spiritual encounter with nature.

You’ve seen them.

You’re good.

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BOHOL HAS WEIRDER SHIT TO SEE

Fortunately, the Chocolate Hills aren’t the only reason to wander around Bohol.

The island is also home to the Bohol tarsiers, tiny tree-hugging furballs with enormous eyeballs that look suspiciously like someone tried to create Pokémon using parts left over from several unrelated animals.

They’re also another relatively quick stop.

See one tarsier?

Adorable.

See six?

You’ve essentially discovered the copy-and-paste function again.

But combining the Chocolate Hills and tarsiers makes considerably more sense than pretending either attraction needs an entire day.

And if your Philippines itinerary continues south toward Cebu, things get significantly more interesting when you board a bus toward Oslob and its whale sharks, where the wildlife encounter is incredible and the transportation there may cause you to reconsider several previous life choices.

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SHOULD YOU VISIT THE CHOCOLATE HILLS?

Absolutely.

You’re already on Bohol.

They’re one of the most recognizable landscapes in the Philippines, they’re genuinely unusual, and skipping them would feel strangely irresponsible.

Just manage your expectations.

The Chocolate Hills aren’t an adventure.

They’re a stop-the-car, climb-the-viewpoint, take-the-picture, okay-that-was-neat destination.

Think Arc de Triomphe, except instead of one giant stone monument surrounded by homicidal Parisian traffic, you get 1,700 remarkably similar hills surrounded by jungle.

Take your pictures.

Appreciate that geology occasionally gets bored and starts making patterns.

Then get back on the road.

Your 43 seconds are up.