The Motorbike Diaries—Part 3: The Chocolate Hills

The Chocolate Hills rise out of the valley subtly at first. You notice that the hills are rather independent of each other instead of one leading into the next. They’re covered with palm trees and some are farmed, but nothing seems too unusual. Then they start getting bigger, and soon their tops are covered with a dry grass that gives the Chocolate Hills its name. You can’t tell until you’re at the viewing center, but there are hundreds of them in the valley, strange mounds that no one really can explain.

The Chocolate Hills are probably Bohol’s most famous tourist attraction. They get compared to everything: Hershey kisses, giant mole hills, women’s breasts. Apparently most people have a hard time believing they’re not a man made artifact, but I bet it would be an even more difficult endeavor to make those hills than the pyramids.

Some claim there are exactly 1268 hills, all uniform in shape and between 100-150 feet high. They’re covered with a grass that turns dark brown in the summertime—at other times of the year they’re green.

Matt and I at the Chocoloate Hills Viewpoint

Legend has it that the hills came into existence when two giants threw stones and sand at each other in a fight that lasted for days. Finally exhausted, they became friends and left the island, but left behind the mess they made. There’s also the romantic tale of Arogo, a young and very strong giant who fell in love with an ordinary mortal girl called Aloya. After she died, the giant Arogo cried bitterly. His tears then turned into hills, as a lasting proof of his grief.

Apparently there’s a bunch of scientific theories about how the Chocolate Hills were actually formed. The most popular belief is that they were an ancient limestone reef that was shaped by thousands of years of erosion by water and wind. Some believe that the they’re conical karst hills like in Slovenia and Croatia, but the problem is they don’t have the caves or underground drainage that define karst formations. So—who knows?

Any speculations?