Alicia

Everyone goes to Carmen. They climb 214 steps to a railed-in deck and look at a few dozen cone-shaped hills from a managed angle. Alicia's landscape is something else entirely — a long, elongated grassy mountain ridge called the Binabaje Hills, more spine than cluster, running for kilometers above a sea of smaller rolling hills and deep valleys. There are no fences, no concrete viewing platform, and almost no other people.

These are not the round chocolate cones of Carmen. The Binabaje range is geologically older and structurally different — limestone-and-shale uplift carved by erosion into long, sharp ridges with steep flanks. You hike along the spine. The land falls away on both sides. The wind is constant. The grass changes color with the season — green in the wet months, golden brown by April. It is, simply, a different and more honest view of Bohol's interior — earned, not delivered.

The hike up the main ridge takes 30 to 45 minutes from the parking area at the trailhead. The path is steep in places but well-trodden, and a barangay guide (around PHP 300 to PHP 500 for a group) will lead you to the viewpoints and back. The first ridge gives you the standard sunrise photograph. The second and third ridges, further along the spine, are where you escape even the few other hikers.

From the top of the main ridge, on a clear morning, you can see the Mindanao Sea to the east and the central Bohol plateau rolling west toward Carmen. Cloud shadows move across the hills in slow patterns. Carabao graze on the lower slopes. The whole scene feels older and quieter than the official viewing complex an hour's drive away.

Alicia is the only place in Bohol where you can legally camp inside this kind of hill landscape. The barangay charges around PHP 50 to camp and PHP 30 for day entry. There's a small pavilion at the trailhead and a few basic cottages, but most people pitch a tent on the ridge and wake to fog, sunrise, and a horizon of green slopes.

Bring water — there's none on the ridge. Bring a headlamp — the descent in the dark is real. Bring a windbreaker — even in March the night wind cuts. Cooking is allowed but bring your own stove; no open fires. The barangay caretaker walks the ridge in the evening to collect fees and check on campers, which is reassuring.

Alicia town itself is a working farming municipality with a quiet plaza, a Sunday market that draws farmers from across the eastern uplands, and a couple of cave systems — Anonang and Iglit — that you can visit with a barangay guide for PHP 300. The caves are not dressed up for tourism, which is the appeal. You walk in with a flashlight and a guide who has known the chambers since childhood. Iglit has a small underground stream and a chamber with surprisingly intact stalactites; Anonang is shorter but has bat colonies that emerge at dusk.

Lodging is limited — a few inns charging PHP 800 to PHP 1,500 — so most travelers visit on a day from Anda (1 hour) or as part of a counter-clockwise loop from Tagbilaran. Carinderias around the plaza serve full meals for under PHP 150; the bibingka and puto from the Sunday market are local specialties worth carrying back.

The smartest two-day east-Bohol loop is: morning drive Tagbilaran → Jagna → Anda (swim, caves), overnight Anda; next day Anda → Candijay (rice terraces, falls) → Alicia (ridge hike, sunset), overnight in tent or Alicia inn; return to Tagbilaran via the inland road through Sierra Bullones. You'll have done in two days what most tours can't show in five.

If you have a third day, add a slow morning back through Sierra Bullones and Batuan to actually stop at the Chocolate Hills viewing complex — but only after Alicia, so you understand what you're looking at and why the alternative matters.