60 pieces · NaturePhoto by Vyacheslav Argenberg, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Late-afternoon light across the Chocolate Hills of Bohol, in the Central Visayas region of the Philippines — grass-covered limestone cones standing out of coconut palm and lowland forest, repeating back into haze toward the horizon.
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Evening Light on the Chocolate Hills
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Evening Light on the Chocolate Hills
Bohol is an island in the Central Visayas, in the middle of the Philippine archipelago, and across a broad inland plateau it does something no other landscape quite manages: it repeats. Hundreds of near-identical cones stand up out of the farmland and coconut groves, each one rounded, each one roughly the same shape as its neighbour, spread over an area of more than fifty square kilometres. Counts differ depending on where you draw the line between a hill and a bump — surveys put the figure at a minimum of about 1,260 and possibly over 1,776 — which tells you more about the landform than any precise number would. They are not separate features so much as one continuous process that happened to leave this many lumps behind. The Philippines has declared the site its third national geological monument, and in 2023 Bohol Island became the country's first UNESCO Global Geopark, with these hills as its signature landscape.
The name comes from what the grass does. The hills are capped in a thin skin of vegetation over marine limestone — coral reef and sea-floor sediment, uplifted and then worked on by rainwater, which dissolves limestone slowly along cracks and joints until what is left standing between the hollows is a field of residual cones. For most of the year that grass is green. In the dry season it browns off, and the whole plateau turns the colour of cocoa, which is where the name and the local legends meet: stories tell of giants hurling boulders at each other, or of a giant weeping over a lost love until his tears hardened into mounds. This photograph catches the transition, with the hills already tawny and gold in low sun while the forest in the valleys between them stays deep green. That contrast is the real subject — the dry tops and the wet bottoms belong to two different pictures stacked together.
As a jigsaw, the difficulty is exactly the thing that makes the view famous. Repetition defeats shape-matching, because a piece from one hillside will sit convincingly on four other hillsides. Build from the foreground instead: the large cone at lower left has genuine internal structure — a shadow line down its flank, patches of scrub, a darker crease where the slope turns — and those give you real anchors. Work the sky next, since the cloud banding runs horizontally and sorts into clean strips. Then use the horizon as a ruler: the hills get smaller, bluer and softer the further back they are, so sort the middle pieces by haze rather than by colour and you will place them in the right row even when you cannot tell which hill they belong to. Save the dense palm forest for last and expect it to be slow; it rewards patience with texture rather than with landmarks.
How to play
- Tap Play Evening Light on the Chocolate Hills puzzle to open the puzzle board, then choose your piece count and difficulty.
- Drag pieces from the tray onto the board and snap them into place until the full image is complete. Works with mouse on desktop and touch on mobile.
- Use the Preview button on the play screen to peek at the full reference image whenever you need a hint.
- When you finish, check your solve time on the completion screen and share it with friends to see who can beat your record.
Frequently asked questions
- Where are the Chocolate Hills?
- On the island of Bohol, in the Central Visayas region of the Philippines. The formation spreads across the island's interior — the municipalities of Carmen, Batuan and Sagbayan among others — covering more than fifty square kilometres. The best-known viewing deck is at Carmen, which looks out over the kind of panorama shown here. The hills appear on Bohol's provincial flag and seal.
- Why are they called chocolate when this photo is green and gold?
- Because of the season. The hills are covered in grass that is green through the wet months and dries to a deep brown in the dry season, which is when they look most like rows of chocolate drops and when the name makes immediate sense. Photographs taken at different times of year can look like entirely different places. This one was made in late afternoon with the grass part-way through turning, so the tops read gold and tawny while the forest in the valleys is still fully green.
- How did so many identical hills form?
- They are a karst landscape. The rock is marine limestone — ancient coral and sea-floor deposits — that was uplifted above sea level. Rainwater is mildly acidic and dissolves limestone along its cracks and joints, so over a very long period the gaps widened into hollows and valleys while the blocks between them were left standing. The cones are what remains, not what was built up, which is why they share a shape: one process acting evenly on one rock type.
- How many hills are there exactly?
- There is no single agreed number, and that is a genuine feature of the place rather than a gap in the record. Published counts range from a minimum of roughly 1,260 to possibly more than 1,776, because the formation grades from unmistakable cones down to low swells and every survey has to choose its own cut-off for what counts. Looking at a view like this one, you can see the problem: the hills nearest the camera are obvious, and the ones on the horizon merge into a single ridgeline.