Bantayan Island
When we travel we usually go to more than one place in whatever country we’re visiting. When we went the the Philippines we started in Cebu City and went to Bantayan Island for the second half of the trip. If you read my last post then you know I didn’t do so well planning the first part in Cebu City. Luckily I did a better job at Bantayan Island.
We set off for Bantayan by heading to the Cebu North Bus Terminal to catch our bus to Hagnaya, in the northwest of Cebu. We caught our bus, got to Hagnaya, walked to the port, bought our tickets, and took the ferry west to Bantayan Island. The ferry dropped us off at the ferry terminal in the southeast of the island and our hotel had someone waiting to bring us to the hotel. The hotel we stayed at, Adelaida Pensionne Hotel was pretty good too. So far we were already doing better than we had done in Cebu City.
After getting there I was pretty pleased with our choice for final stop of the summer. Bantayan Island was away from the hustle and bustle of the city so we could relax and enjoy our time there. But it was also big enough that there were plenty of amenities like bars and restaurants unlike Pangkor Island, where we went in Malaysia, which was very small. It was great for relaxing but probably not as good for poking around and exploring. Bantayan didn’t have that problem.
It was already a little late when we arrived so we weren’t going to do anything serious until the next day, but you don’t get to an island and not immediately check out the beach. So we walked down the street from our hotel to see how Sugar Beach was. Maybe not quite as pristine as I’d hoped but it was plenty big and certainly not bad. I was excited to get to swim a bit. From Sugar Beach we made our way to Santa Fe to look for some dinner. There were plenty of restaurants and we settled on Stumble Inn. We enjoyed our food and chatted with the owners and some other patrons, who told us that Fiesta was that night. Fiesta is a party (obviously) that happens on different nights around the island. It seemed to be in a different place each time so you could go to lots of them if you felt like traveling around. And that night it was right near us in Santa Fe. After we ate we wandered over to see what it was all about and found it when we started hearing all the music and seeing all the people. There were more people there than we had seen the entire time on the island until then. We enjoyed the music, ate some popcorn, drank some smoothies, talked to some other revelers, then took our leave. On the way back to the hotel we swung by the beach near Kota Beach Resort, maybe part of Sugar Beach, to see how the beaches were at night then turned in.
We’d only been there for maybe half a day and we were already seeing and doing things. Looking back on Cebu I’m not sure how I could have messed up so much. And the second day continued to give us great stuff.
On our second day in Santa Fe we woke up, went into town, and had a great breakfast at Giordano’s before heading back to the hotel for our island tour. Since the island was bigger than Pangkor Island we didn’t see the whole island, but did get to see a bunch of cool things in the south. The first stop was Ogtong Cave, which a tourist map had informed us was a cave full of water that you could swim in. It was actually at a hotel so we had to pay to get onto the premises then we went straight to the cave. I was underwhelmed. It was certainly cool looking, but being in the middle of a hotel took away a little from the experience. The water also didn’t seem too salty so I had to wonder if it was manmade. While there we wandered around a bit and enjoyed the view of the ocean, but we didn’t stay too long.
While there I realized I had forgotten the floaty stick for my action camera so we detoured back to the hotel real quick so I could grab it. Then we went to what I thought was called the diving cliff on the map. I was pretty excited for some cliff jumping. I’d only every jumped into quarries before, never the ocean, and was looking forward to it. But after we got there I wondered if I had misread, since it didn’t really look like a place for jumping. Even if it was though the waves were way too strong when we were there to jump. I’d have been smashed against the rocks. The area was pretty picturesque though, with the waves crashing up against the bluff and the ocean spread out in front of us.
Continuing west we got to the Omagieca Oboob Mangrove Gardens, which I thought was one of the coolest places we went on Bantayan, and certainly the best place that wasn’t a beach. The area is now a protected spot to protect the biodiversity of the area and the coast and for a small fee you could get in and they’d show you around. We wandered through the mangroves on the bamboo walkway admiring the plants and the ocean, feeding some fish, and spotting some crabs before making our way back to the entrance. When we got there we saw a whole bunch of tiny crabs marching down the beach and took some photos.
Our next stop was a lagoon north of the ferry terminal where we were dropped off the previous day. Quiet and peaceful we paid less than a dollar to get in then wandered around the shallows admiring the starfish and trying not to step on any sea urchins. It was a nice relaxing end to the tour and afterwards we went back to Santa Fe and took a break at Kota Beach Resort, where we had looked at the beach the previous night. After recharging from the tour I ventured out to the beach to see how the water was and swim a bit. I didn’t get too far out though before I stepped on some rocks or coral or something and couldn’t go any further. Every way I went ended the same, with me limping back a couple feet to where it was sandy again. The tide was pretty low so during high tide maybe this isn’t a problem, but if you go to the beach, at least that one, later in the day during low tide, make sure to wear water shoes. After running out the afternoon on the beach we grabbed dinner at HR Music Bar and Native Restaurant and called it a day.
I was pretty excited for our third day. We had booked a boat trip to nearby Virgin Island, which was supposed to be pretty and have some decent snorkeling. After breakfast we took a ride out to the boat area, loaded ourselves into a small boat, and took off. There was supposed to be a stop at another island called Hilantagaan Island but we were told the weather wasn’t favorable and there were a lot of jellyfish so we went straight to Virgin Island. The boats land on the side of the island without most of the things so we walked through to the other side, caught a glimpse of a water snake, then paid our fee. The island may once have actually been a ‘virgin’ island but now there are a few bungalows, a restaurant, and a couple of stores in addition to all the hammocks and beach chairs. Even with that stuff there really wasn’t much there. And certainly not many people. After getting the lay of the land we went to the beach to snorkel. Now I can swim but I’m not much for floating around in deep water staring into the abyss. Luckily there were plenty of colorful fish close to shore. We fed the fish and explored the area around a little platform out in the water. We got to the island a little after 10 so not too much later we had lunch. After we ate we made our way back to the other side of the island, where the boat landed, to jump off their…jumping platform I guess. I don’t know if it has an official name. But it’s a wooden platform they built maybe 15 feet high to jump into the ocean. I jumped a bunch of times before we went back to the busier side and spent most of the rest of the afternoon floating around looking at the fish.
We couldn’t stay that late because we had to get back before the sun set so in the later afternoon we hopped back on the boat back to Santa Fe. We were pretty beat from swimming around all day so we just bummed around until dinner at Baia Spaghetteria. Afterwords we went back to Stumble Inn for some apple pie and cheesecake before calling it a night.
After an eventful first couple days we decided to spend our last full day relaxing. We slept in a little then had breakfast before heading to a butterfly cafe for coffee. When we realized they also had an actual butterfly garden we went in and walked through the garden, watching butterflies in all sorts of colors flitting around in the sun. Every now and then one would land on us and we’d get our camera out just in time for it to fly away. After we finished admiring the butterflies we went back to the beach one last time. I swam a little then we wandered around the shallows looking at snails and shells and trying to find crabs. In addition to the normal hermit crabs you always find we found some much bigger crabs swimming around and burying themselves in the sand. To end our trip we stayed at the beach and watched a gorgeous sunset before going to Bantayan Burrito Company for our last dinner.
And just like that our trip was over. The next day we took the ferry back to Hagnaya and then the bus back to the airport in Cebu so we could come back to Shenzhen. The Bantayan leg of the trip made me realize just how important planning can be to a trip. When I planned poorly for Cebu we had to squeeze a bunch of things into a little bit of time, but when I allotted enough time, like for Bantayan Island, it was much easier to enjoy the trip. I’ve kept this in mind for every trip since.
Bantayan Island had just the right balance between quiet beaches and places to relax and towns with amenities to scratch that summer island itch so even though I didn’t do so well on the first part of our Philippines trip we still managed to end our summer on a high note.
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