Boracay {Cath}

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Borocay was beautiful. We stayed in a down the alley, on a 2nd floor room just off the beach. As rooms go it was great - 2 double beds, fan, bathroom, shower (cold, but who needs a hot shower? It's ridiculous degrees Celsius outside!), toilet (no seat - that's only in the really fancy rooms!) and a TV, all for 500 Pesos (about US$12 / R90) 😊 Not that we spent much time there!

{This was the first room we've had with a TV so far, and we turned it on to find... Super-Sport! And M-Net! Direct from SA to Boracay! Incredible! And we turned it on just as the Singapore F1 was beginning, so we watched the first ever F1 night race with a South African commentator in Boracay. Awesome! - Darrell}

The main beach, White Beach, was gorgeous, with soft white sand and palm trees the full length of the beach. And when the sun set over the still, smooth ocean, I had to pinch myself to make sure it was real.

Then only problem is, as Darrel-avid-kite-surfer put it, that Borocay gets too much wind. Although it's great for kite surfers, wind surfers, and sailboats - now advertising fabric softener and cigarettes on their sails - it's not great for the shop and restaurant owners just behind the palm tree line. To counter the wind, they've gone and pinned up massive plastic sheets to bamboo scaffolding and tied them to the palm trees. We mistook it for construction when we first got onto the beach. So, although it was a bit off-putting at first, we did get used to it. It creates an 'openness to all' feeling on the beach, as opposed to the 'you shouldn't be here' feeling you get when some of the bungalows/hotels are parked right on the beach.

On the other side of the plastic is more of a village feeling. The touts have gone a bit nuts here. There're heaps of them, and they're all selling the same things. The men sell, " boat ride today? How about jetski? Snorkelling trip? Some island-hopping?", "We also have this (picture of a quad bike) - good for 2 people". And they all use the same peeling laminated A5 picture cards on a keyring. The ladies sit in groups offering "MumSirMassage", sometimes calling in unison. The beach-side of the walkway is lined with tables offering various assortments of shell necklaces, bracelets, anklets, earrings, and cell phone accessories. There was one lady using coloured beach sand to make pictures in miniature glass bottles. That was pretty cool.

The town side of the walkway was sealed off mostly by restaurants offering prawns, fish and the biggest lobster you've seen nestled between ice blocks on smooth white tables. I asked one of the waiters where the lobsters and fish came from and he said, "Oh you know, Palawan and other islands". No wonder we couldn't find any fish in Palawan. It's all up at the All-You-Can-Eat Seafood buffets in Boracay.

On the 2nd or 3rd day that we were there, we decided to take a break from our wake up-breakfast-beach-lunch-beach-gorgeous sunset-Supersport on TV-Mongolian Buffet for P200ea-walk on beach-bed circuit to go and explore the rest of the bone-shaped island.

What a great idea! 😊

The quad bikes were a little out of our budget, so we started looking around for a pair of bikes we could hire for the day. We eventually found a gentleman willing to hire us 2 bikes for P700 for the day (the weather was ominous, so I think he was more willing to get rid of them earlier rather than later).

We decided to first pop over to the 'windy side' of the island, just on the other side of the narrow part of the bone, 500m away. It was a quick walk through the town, picking up breakfast at the bakery opposite the Budget Mart on the way. Yummo! 😊

The windy side, to Darrell's disappointment, was only windy the month before we got there, and would only be windy again the month after we left. It's the side of the island where most of the watersport activities are held, and if you weren't there for that, there isn't really anything else to do. There is not much in the way of beach (it might have been high tide, or a seasonal thing). So we decided to walk on, up the length of the island... really, how big could it be, it took all of 5 minutes to walk the width of it...

So we walked, and walked and walked 😊 I really wouldn't have guessed that Boracay, with it's barely above water-level beaches, could be so hilly!

We did get some great views, although often they were obscured by the thick jungle-like vegetation. We were amazed at how little development there is on the opposite side of the island. There are still a bunch of "lot for sale" signs painted on a piece of wood or cardboard and nailed to a tree. We passed one or two villages on our walk along the main road, with friendly kids looking at us curiously. We tried to go through one of the villages to get to one of the beaches behind a golf course that a few post cards advertised as the most beautiful, only to be cut off by a few of the local women who said that it was private property. I still don't know whether she was talking about the village we were in (if that's the case, then that's fair) or if it was because the resort had bought the beach. Either way, we had to turn back the way we came, passed the children, and the goat munching on the grass, and find some where else to explore.

We came across the 'peak' of Borocay, and thought, "Why not". We were about to walk up when a man came rushing up to us to warn us of the P50 each to go up. Oh well, OK. So we went up. There were wooden steps that had been laid up the short slope, which wound round a small 'zoo' of sorts, and onto a wooden landing. The 'Zoo' had an interesting collection of animals, (loads of monkeys, a python, monitor lizard, puppies, birds, 2 'Cat bears' just to name a few) all in small wire cages.

Out on the landing, there was a boardwalk sporting the best look out points. It really was a stunning and view. It turns out that the narrow 'shaft' part of the bone island, is very narrow, and the heads on either side, are wide indeed. We spent ages looking over the crystal blue waters, watching the hired jet-ski race around in circles, and the paragliders being hoisted up behind boats on the one side of the shaft, and the calm and white sands of the other side.

We decided to go on a bit further. And we walked, and walked, and wished we'd hired a bicycle, and walked some more. On the road, (and on the mud next to the will-be-a-road-soon), through thick forrest, and back into town and on passed another village. That thing I said earlier about wondering why the island isn't more developed... I was just looking in the wrong area! There was a massive 14000 capacity hotel being opened that day. We asked about another of the beaches that we had been thinking of going to and were told that we'd overshot, so we decided to go to the one a little further on.

Up another hill, past a school, a jeepney shuttle to and from white beach, and some shell necklace shops, and Viola! Out we popped out on Yapak, the beach on the furthest end of the island! And it was magnificent! Utterly unspeakably magnificent. I would do the hike again gladly to get there. It was wonderful. We walked around to the small bay-like rockey out crops and settled down on the sand for our lunch of crackers and sandwhich spread. Yummo!! 😊

The beach was almost deserted (we were there in low season). The water was warm. There were palm trees backed up by thick jungle. It was heaven.

By the time we pulled ourselves off the beach and back onto the main road again, we assumed it was well passed the last leaving time for the Jeepney. So we piled into a tricycle with another guy who'd cycled there, only to get a puncture, and now had to strap the bike onto the roof and get a lift back...

First thing in the morning, we were off again, on the ro ro (roll on roll off, bus, ferry, bus, ferry) route back to Manila.

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Photos

Clear blue water
That's me on the bottom of the sea

Comments

[Landi]

good times
Looks stunning !!!

[Dave]

Glad you guys are enjoying our country!
Peak season in Boracay starts in late November thru May. Then, the wind shifts to the other side of the island. That's when the main beach becomes a party place. I'm not sure how you'd prefer it, either way, Boracay is definitely one of the bests, if not the best beach in the world!