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Published: September 28th 2012
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I do realize that we said we mostly wanted to see the less-touristy places but we could not help to wonder what, considered by many
‘the most beautiful' beach in the Philippines would look like, so we decided to check it out. The flight was comparably expensive as they only use the small charter planes to go
Caticalan but we booked it either way. When we arrived at the island we decided to walk to the Station 3 area where all the budget accommodation was and somehow (even though people were saying it was impossible in Boracay) we managed to find a nice bungalow for 500P only (Bora Bora Inn).
We already got the impression that this place was simply spoiled by tourism as we could not even walk for a minute without being stopped by hawkers trying to sell us something, and at that point we did not even hit the beach yet. The weather was not so good and it was raining from time to time so the place did not look great to be honest. We went for a walk alongside the beach and we were shocked by many things. First of all the tourism infrastructure that
they have in place is unbelievable and horrible in the same time. Resort after resort and restaurant after restaurant dotted along the beach with no space being spared. Every few seconds someone stopped us saying:
“Boat tour?”, “Snorkeling?”, “Yachting?”, “Buy something!” and so on and so on. It was so damn loud with all the hawking and Chinese tours were pushing us aside of the walkway that we just had enough after 10 min. We were also shocked by how dirty the beach was…is that what you call a paradise??? We could understand that strong currents and big waves at this time of a year brought all the natural dirt from different islands but glass, plastic, shoes and even condoms were not something that anybody cared or bothered to clean in some parts of the beach.
Even worse, at the time of our visit a huge wall being raised to create a shelter from the wind and to make private beach places for restaurants along side the walkway. They even took most of the palm trees to hide them behind this awful plastic construction so beach became small, dirty and additionally separated by the wall – are you kidding
me??? I am not sure if this wall was a temporary fix or not but they put so much work into creating those private and separate beach places that I would assume it was to be there permanently. As it was the day when we arrived (tired) and the weather was crap (places always look better when it is sunny) we decided to give this place another try the next day. I am afraid it did not get better and we just simply did not like the place.
We walked to the end of the beach and we tried really hard to imagine how this place must have looked like years ago with nice weather and turquoise, flat water. I am sure that it could have been stunning but not when we visited. We liked the station 3 area as it looked quite authentic, food was local and nice but it did not compensate for the rest of it. Believe it or not we did not spend a single minute swimming or sunbathing as we just did not see the point. Have we been spoiled by the small islands north of Cebu that we just visited? Or maybe our
hopes and expectations were too high to start with?
I was thinking if we should blog about this place at all as don’t want to put people off with our perception of this place, but on the other hand why should we hide our feelings towards it. One good thing about our stay in Boracay was the fact that we managed to fix our laptop that had broken few days earlier (hard drive just died) and we were back to being connected etc. Besides that we got out of there as fast as we could after having spent only 2 night in the so called 'paradise’ and moved on to the place that we knew for fact we would love…
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The Travel Camel
Shane Dallas
Return to the road less travelled!
A great lesson for all those who prefer travelling to tourism - avoid popular tourism spots, especially those near a beach.