Boracay

Now I understand how GRRM can write a single book for more than 6 years…

After really comfortable, Maggie got us seats at emergency doors so we had like 1.5m legs room in front of us, 3 hour flight, we have landed in Philippines, Kalibo to be exact.

Despite landing at around 11PM, the first thing we noticed after debarking was moisture and warmth in the air. After quick check-up we left the airport and could see the Philippines for the first time, and what a sight it was. Mind that it was dark, there were some locals in rugged clothes sitting in the middle of the street, grilling something on a fire (in the middle of the street), there were dogs, without a leash, everywhere, buildings looked half-finished and there was trash everywhere. Despite this cultural shock, there were already some people waiting for us, to get us to the Boracay island. After two hours of comfortable ride in a modern bus with AC, another check up in the port and a short ride with a boat, we were on the island. There was a van already waiting for us, to drive us to the hotel. I must say, they really take good care of tourists, everything I described here was included in price of around 10€, which we with the plane tickets. On our way to the hotel, I was really happy we chose a good, secure hotel, everything on the street looked like it was going to kill us, luckily as we found in the next days it wasn’t that bad, we were just tired and not used to it when we arrived, beside everything looks scarier in the dark.

The hotel was enormous and secure. It wasn’t a typical hotel, but more of a whole complex stretching around golf course. It was completely isolated from the rest of the island with fence and guards, especially the entrance looked like it was guarding post of a war camp. After quick check in at 2AM we were driven to our villa in the complex, to our surprise each villa also had their own guards and hotel personnel.

After a good night’s sleep, we head over to the main building, to have big buffet style breakfast. To our surprise the choice of food was enormous; from Asian, Philippines to the western food. They even had a cook who did your eggs as you wanted. After the breakfast we decided to go check out the hotel’s private beach (ofc it had one xD). Despite being only 10AM it was already really hot and impossible to walk barefoot on the asphalt (I tried). After short walk we arrived to the beach. It looked like a postcard, white sands, palms, light blue water… a paradise. We ran into the water, it was first time we were in the Pacific Ocean.

After a while we decided to go to the main beach of the island, so called white beach. The beach is enormous, it’s stretching along full length of the island, there is really fine, almost snow white, sand on it, palms in the back, beach chairs, quite a lot of tourists and locals.

It was not more than 2 minutes since we settled down, that we were swarmed over with locals trying to sell us everything from sunglasses to multi day tours around the islands. After what must have been 30minutes of bargaining and negotiations we reserved a diving tour for the next day. After locals saw that we actually “bought” something from them, they were all over us, coming in intervals of 2minutes, it got quite annoying really fast.

In the evening (that is 5PM there), we decided to walk along the beach, until we were hungry and ordered something to eat. The food was good and refreshing, and of course, we had to try (local) coconut milk with ice (it was delicious!). After dinner, we watched sunset, it was really beautiful and fast. The time since the sun first touched the water to the time when it was below, must have been no longer than 20 seconds.

Next day, early in the morning we were scheduled for diving trip. We met our guide on the beach where she got us our diving gear and brought us to our boat. Speaking of diving gear… there is a “funny” story associated with it, I’ll write about it in a future post. We visited three diving spots, full of fishes and corals, and in the end made full circle around the island. It was really nice and well worth time.

In the afternoon we went back to the beach, to relax some more and in the evening Veronika and I already had to prepare for the next day, when we had a flight booked to another island Cebu.

All in all Boracay island is very beautiful, there is tons of stuff to do there, now I’m sorry we were there for such a short time. Despite first impressions, people there are really friendly and really try to keep the tourists happy (much more than our neighbours khm khm!). Hopefully I’ll have a chance to visit Boracay and the rest of Philippines again.