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Bantayan is a small island a little North-West of Cebu. It is easy to get here, since there is a straight bus going from the (new) busterminal in Cebu city to Hagnaya, a small place in the North of Cebu. This trip is about 2,5 to 3 hours and you drive mainly along the coast. From Hagnaya (don't try to stay here overnight!) there are boats going to Sante Fe regularly. This will take you only an hour.
The island itself is pretty small, but has some potentials to become a great place for travelers. The white beaches and the blue water are definitely present here. The accomodations are good, you can find them in some different categories. First we looked at cheap cabins at the Budyong Beach Resort (p400), but the rather unfriendly people here were not very cooperative so we went to the neighbours : Kota Beach Resort. The cabins were more expensive (p750), but very clean and spacious. Below 2 views from our balcony here. We stayed here for 3 days, which were almost our last days in the Philippines, so we took a little comfort this time.
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These are 2 photo's from our little balcony of our cabana at Kota BEach Resort, close to Santa Fe . |
On the island are enough things to see and do. One day we rented some bikes and drove up to Bantayan City, the capital of the island about 7 kilometers away from Santa Fe. On the way you will see hundreds of chickenfarms, Bantayan has a very high egg-production. We read that the roads here were very good, because of the transport of all of these eggs. This appeared not to be true completely. I ran into a lot of holes in the roads, which can be very dangerous for men!!
In Bantayan City you can take a look on the local market place and sit down at the harbour just to look at all the people moving around. There is also a nice town-square and some very good bakeries. The town's economy seems pretty good, but we also found some very poor people living here, and I still feed unconfortable when I go through these areas. But the people (again) are so friendly here.
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When you get back from Santa Fe to Hagnaya keep in mind that if you take the early boat of 6 a.m. you have to wait a long time in Hagnaya before you can get off the boat. It is low tide then and the boat is too deep to make it to the harbour completely. Therefore the boat stopd about 300 meters out of the coast and the passengers will be picked up in a number a small boats. This can take a while, so I advise you to a) stand at the exit long before arrival, b) mingle with your backback between the other dozens of stressy Philippinos or c) stay seated till almost everyone is off. The bus to Cebu will be crowded anyway.
From Bantayan we went to Mactan Island, the island in front of Cebu City on which the International airport is located. There are a lot of big resorts here, mainly visited by Japanese tourists. The rooms in this area are very expensive, some of them a few hundred $$ a night. We found a place (also in LP) called the Buyong Beach Hotel, which was very cheap and the people were really nice. Unfortunately no beach, but on a walking distance from here you find (for example) the Tambuli Resort, which has a great swimming pool and on the beach you will find a crashed plane, which was found a few kilometers out of the coast.
The next day we flew back to Manila.
