Dreaming away on one of the cliffs, while staring at the clear blue ocean, while the suns rays kisses your skin and leaves its golden color behind. As you walk away, your mind will leave all it's troubles behind. You just feel free and Alive!
Bantayan island is a small island in the north of Cebu. The Island has extremely good beaches and and the sunset will not disappoint you! In my opinion, the island itself is a little bit underrated by tourists. After 8 months of traveling in the Philippines, it is one of my favorite islands and I have seen loads of islands in different country's! Bantayan is an unique beach destination to go to! I hope more people would explore this place! This travel guide will be helpful and should be encouraging enough to get you to this little paradise!
How to go to Bantayan from Cebu
First, you have to go to the Northern bus terminal. Here you can take the bus Bantayan/Santa Fe. This bus will drop you off by the port. You can also choose for the faster option, a van. This option is faster but the seats are smaller and especially for tall people like me (6ft/1.84 m) extremely uncomfortable, sometimes they don't have space for your backpack. The bus is more specious, cheaper and more comfortable. we payed 170 peso for an air conditioned bus.
Where to stay
There are many places to stay in Bantayan, but as a budget backpacker is it not always easy to find a room online here in Bantayan for a good price. When you want to stay in a nice resort by the beach or book a few weeks ahead, it should be easy enough to find something online. It is a little bit challenging for us since my travelbuddie and I don't plan much before and did not book a room yet before we arrived, but the locals know and can help you if you travel the same like us! Mostly, the cheapest accomodations are not on booking.com or sites like that. If you don't book online, they don't have to pay fees to booking.com, agoda and other organisations, and in many cases they will give you a nice discount! Just show up and within a short time, you will easily find a place to stay!
Our tricycle driver brought us for 20 peso per head to Bantayan Cottages, a small resort not by the beach. The place was really cheap. We payed 400 peso ($8) for our fan room with shared bathroom. If you rather want an air conditioned room, they charge you just 700 ($14) per night. Since we shared it, we payed 200 peso per night for our fan room!
The place was worth the money for us, but you should be used to the little bit less clean places. As a European living already a while in the Philippines, I guess it is for many Filipino's good enough if you go there just to see the place and really want to save money like our main goal. The bathroom is maybe as dirty as by the average bus stop, but has a shower and flush for the toilet. Westerners who are not used to hostels yet, I would recommend you to pay a little bit more for a better place with a cleaner bathroom. This one is a little bit dirtier than the average hostel.
Bantayan Cottages is located in Santa Fe, the town I highly recommend you to stay. It is near one of the best beaches of the Island, Sugar beach. It's easy here to find good food and scooter rentals. It is the beach with the most resorts around too and not for nothing but I will tell you more about this beautiful beach later!!
An other cool place to stay is Paradise Camsite. For 150 peso ($3) you get a campingspot and the entrance fee of the area is 50 peso ($1). It is a grassland next to the ocean. There is no beach but you can climb down to the sea by stair. If you walk a few minutes to the right, you arrive on paradise beach, a beautiful beach and definitely worth a visit. But sugar beach is still nicer to my opinion. The sea looks more blue there but don't skip Paradise beach!
The turquoise ocean view you wake up with!
I made friends with this goat by the campsite
How to go around
I highly recommend you to rent a motorbike and drive around the island! While driving over the road trough the coconut fields. You will bump into unresistable views and let you make definitely a view more stops than planned! It is easily to find a place to rent a scooter, just ask a tricycle driver and they will know! Sometimes the people on the street even offer a bike for rent to you! The price to rent a motorbike here is quite cheap, 250 peso ($%) for 24 hours, a little bit under average in the Philippines. Mostly they charge 350-500 peso on other places! Bantayan is definitely a cheap island!
Where to eat
In Santa Fe are many restaurants to find with all different cuisines. If you want an Italian pizza, French croissants made by a French settled here or an ordinary Filipino barbecue, you can easily find it here! There are many bars to find where you can enjoy a cold beer or karaoke session after a good day on the beach. Our favorite place, also recommended by the guesthouse, is called MG squire. It is a small street with several restaurants choice! The food here is very cheap but a lot of share meals so it would be nice if you have the same taste! They have a lot of options. Pizza, burrito's pasta and many Filipino dishes. For around 95 peso per person ($1,80) we could enjoy a really nice dinner!
What to do
In Bantayan are many things to do. If you want an active holiday or just want to relax on the beach, everyone can find something here in this paradise! If you follow this guide to paradise, you will definitely enjoy your days on Bantayan Island!
Madridejos Baywalk
If you check out the tourist spots in Bantayan, you will find pictures of this beautiful baywalk totally north of the island. In reality, the beach there is very dirty but still pretty. The baywalk is already closed with a big metal fan since the floor of the bridge is pretty dangerous and broken. Anyway, as my friend and I like dangerous activities and exploring, we decided to climb over the van and check it out. It was a little bit a scary walk since the cement is so weak and broken on a lot of places! We only walked totally left or right, on the places where the cement is double to keep ourself safe! It is better just to skip this place!
The fan in front of the baywalk
Walking carefully over the broken baywalk
The beach just in front of the baywalk
Sugar beach
This beautiful beach is located near Santa Fe town. The beach is a very long what makes it more quiet since the few tourists and locals are spread out over the entire beach. The sand is powdery white and the sea is a mix of blue and turquoise tints, which let you feel amazed when your eyes first met the ocean! This beach is definitely one of the better beaches around Cebu!
The coconut trees of Sugar beach
White sand & Coconut trees
Do you know a better spot to drink a cocktail?
Paradise beach
This beach is located a little bit further away from Santa Fe, but it is definitely worth a visit! It is the favorite beach of a lot of people I spoke with on the island, but I prefer Sugar beach. Sugar beach has a much more blue sea, but paradise beach is more hidden and as I mentioned earlier, there is a cool campsite next to it!
Beautiful colors of the ocean
Drive around the island
I highly recommend to rent a motorbike and drive around the island! While driving over the road trough the coconutfields, you will bump into wonderful views are unresistable and let you make definitely a view more stops!
Visit the cliffs
One of the best places I have been in Bantayan is definitely this spot! The water looks amazing with its turquoise colors and is crystal clear! You have the view over Sugar beach and everything you can see is just blue! I think I can sit down for hours, just staring at the ocean!
My favorite spot
Bantayan Island Nature park & Resort
A popular stopover because of their cave. Inside the cave is a pool, were you can enjoy a refreshing dip in the cold water. The place itself is actually cool, but I liked their infinity pool more. They have also a food spa with fishes which eat your dead skin. For only 200 peso ($4) you can use all their facilities!
The cavepool in Bantayan Island nature park & resort
Ending the day by the infinity pool is a good end of the day right?
Watch the sunset
You can not leave Bantayan before you have seen the sunset! The sunset here is absolutely stunning and worth to see! A populair point is Madridejos Baywalk if you believe google, but when we came there we saw the place is actually closed. You can go to any beach Northwest of Bantayan town, or just to the beach of Madridejos, without using the baywalk.
We had to walk first trough a small barangay(area of the town) before we reached the beach. The people looked at us like we were aliens! Maybe we were the first white people who reached this barangay! The kids were staring at my camera and I got the feeling they did not understand what it was. They looked amazed and started smiling when I showed them the picture I took of them!
When the sun goes down...
Steemit travels with me!
Thank you for reading with me! I hope I could give you a little impression of this unique paradise in the Philippines! Would you like to visit this laid-back, picture perfect island and do you have any other questions? Just let me know!
Love,
Sha