We only had three days on Cebu Island, and in retrospect, could have done with an extra day.
We had two days in Moalboal and an afternoon and evening on Mactan Island.
The distances aren’t that far, but traffic and the quality of roads can be trying.
If I had my way again, I would have added an extra day to go to Oslob to see the Whale Sharks. Seeing as though we’d just seen them during our trip to Western Australia we didn’t bother going again. There are also ethical issues with doing it in the Philippines.
We’d managed to squeeze in half a day wandering around Cebu City during one of our few stopovers in the city, and so that’s something to factor in too, in your planning.
You can also do a day trip to Bohol from Cebu City – but we did that as a separate trip.
Saturday 28
We arrived at Cebu at 1800.
The flight cost us about $60 each (from Puerto Princasa – from where we flew after our trip to El Nido).
We’d organised another transfer – this time to Moalboal. I organise that on Klook and it cost $110 and took us three hours.
It was a bit of a hairy drive, mostly in the dark, but we were so tired by this point we didn’t mind.
We rolled into Pescadores Suites Hotel around 2300 and pretty much went straight to sleep.
Sunday 29
After a long day of travel we decided to have a pretty chilled today.
We had a decent breakfast at the hotel before heading down to check out the water.
The hotel had free snorkelling gear and I think we got a voucher for 15 minutes free use of the clear kayaks.
The hotel is fairly big and was very obviously kid friendly. But it didn’t seem to bother us too much. The rooms were big, bright and clean. The only downside, I guess, is the location. It was a good 10-15 minutes into town, which was a bit of a drag when we were tired and wanted to grab something for dinner.
We also had all sorts of drama paying due to their system. There was an ATM on site but I preferred to pay on my card, which I eventually managed to do.
There’s a peppering of restaurants along the way, so there are plenty of choices if you are too lazy to go all the way to the main street. There’s also the option of investigating transport I suppose.
Moalboal is famous for its sardine runs and turtles which are just off the shore.
We decided to swim up from our hotel and it wasn’t long before we were swimming through thick clouds of fish.
The coral was pretty decent too.
We only managed to see one turtle, but that’s better than none.
After we’d had our fun, we swam back to the hotel and got washed up for lunch.
We ended up at Smooth Cafe which clearly catered to tourists and was probably overpriced, but it wasn’t terrible.
In the afternoon we had a bit of a chilled afternoon, including a massage, before heading back into town for dinner.
This time we ended up at Betsy’s diner.
Monday 30
We got picked up at 0730 by our driver to start our Kawasan Kanyoneering adventure.
Around 0800 we arrived at the Beltram canyoneering “office” and signed our lives away before getting kitted up for our big adventure.
We got bundled into our fancy yellow people mover and taken up the mountain to park office.
We had to fill out more paperwork and pay the 4200PHP entry fee ($115 for the three of us). We also decided to pay the 1800PHP/$50 dollars (for the three of us) to zipline into the park.
You can choose between ziplining and doing a 45 minute walk along a path to the entry, but we wanted to be quick and efficient, and try out zipline.
It wasn’t long before we were clambering over rocks, jumping into the Gatorade blue rockpools and swimming under waterfalls.
We finished up around 1230 and after the team gave us lunch we were on the road again – this time for Osmeña Peak.
The drive took us about an hour and a half which may or may not have been longer than usual because apparently there had been a landslide and one of the main roads was closed.
We arrived around 1430, and paid our 50PHP entry each + 50 more for parking and 150PHP for a guide ($4).
It was super cloudy and windy but we made our way up the mountain in about 30 minutes and tried to take advantage of any clearing of the clouds to take pictures.
Around 1500 we were back on the road for Casino Peak. It’s only about 20 minutes up the road and probably offers similar views to Osmeña Peak but is less busy. It’s also a shorter but steeper climb.
Casino Peak also cost us 50PHP per person plus 150PHP for a guide.
The drive back to the hotel took us about 1.5 hours but we didn’t mind too much because we were all wrecked after all the day’s activities..
The driver for the day cost us 4500PHP or about $123 for the three of us. We organised it through the driver who brought us from Cebu to Moalboal on the Saturday evening.
We got back to the hotel around 6pm and after a bit of time relaxing, we wandered into town for dinner at Hungry Monkeys.
Tuesday 31
We’d organised another driver on Klook to take us back to Mactan Island.
He arrived around 0900 and after a quick stop at a shopping mall (to try to buy a replacement drone) we arrived at the hotel on Mactan Island around 1300.
The car cost us $110.
We had lunch at the hotel’s Sunset Bar and then went to the pool for some much needed time to relax and recuperate.
Dusit Thani Mactan Cebu Resort Cebu City cost us $487. That’s for two double seaview rooms. It’s more than we’d usually pay but we wanted a bit of lux after moving around and slumming it for so long.
Around 1900 we hopped in a taxi to head off to what everyone said was the premier lechon restaurant – Rico’s Lechon.
The pork was just OK in my opinion, and I don’t know whether it was lunch or dinner, but I ended up getting pretty sick, in the end.
The taxi to the restaurant was about $10 or 400PHP each way.
We had an early-ish night, before our early flight to our final island – Boracay.
Wednesday 1st
We were up pre-dawn for our flight from Cebu-Boracay.
We hopped in a taxi at 0630 for the airport.
It’s only about 10km from the hotel to the airport but the trip took us 40 minutes and cost us 500PHP or $14. We had to get two taxis because of all our luggage.
About 0720 we arrived at the airport which gave us just enough time to sort ourselves for our 0815 flight to Boracay. We took Cebu Pacific flight 5J134 to Caticlan.
The flight cost us around $65 each. It was only an hour and a half so we were there around 0930.