Visayas travel guide

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Strung like a necklace of uneven beads, held together by seas, straits, and gulfs, the Visayas are home to the Philippines’ premier tourist attractions. The six major land masses and fringe groups of isles between Luzon and Mindanao parade calm waters, shimmering coves, and palm-fringed beaches. Seafood is enviably fresh in the region dominated economically by hauls from under the ocean.

Visayan labels the people and dominant language of the region, though three distinct cultural-linguistic groups live on the islands that span Leyte in the east to Panay in the west. Most people farm or fish, with rural poverty widespread.

The most popular Visayan island is tiny Boracay, where 3km (2-mile) -long White Beach rocks to the beat from scores of noisy resorts. It’s a teaser for more pristine coastlines elsewhere that are just as popular with divers and snorkelers. Bohol’s Alona Beach caters to diving, and more sedate Moalboal on Cebu Island and tiny Apo Island off Negros see more scuba traffic. After toweling off, tour Fort San Pedro in Cebu city or grab beers in one of the city’s bar districts.

Jet planes whisk travelers from Manila to Cebu and most other Visayan capitals in under an hour, but the best way to see the Visayas up close is by boat. It takes 20 hours by sea from Manila to the Visayas. Far shorter routes from Cebu reach Bohol, Negros, and Samar.

One guy who should have avoided boating in the Visayas is Portuguese sailor Ferdinand Magellan. The trip started well on March 16, 1521, when he anchored in Leyte Gulf. Enrique de Molucca, Magellan’s Malaysian slave, hailed a small boat of eight natives from the rail of their ship the Trinidad. The natives understood him perfectly, meaning the world had been circled linguistically. Enrique de Molucca became the first known person to circumnavigate the globe.

Six weeks later, Magellan had sailed north to Cebu to “Christianize” the rajah and 500 followers. Lapu Lapu, a minor rajah of Mactan – a muddy coral island where Cebu’s international airport now stands – was less accommodating. He defended his island with some 2,000 warriors against 48 armor-clad Spaniards, the battle claiming Magellan’s life. A white obelisk on Mactan today marks where Magellan fell.

Places to see in the Visayas

Boracay

First "discovered" in the 1960s, Boracay is synonymous with Philippine beach tourism and has become a fabled paradise for travelers because of its long white-sand beach with coral reefs just offshore. In the morning, before headcounts thicken, the sight greeting arrivals can hardly avoid being photographed: a gentle sea, the whitest of white beaches, tall coconut palms swaying in the breeze. 

Today resorts are packed in wall-to-wall, vying for a piece of the oceanfront along with dive shops, Western restaurants, and open-air massage parlors. Mobile touts sell sunglasses and souvenirs on the sand, while swimmers mix with bancas in the light-blue waters offshore. The south end of White Beach is generally less crowded and more laid back than the central sands. A 15-minute walk eastward from White Beach leads to the less scenic, wind-whipped “back beach” (Bulabog Beach and surroundings), where a few resorts have opened for travelers who are weary of the traffic elsewhere on Boracay.

Fort San Pedro and Colon Street, Cebu City

The city of Cebu is the oldest in the Philippines, the commercial and education center of the Visayas, and the hub of air and sea travel throughout the south. 

A large wooden crucifix that was left by Magellan in 1521 commemorates the archipelago’s first encounter with the West. Magellan’s Cross, at upper Magallanes Street, is Cebu’s most important historical landmark. Its supposed remnants are encased in a black cross of tindalo wood and housed in a kiosk (to stop people from taking home pieces as souvenirs), which also serves as a shrine commemorating the initial conversion of the islanders to Christianity. It’s unsure whether the original cross has survived, but what is known is that Legazpi replaced that original cross of evangelization four decades later. Cebuano devotees may be seen visiting the shrine, pausing for prayer, lighting candles, or dropping coins into the alms box.

As the oldest Spanish settlement in the country, Cebu has numerous sites that depict its rich colonial heritage. The foremost is the Fort San Pedro, a Spanish fort built in the 17th century and reinforced in 1738 to repel attacks by Muslim or European raiders. It is a triangular fort with bastions at each point, and an earth embankment. The walls are 6 meters (20ft) high and 18 meters (60ft) thick, with the bastions rising some 9 meters (30ft). The fort has since been used as a prison for Cebuano rebels during the Spanish era, a military outpost by the Americans, and a prisoner of war camp during the Japanese occupation. Its main building now houses a museum.

Named after Christopher Columbus, Colon Street used to be Cebu City’s main thoroughfare, where all the moviehouses and ritzy shops were found, and all jeepney routes began and ended. A business address in Colon once meant that your restaurant, shop, or office was in the very heart of the capital, but other commercial centers have edged out Colon’s prestige. Today, Colon is usually so crowded it has become off-limits to most jeepneys. Shoe and watch repair stalls stand alongside an eclectic mix of hardware, machine, electrical, and noodle shops.

Mactan Island

For many visitors, Cebu means handcrafted guitars and ukuleles made of soft jackfruit wood. The guitar-making industry is centered on Mactan Island, just offshore from Cebu City. Visitors can watch the local craftsmen at work or be entertained by a quality-control expert trying out a freshly completed guitar.

Mactan is most famous for Magellan’s Marker, which was erected in 1886 where he was slain on the island’s shore. The Lapu Lapu Monument stands just a lance’s throw away. The latter portrays the Mactan chieftain with his kampilan (a machete-like weapon) raised above his head, ready to strike, although his back is diplomatically turned to the old foe Magellan’s marker. On  April 27 every year, history comes to life at the Kadaugan sa Mactan Festival with the re-enactment of Magellan’s fatal encounter with Lapu Lapu.

Moalboal

Moalboal, three hours southwest of Cebu City, is one of the area’s renowned dive spots. Blessed with three marine reserves – Tonggo Island, Ronda Island, and Pescador Island – the area teems with corals, fish, and, frequently, dolphins and whale sharks. Divers can ply the waters year-round, and beginners can explore in the friendlier waters.

The diving legacy has made Moalboal a magnet for long-stay expatriates, as the town has remained smaller and calmer than Boracay or Alona Beach in Bohol. At least a dozen dive shops operate in Moalboal, many run by Germans or Koreans in honor of the clientele’s nationalities (www.dive-moalboal.com).

The hub of activity around Moalboal is Panagsama Beach, which is a dense collection of restaurants, dive shops, and lodgings. A huge typhoon washed the beach away in 1984, but it has recovered much of its past glory. The adjacent White Beach is an alternative, with its quiet, expansive stretches of sand that invite sunbathers and strollers to visit. Everything shuts down here earlier, however, so check with your resort beforehand if you need anything after 7pm.

Read more about scuba diving in the Philippines…

Chocolate Hills, Bohol Island

Bohol, the roughly circular, mid-sized island next door to better-known Cebu, has one stand-out attraction. Northeast of the capital, Tagbilaran, a range of small hills – formed by limestone, shale, and sandstone, in an area once covered by ocean – rise 30 meters (100ft) above the flat terrain to form a unique, and much-photographed, panorama. They are called the Chocolate Hills, for the confectionery-like spectacle they present in summer, when their sparse grass cover turns dry and brown. Two of the highest hills have been developed, offering a hostel, restaurant, swimming pool, and observation deck. Buses from Tagbilaran take two-and-a-half hours.