After several days of either riding the waves or simply watching others take them on, your mission to decompress and take it easy accomplished, it’s still difficult to pack up and leave. Siargao (shar-gao) is the kind of place that seems to give off a magnetic force, transforming weekend-long stays into weeks or for the [...]
Sprawling Mindanao, the world’s 19th-largest island, is known for dazzling scenery, primitive hill tribes and an almost complete lack of tourists because of political unrest and occasional fighting between the government and Muslim separatists. What most tourists don’t realise is that the lovely coastal stretch of northern Mindanao between Cagayan de Oro and Siargao Island [...]
In a country of thousands of islands it’s hard for one to stand out. Camiguin (cam-ee-gin) manages to distinguish itself, at least in part because of its fortuitous location. It’s far removed from any threat of violence, but because it’s part of Mindanao, many people scratch it off their itinerary. Because it’s uncorrupted by large [...]
Endowed with an impressive name (the ‘Oro’ part, after all, refers to the gold discovered by the Spanish in the river here), the city unfortunately has the usual traffic-clogged streets and is primarily a stop to or from Camiguin Island or the departure point for the road journey south to Davao. That it is comparatively [...]