Malapascua Island
Eight kilometres off the northern tip of Cebu, the island of Malapascua has been touted as the next Boracay, largely because of Bounty Beach, a blindingly white stretch of sand on the island’s south coast where a dozen simple resorts have sprung up offering a good choice of accommodation.
The beauty of Malapascua is that while it’s every bit as scenic as Boracay (and, at 2.5km long and 1km wide, even smaller), it has none of the cosmopolitan development, with no big hotels, no fashionable nightclubs and only a handful of beach-style bars frequented largely by divers.
For the time being, it remains an island unto itself, where most of the tourists are glad to take life without the frills, away from nightclubs and karaoke. It’s worth taking a stroll in the cool of the late afternoon to the lighthouse tower on Malapascua’s northwest coast: the tremen- dous views from the top across the Visayan Sea towards Masbate and Bantayan are particularly memorable.
Another advantage Malapascua has over Boracay is that the diving is much better, with a number of extreme dive sites that will get the adrenaline pumping more than your average gentle drift along a shallow reef.
Anyone staying a few days is almost guaranteed a sighting of manta rays and thresher sharks, while two hours from Bounty Beach is the wreck of the passenger ferry Dona Marilyn, which went down in a 1984 typhoon and is now home to scorpion fish, flamefish and stingrays.
Gato Island, 8km north of Malapascua, is a marine sanctuary and a breeding place for black-and-white-banded sea snakes, which are potentially deadly but do not attack divers. Other islets off the coast of Malapascua, all excellent places for exploring, snorkelling or diving, include Dakit Dakit off the south coast and Lapus Lapus off the north coast.
Overnight trips can be arranged to the tiny volcanic island of Maripipi (see p.245), where reef sharks and dolphins are common.
Whether you’re diving or not, don’t miss the opportunity for a day-trip to Calangaman, a beautiful, remote islet that consists of no more than a strip of sand just a few metres wide with a few trees at one end. Another gem in the area – two hours to the northeast by banca – is the Robinson Crusoe-esque Carnassa Island, where you land at a picturesque bay fringed by palm trees.
