Camiguin Island | June 4-7, 2022

COVID Travel Restrictions: Not

Thanks to imminently expiring travel credit at Cebu Pacific Airlines, I’m on my way to Camiguin to snatch some time at the beach, encounter a new place, and the chaos of provincial internet + remote overland travel. All that.

This is my first non-work travel since before COVID, and it’s long overdue.

The Trip to Camiguin

The Simple Joy of Layover Buffet

I’m enjoying one of my favorite, irrational, and guilty pleasures: Seated at the Waterfront Hotel across the street from the Cebu-Mactan Airport, eating better than average hotel buffet food. The Waterfront buffet has been an anchor when traveling from Dumaguete to Moalboal to connect to another destination. More comfortable than Cebu’s domestic terminal, you get food, Internet, charging, coffee, and clean restrooms. With the travel downturn, management pared back the buffet, costing 1/3 less these days.

Cebu Airport

The domestic terminal is closed for renovations, so I hike to the international terminal. If the new domestic terminal is anything like the new international wing, Cebu airport will be nice indeed. It’s Cebu Pacific’s hub (naturally), and while the airline is comedic in its near competence, it should have a nice hub.

My favorite upgrade: canned announcements are straight from a Pizzicato Five track. Bond villain redoubt-in-imminent-destruction countdown voice in English, Mandarin, and Japanese. You’ve come a long way, Philippines.

Cebu to Camiguin

The flight to Camiguin was short — a hop really — prop plane up in the air and then back down. It’s another dreamy flight over the archipelago’s waters dotted with atolls and small islands. Metal roofs sparkle like jewels in the afternoon sun on the inhabited islands. You feel like you can see the earth’s curvature as you watch the ocean laid out below you, the turquoise blue rounding under the pale blue sky.

The Ride Around Camiguin

Stefano, one of the owners of Nypa Style Resort, has organized a scooter for me. It’s a Yamaha Aerox and a technological wonder. The LED dashboard shows fuel in bars, and everything is slickly displayed. It’s whisper-quiet and cat nimble.

With this cool ride and a full tank of gas, I have two agenda items: diving arrangements and island exploration. The ride is a long-overdue tonic — a breezy adventure. Camiguin exudes Pinoy Provincial charm.

The jungle pulses green verdant on my left. To my right, a turquoise blue ocean meets the sky, punctuated by concrete road and landslide barriers and explosions of color red hibiscus, orange bird of paradise, pink and fuchsia bougainvillea, yellow Lakers jerseys. Under the green pulsing ferment, I imagine decomposition as a million time-lapse films. The jungle consumes everything in the end.

The road winds back and forth in tight turns, inclining and declining. Dogs lie in the road napping away the heat; tied goats eat grass and anything else. The smell of ocean breeze, cow shit, and trash burns. Above all, curing copra coats the air with sweet coconut tang.

Philippine National Police wave me past checkpoints where no one stops, but I err on the side of caution. Boys play basketball in covered municipal ball courts, which double as voting halls, vaccination centers, and public meeting halls. Small children run across the road, chickens run across the road, and men buy beer and rum to celebrate their wins at the cockfights or forget their losses.

Between shimmering rice paddies, girls take selfies: arms extended straight like hieroglyphs, millet drys on plastic tarps taking one lane of the road, adolescents head into Saturday afternoon to night walking in little gangs, all the while people waving and saying hello as I pass.

The place has a Balinese feel — granted, the climate and geography are the same, but also, there is a sense of timelessness that arises from the volcanic bedrock and infuses the place with impassive majesty.

An Unplanned Dive

My last trip in 2020 was to Coron for a bit of wreck diving and island exploration. The lock-downs and dozens of dramas mean I’m far from fit, packing on extra weight over the past months. The road back to conditioning starts with a bit of motivation, so I decide to grab a quick dive to start the move to healthy living.

While mulling this notion, Stefano helpfully guides me to Roman, who runs Coraya divers. I meet him at a resort he also seems to manage, Balai sa Baibai, an upscale resort. We discuss our dive for the next day.

Sunday arrives with a strong tropical rain storm, and I postpone the dive. I get it: aside from visibility, diving in the rain is pretty much like diving on a bright, sunny day. For my first dive in a while, I want cheerful, sunny weather and excellent visibility, so we push to Monday.

The dive is good, aside from some tank rigging lapses and the laughable amount of additional weight I need to hit neutral buoyancy — lots of macro life, which Roman locates easily. When we reach coral surrounding a scuttled fishing boat, we see occasional box fish, several fat scorpion fish, sea snakes, and a territorial bannerfish.

The highlight is a large field of garden eels planted in the volcanic sand; as we approach, they retreat into their tunnels, and as we pass over them, they reappear, growing out of the sand like reedy ghosts.

Surprising Survival of Syncretic Buildings

Try as I might, there is very little information online about this architectural style. These houses combine Precolonial and Spanish architectural styles, and their density is a welcome surprise.

I’ve frustrated other drives more than once as I stop and dismount to grab shots of these places. The doors, windows, and details are arranged like large, inhabited abstract art pieces scattered across the island.

All I know about the houses is that they date from the colonial era, and the elements and WWII destroyed most. Some of those latticed window panes are made from the windowpane oyster, Placuna placenta, called Capiz in the Philippines.

Homing in on Accommodations

The Resort

Nypa sits about 15 minutes from the airport and the island’s capital, Mambajao. It’s about a dozen structures arranged around an open courtyard dominated by a large tree in the middle with a circular stone patio. The circular stone patio and the wall remnants of some old, long, crumbled structure give the place a vaguely pagan vibe. You might think you’ve landed in the Secret Garden.

The owners, Ilenia and Stefano, curate the land as a bonsai writ large balancing order and organic. The grounds are beautiful: manicured, tranquil, a million miles from wherever you came from.

Checking past reviews of Nypa Style, someone complains about the cats and dogs that enjoy the run of the place. Yet, they are a pleasing feature of the experience. The cats scamper across the courtyard, and the dogs roam around the property. They are well-fed and content in the knowledge that this place is really all about them.

My experience one might call glamping, in my bungalow, at any rate. Predictably, I’ve selected the Nipa bungalow furthest from the central restaurant structure, where I tackle the odd task and eat most of my meals. On the next visit, I’ve staked out my bungalow selection.

Morning Cacaphony

Anyone who has traveled around the Philippines knows that morning belongs to brother rooster. On Camiguin island, rooster crowing lays the atonal foundation for loud, orchestral bird song.

An auditory treat. It’s a party: birds sing, hoot, shriek, whoop, and call out to eligible companions in avian dialects. The performance is so vivid and varied that my phone alarm, set to birdsong, goes off unnoticed.

Notes, Links, and Details

Notes

Camiguin isn't cheap, which keeps the backpackers at bay but it drives up the travel somewhat.

Cebu Pacific flies direct from Manila to Camiguin on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday — but the schedule can change at the last minute sending you on a long travel day, connecting through Cebu.