Bantayan Island Cebu is got to be one of the top island destinations I’ve ever been, it just have a different feel to it. The number of bantayan island beach resorts, great white sand beach, Bantayan resorts offer reasonable rates and the people there are very nice. It’s a smallish island north of Cebu City, it has three municipalities all have great sights I heard, and the entry point is in Santa Fe.

On our second day, we woke up very early in the morning to catch the early buses heading to Hagnaya Port. This is the most common mode of transportation to Bantayan Island from Cebu, you may rent a taxi cab or hire a van but it’ll cost us somewhere around 3-4000 pesos. There are only non-air-conditioned bus, which only cost us 80 pesos each for the fare, we depart at 6:30am in the morning, this is the best time to leave if not earlier as the trip will take about 5 hours in total. The ride is the typical bus ride you get in provincial buses, it was hot, humid, and windy but for the price we can’t complain, we arrived at Hagnaya Port at 9:30am.

Upon arriving at Hagnaya port, we’re greeted with porters offering us tickets for the RORO and help carrying our baggage. Do not deal with them, just follow the other passengers and buy your tickets to Santa Fe. The price of the tickets is very interesting, they are posted 120php each, but we were charged with only 25 pesos. They said it was because there’s another ship owned by a competing company waiting to be boarded, predatory competition at its worst.

By noon time we’re already check-in to our beach front room, it’s a simple room but the view is spectacular and it is air-conditioned as well. We paid 2,000 for our overnight stay including transfers to and from the port, not to bad a deal.

We freshened up and took our lunch at Marisqueira O Portuguese, a Portuguese Restaurant in Bantayan.

We then went to Ogtong Cave, which is in Santa Fe Beach club; it is the high-end resort in Bantayan, about 15minutes padyak ride from our resort. We were charged with 50php for the entrance fee, just to see the cave.

It was late afternoon when we decided to swim in the water, in front of our room, the fine white sand extends even under the water, no sharp rocks or corals underneath, just like in Boracay.

The sunset in Bantayan Island is just mesmerizing, the colors of the sky just gets more and more saturated as the sun descends upon the horizon. The sun sets west of Santa Fe, and the local said Madridejos has the best sunset in the island.

For the rest of our itinerary and experience in Cebu, you may check out this post.