BY LIV G. CAMPO / The Freeman
They say that Boracay is a destination for the rich. I beg to disagree. I’m just a minimum-wage earner, obviously not rich, but I was able to personally see that beautiful island in Aklan.
Plane tickets have to be booked a lot earlier, though, to get cheaper rates. Our (I was with my friend, Phoebe) scheduled trip was late November, so we bought a ticket to Iloilo City a month earlier. A direct trip from Cebu to Caticlan is costly, not less than P3,000 per person (one way), so we had no other choice but to get Cebu Pacific Cebu-Iloilo tickets, which at that time were only P793 each. It, however, meant several stopovers to finally get to our destination. But we were on a budget trip, so yeah, we had to had to go though that.
I learned (thanks to Google) that Caticlan is six hours by bus from Iloilo. So we had to take the earliest flight available to get there before sundown. Fortunately, we got an 8a.m. schedule. Sadly, however, the flight was delayed for more than four freaking hours! We finally got to Iloilo at past 1p.m. Four hours doing nothing at the airport would not have mattered to me at all if Bora were not a separate island that has to be crossed using a ferry boat! And ferry boats, although there are many, stop their services by 9p.m.
We had to be there before 9 or we would be forced to get a room somewhere near the pier area. As I said, we were on a tight budget so spending for a room that is not in the initial plans would hurt our pockets further. As a result, we had to actually run like we were on The Amazing Race to get to our every stop.
From the Iloilo airport, we dashed to the nearest cab station, and paid P300 (the fare was originally P500, but we were able to haggle) for a ride to the Ceres Bus Terminal, which is just 45 minutes away. It is actually not a long trip, like what the cabbies there would tell you, so they could trick you into paying P500.
At the terminal, there are several buses serving the Caticlan route. For an air-conditioned Ceres bus, the fare is P300. Most bus terminals here in Cebu have buses leaving every 15 minutes. In Iloilo, however, particularly in that Ceres Bus Terminal, buses only leave when these are filled up. I almost threw up in my eagerness to leave right away. But, oh well, even if I had actually thrown up, it would still not have made the bus move an inch.
The bus finally left the terminal at past 2p.m. If Google was right that the trip would only take six hours, we would still make it to Caticlan before the pier area would close. The bus was however not in a hurry to get there. There were just so many stops – at least three! And each time was like forever! That gave us time to refresh though, and eat. But what in tarnation, we were moving against time!
8p.m. came, and the pier area was nowhere in sight. It was shortly before 9 when we finally got there. Whew! The ferry boat is P30 per head, plus P50 terminal fee and another P50 for environmental fee. Yes, it’s P130 for a less than 10-minute ride to the island of Boracay.
We already booked a room at The Q Lodge for our four-day-three-night stay in the island. November is already the start of the peak season, but we were still able to get a cheap room for P1,030 per night (visit theqlodge.com). The room is equipped with a TV set, an air-conditioning unit, and a hot-and-cold shower, which wasn’t a bad choice even if we had to walk for about five minutes to get to the Station 2 beach area. It is also advisable to have a room far from the beachfront so you could sleep soundly at night as Boracay becomes more alive at night with the live music from bands.
There are many cheap hotel rooms there, a lot cheaper during off peak, which covers after summer ‘til October. The only thing that is expensive in Boracay, I later learned, is food, especially if you eat at the beach, which was exactly what we did in practically almost every time we got hungry. There are so many restaurants in the area, and most of them serve an eat-all-you-can buffet meal for no less than P250 per head. But there are famous brands there, too, like Shakey’s, Mang Inasal and Pancake House, to name a few. I did not see Jollibee, though, or meal time would not have been a problem for us. (haha!)
We saw a small resto near Starbucks (yes, Starbucks has a branch there, too) offering P75 per combo meal, minus the drinks. That price is not really cheap, but the place (I don’t remember the name, basta, it’s beside Starbucks), serves like a carenderia for visitors like us who can’t afford expensive meals at the posh restos in the island.
But if you’re looking for real carenderias, there are many down the road near D’ Mall. We had lunch there once, and paid around P50 each, inclusive of drinks. I did not like the food there, though. I also did not enjoy the expensive barbecue at “I Love Backyard BBQ” in D’ Mall. It was the most costly dinner we had, P400+ for one plate of barbecue good for three people (at this time, another friend, Ariane, who works as an architect at one of the resorts there, joined us). So it’s not about the price, probably they don’t have great cooks there, or I just have a very discriminating taste, whatever!
Other stuff like chips, water, et cetera, are also priced way higher (in a department store near Station 2, for example) than those sold in grocery stores outside the island, particularly here in Cebu.
The drinks are however cheap, so it is okay to splurge a little every night while there. Margarita is P100 (it’s P150 here in Cebu) and piñacolada could be bought for P60 (buy one, take one) during happy hour (before 6-10pm in most bars), and beers, too. Buy a drink or two and you can already have a place by the beach complete with your own set of bean bags and a table for you and your friends, not to mention the live band playing in the background.
We did enjoy the beach and the sea while there and swam for hours. For those who just want to play in the sun or just sit there and enjoy the sceneries, resorts at the beach area offer their beach umbrellas with chairs for P100 for two hours (the standard price). Others just let you order drinks or food, and you get to use their stuff without time limit, which was exactly what we did.
If you also bargain harder, you can enjoy some water activities there for a lesser fee. We tried boat sailing. It is normally P800 per boat for an hour, but we got ours for P600. And we were five in that boat, so that’s only P120 per head. On our third day, we also tried the island-hopping tour package of P1,000, cheaper than the first offer we got, which was P1,600 on our second day there. The package involves sight-seeing in Bora’s three islets. But what I loved most in the trip was the snorkeling activity at Crocodile Island, about 30 minutes by boat away from the main island.
And yeah, the souvenir items: shirts, key chains, to name a few, are also affordable. Your P200 will buy you one Boracay shirt for P100 and 10 key chains for P10 each.
Our trip back home was on the same route: Caticlan by bus to Iloilo City; Iloilo to Cebu by plane. For our trip back to Cebu, we got a PAL ticket for P881 each, not bad again. It was quite taxing this way, but trust me, it is fun! Apart from seeing some parts of Aklan (the province where Caticlan belongs), you could also taste the province’s delicacies like the “pinasugbo” (or what we call “kunsilba” here in Talisay), buko pie, among others. These are cheap, by the way.
So who says Boracay is only for the rich?
Plane tickets have to be booked a lot earlier, though, to get cheaper rates. Our (I was with my friend, Phoebe) scheduled trip was late November, so we bought a ticket to Iloilo City a month earlier. A direct trip from Cebu to Caticlan is costly, not less than P3,000 per person (one way), so we had no other choice but to get Cebu Pacific Cebu-Iloilo tickets, which at that time were only P793 each. It, however, meant several stopovers to finally get to our destination. But we were on a budget trip, so yeah, we had to had to go though that.
I learned (thanks to Google) that Caticlan is six hours by bus from Iloilo. So we had to take the earliest flight available to get there before sundown. Fortunately, we got an 8a.m. schedule. Sadly, however, the flight was delayed for more than four freaking hours! We finally got to Iloilo at past 1p.m. Four hours doing nothing at the airport would not have mattered to me at all if Bora were not a separate island that has to be crossed using a ferry boat! And ferry boats, although there are many, stop their services by 9p.m.
We had to be there before 9 or we would be forced to get a room somewhere near the pier area. As I said, we were on a tight budget so spending for a room that is not in the initial plans would hurt our pockets further. As a result, we had to actually run like we were on The Amazing Race to get to our every stop.
From the Iloilo airport, we dashed to the nearest cab station, and paid P300 (the fare was originally P500, but we were able to haggle) for a ride to the Ceres Bus Terminal, which is just 45 minutes away. It is actually not a long trip, like what the cabbies there would tell you, so they could trick you into paying P500.
At the terminal, there are several buses serving the Caticlan route. For an air-conditioned Ceres bus, the fare is P300. Most bus terminals here in Cebu have buses leaving every 15 minutes. In Iloilo, however, particularly in that Ceres Bus Terminal, buses only leave when these are filled up. I almost threw up in my eagerness to leave right away. But, oh well, even if I had actually thrown up, it would still not have made the bus move an inch.
The bus finally left the terminal at past 2p.m. If Google was right that the trip would only take six hours, we would still make it to Caticlan before the pier area would close. The bus was however not in a hurry to get there. There were just so many stops – at least three! And each time was like forever! That gave us time to refresh though, and eat. But what in tarnation, we were moving against time!
8p.m. came, and the pier area was nowhere in sight. It was shortly before 9 when we finally got there. Whew! The ferry boat is P30 per head, plus P50 terminal fee and another P50 for environmental fee. Yes, it’s P130 for a less than 10-minute ride to the island of Boracay.
We already booked a room at The Q Lodge for our four-day-three-night stay in the island. November is already the start of the peak season, but we were still able to get a cheap room for P1,030 per night (visit theqlodge.com). The room is equipped with a TV set, an air-conditioning unit, and a hot-and-cold shower, which wasn’t a bad choice even if we had to walk for about five minutes to get to the Station 2 beach area. It is also advisable to have a room far from the beachfront so you could sleep soundly at night as Boracay becomes more alive at night with the live music from bands.
There are many cheap hotel rooms there, a lot cheaper during off peak, which covers after summer ‘til October. The only thing that is expensive in Boracay, I later learned, is food, especially if you eat at the beach, which was exactly what we did in practically almost every time we got hungry. There are so many restaurants in the area, and most of them serve an eat-all-you-can buffet meal for no less than P250 per head. But there are famous brands there, too, like Shakey’s, Mang Inasal and Pancake House, to name a few. I did not see Jollibee, though, or meal time would not have been a problem for us. (haha!)
We saw a small resto near Starbucks (yes, Starbucks has a branch there, too) offering P75 per combo meal, minus the drinks. That price is not really cheap, but the place (I don’t remember the name, basta, it’s beside Starbucks), serves like a carenderia for visitors like us who can’t afford expensive meals at the posh restos in the island.
But if you’re looking for real carenderias, there are many down the road near D’ Mall. We had lunch there once, and paid around P50 each, inclusive of drinks. I did not like the food there, though. I also did not enjoy the expensive barbecue at “I Love Backyard BBQ” in D’ Mall. It was the most costly dinner we had, P400+ for one plate of barbecue good for three people (at this time, another friend, Ariane, who works as an architect at one of the resorts there, joined us). So it’s not about the price, probably they don’t have great cooks there, or I just have a very discriminating taste, whatever!
Other stuff like chips, water, et cetera, are also priced way higher (in a department store near Station 2, for example) than those sold in grocery stores outside the island, particularly here in Cebu.
The drinks are however cheap, so it is okay to splurge a little every night while there. Margarita is P100 (it’s P150 here in Cebu) and piñacolada could be bought for P60 (buy one, take one) during happy hour (before 6-10pm in most bars), and beers, too. Buy a drink or two and you can already have a place by the beach complete with your own set of bean bags and a table for you and your friends, not to mention the live band playing in the background.
We did enjoy the beach and the sea while there and swam for hours. For those who just want to play in the sun or just sit there and enjoy the sceneries, resorts at the beach area offer their beach umbrellas with chairs for P100 for two hours (the standard price). Others just let you order drinks or food, and you get to use their stuff without time limit, which was exactly what we did.
If you also bargain harder, you can enjoy some water activities there for a lesser fee. We tried boat sailing. It is normally P800 per boat for an hour, but we got ours for P600. And we were five in that boat, so that’s only P120 per head. On our third day, we also tried the island-hopping tour package of P1,000, cheaper than the first offer we got, which was P1,600 on our second day there. The package involves sight-seeing in Bora’s three islets. But what I loved most in the trip was the snorkeling activity at Crocodile Island, about 30 minutes by boat away from the main island.
And yeah, the souvenir items: shirts, key chains, to name a few, are also affordable. Your P200 will buy you one Boracay shirt for P100 and 10 key chains for P10 each.
Our trip back home was on the same route: Caticlan by bus to Iloilo City; Iloilo to Cebu by plane. For our trip back to Cebu, we got a PAL ticket for P881 each, not bad again. It was quite taxing this way, but trust me, it is fun! Apart from seeing some parts of Aklan (the province where Caticlan belongs), you could also taste the province’s delicacies like the “pinasugbo” (or what we call “kunsilba” here in Talisay), buko pie, among others. These are cheap, by the way.
So who says Boracay is only for the rich?
hi.. thanks for this helpful post.. ;) just wanna know what time the bus from Caticlan to Iloilo leaves? is there a bus going back to Iloilo everyday? thanks much...
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