Typhoon “Lando” made landfall, Sunday October 18, 2015 at 1am in Aurora, while my two friends and I are waiting for boarding announcements for our 1:35AM flight. It was raining in Manila, though at public storm signal number 2, I didn’t experience strong winds or strong rain that early Sunday morning.
Our flight arrived 2:45AM in Mactan Cebu International Airport; we didn’t have checked-in luggage so we headed straight off to the metered taxi stands (right side of Arrivals), asked the driver to take us to North Bus Terminal. The cab driver kept harping us about taking his taxi to Hagnaya Port, which is about 2 1/2hrs to 3hrs from Cebu. I was getting annoyed since I already declined several times, and said we’re taking the bus. We had time to burn since we had no itinerary planned that day.
The bus left at 4AM for Hagnaya Port. We were lucky that we got an air-conditioned one. We were expecting not to since I read in a blog that aircon buses start their trip at 7am. We slept mostly in the trip, had one stop-over. I briefly woke up when the bus stopped but went back to sleep.
We arrived in Hagnaya Port at 7AM, I was puzzled at first why the ticket offices were closed, I found out a few minutes later with my barely functioning Visaya that trips were cancelled since the Coast Guard won’t give clearances to the ferry operators because of big waves. I texted the hotel’s representative and asked about trips and she said that there are pumpboats that travel to Sta. Fe but with a higher price. And it was high indeed. We found out later that trips like that only costs P300 but the guy asked for P500.
So, after the nerve-wracking 1hr and 30mins boat ride with huge waves barreling the small boat, we arrived in Sta. Fe, drenched. We only walked a few yards to St Bernard Beach Resort where we were booked, checked in to our room and took showers.
We took ‘trisikads’ and asked to be taken to any restaurant with good food, the driver took us to HR Music Bar and Restaurant. We ordered buttered chicken and fried liempo with fried rice and had sodas.
We went back to the resort and had naps. We were supposed to roam around town when it was not so hot but we woke up at past 6pm so we went to town and bought dinner instead – this time grilled liempo and lechon manok and took them back to the resort to eat on the beach – the resort had makeshift tables. We had a few shots of tequila we bought at a store nearby before heading back to bed.
Next day, we got ready for our Virgin Island trip, we left around 11am – it was only a 30min boat ride to the small but breathtakingly gorgeous island.
We snorkeled around for a bit before heading back to Bantayan Island. We spend the rest of the afternoon with an OB-GYN (another story). And the rest of the day was uneventful aside from the wittle twip to that Emergency Room 😀
We left around 10:00am to catch the 10:30am ferry trip back to Hagnaya Port and took a van back to Cebu. We met family before heading to the airport and flew back to Manila.
Expenses:
Flight – booked seat sale from Cebu Pacific
Cab from Mactan to North Bus Terminal (metered taxi) – P160
Bus fare to Hagnaya (Ceres – airconditioned) – P160 per head
Pumpboat to Sta Fe – P500 per head (normally it would cost P300 and ferry would cost less)
Hotel – P1,750 a night x 2 nights
Trip to Virgin Island (pumpboat) – P800
Entrance fee to Virgin Island – P500 for 2, add P100 per head for more than 2 guests
Ferry to Hagnaya – P160 per head
Hagnaya Port to SM Cebu (van) – P150
I did not include food expenses because it will depend on what you will order. But food there is not expensive. There were 3 of us so we split food bills 3 ways. Also be wary of getting trisikads, trimotors or whateve mode of transportation you will be taking while you are there. If they know you are not from there, they will price everything higher. We asked the hotel staff for the minimum fare then we just played around with the numbers when we take special trips. But even so, I felt we were overcharged at some point – I was charged P150 just for them to take me to a place near the town. I was not advised beforehand that they would charge that much just to take me there – if I had known, I would have taken the regular tri-motor.
TheHangryPinay 