Boracay Beach June 2006

We visited Boracay Beach last weekend thanks to Ray's luck at the US Embassy Shopper's Day Bazaar back in early May when he was the grand prize winner of a trip for 2 to SandCastle's Resort on the beautiful resort and white sand beach island of Boracay, Philippines. Even though we had been there back in October of 2004 with LeAnn's mom, sister and brother-in-law, we were looking forward to a return trip.

Going at this time of year was a different experience. It is the end of peak season, so the island was very crowded, but we did not have any trouble getting into restaurants to eat, or doing activities on the beach. The most disappointing aspect of the trip was the fact that the wind was blowing into the beach and brought in lots of trash and other island debris. We did not expect this and had not heard any one talk about this before. The tides were also at their peak due to a full moon (which was beautiful at night), leaving a lot of garbage on the beach.

We arrived Saturday morning and spent some time just wandering up and down the beach, and of course going out into the water. The water was very warm, although not that clear due to the wind direction causing lots of wave action. Although the waves weren't that high, they came in with very little time in between, probably the fastest time between waves of all the places we've been.

SandCastles resort is located near station 1 about 2/3 of the way to the north end of the island. It was convenient to get to D*Mall and all the bars and restaurants along the beach. We stayed in one of the new apartment rooms which faced the beach and had a nice patio off the room.

We walked down towards Willy's Rock and stopped at Cocomangos restaurant and bar and had the best frozen margaritas on the island and a pizza and salad for and early dinner. We then went for a beach-side massage and manicure/pedicure (Ray's first). We both got so relaxed that we fell asleep during the massage and slept for about an hour before waking up (and missing sunset).


We planned some activities for Sunday, including parasailing and sailing. We both felt a little apprehensive about parasailing as neither of us had done that before. We got out onto he boat and got strapped in and where up into the air before we had time to worry about it. Within no time we were out and up 300 ft from the boat. We did not even have to get wet as we took off from a large platform on the back of the boat and then were pulled back in onto the same platform. We enjoyed the view and ride. It was a great experience.

We then went out on a local sailboat known as a paraw for a tour up and down the beachfront. The sailboats are dual outrigger and have have narrow webbed areas on each side for sitting and enjoying the ride. The narrow boat easily cut through the waves and we had a very comfortable ride. It went so fast.

Another walk down to Cocomangos for happy hour and a beautiful sunset. We went down to a restaurant near our resort and had Mongolian grill (a bowl full of vegetables, chicken, squid, pork, beef and rice heated on a large griddle with multiple sauces for flavoring) for dinner at a table out on the beach.

We got up early on Monday and took a motorized tricycle to the pier where we grabbed a banca boat to be ferried across the small strait. From there it was another short tricycle ride to the airport where we boarded a 32 seat prop plane for the trip back to Manila. A quick trip but our last chance to experience paradise as LeAnn and the kids head back to the US in about 10 days.