Visiting the Islands

With its many stunning white corals and beaches, the coast is undoubtedly the country's main draw, most espacially  in the Visayas and Palawan Regions. The pre-eminent attraction is Boracay, a tiny island barely 8km long, the appropriately name White Beach running more than half its length. Other well known beach resorts include Panglao Island, El Nido, Puerto Galera and San Fernando. Some of these are now becoming popular tourist destinations, but many stretches of untouched golden sand remain, beckoning the adventurous, particularly in the remoter parts of Palawan, and on some of the smaller islands off the coasts of Cebu and Mindanao.

Below: Outrigger boats as seen here in El Nido  Palawan, are widely used for inter-island travel and almost universal in local water-home tours.

The mountainous interior has been largely overlooked by tourism, with the exception of the Cordillera Central mountain of northern Luzon. Here the magnificent mountainside rice terraces, a World Heritage Site around the Village of Banaue that were first constructed around 2,000 years ago, are the main attraction. Those in search of cooler weather head for the heights of Baguio; at some 1,500 m above sea level it is the Philippines' only high-altitude city.

Below: The Philippines' number one attraction is undoubtedly Boracay Island. due almost entirely to its spectacularly White Beach several kilometers of white sand and stretching along much of the island's west coast.

Wildlife watching is still in its infancy in the Philippines, partly as a result of the rather secretive fores-bound nature of many of the animals that live there. However, whale and dolphin-watching as well as bird-watching, are increasingly well organize. Bird-watching trips to a variety of forests around the country are now quite common, particularly Subic Bay, Mount . Makiling and St. Paul's underground River Whale- and Dholpin-Watching are largely a preserve of the Visaya's, most particularly off the southern coast of Bohol and in the Tanon Straits between Negros and Cebu, close to the Southern Luzon town of Donsol For several months of the year it is possible to spot and go swimming with the Whale Shark, which congregate there in large numbers.

Above: In recent years accommodation in  many resorts has headed upmarket, as i llustrated by the dusk view of Discovery  Shores, one ofBoracay's  most exclusive resorts.