Having a group of 20 dolphins jumping around the catamaran and welcoming you is undoubtedly a sign that you are arriving somewhere very special, and this is how our lovely experience on Apo Island all began.

Apo is a tiny little island found in the Visayas (a region of the Philippines), just off the Southern tip of Negros Oriental, and is truly authentic and beautiful. There are only three accommodations on offer, and the local community is still very well maintained and not over commercialized. In fact, the island has only two villages, with approximately 60 families in total, all taking great care of their environment and preserving their unique bamboo huts and unpaved small walking paths. They even sweep their beach to keep it clean of twigs and leaves; we were truly in a unique place! And, on top of it, the people were extremely friendly.

During our stay we had a cute room on the beach with a balcony overlooking the ocean, including a perfect view of the sunset. There was electricity only from 9:00-12:00 and 18:00-21:00, there was no internet, and we had the luxury of a shower with running cold water and not the good old bucket method, which we only had to use for toilet purposes (you’ll excuse us if we don’t get into further details…). The island church of Saint Vincent Ferrer was located right next to our room, which was also very lovely as we were there during Easter, and the choir composed of the young girls from the island were singing beautiful songs on a daily basis.

Aside the wonderful on-land experience, the underwater world in Apo is even more stunning. Apo is known for its marine preservation, having a famous marine sanctuary, which unfortunately is temporarily closed after having been seriously damaged by the typhoon last year. However, it is still rich in things to see. Just a few meters off the shore there are families of turtles swimming around. There is also a lot of beautiful house reef and corals, forming all sorts of impressive colorful shapes including rose-like formations. Electric-blue star fish decorate the ocean floor, as well as many other beautiful tropical fish.

Since Apo is known to have some of the best diving in the world, our experience in that field had to continue. The first one of the two dives we did there was calm and relaxing, where we traveled down a huge sand cliff and around a large rock formation filled with coral and beautiful fish, including nudi branches, clown fish, skeleton shrimp etc. The array of colors, forms and marine life in general was just indescribable. On the second dive we did what they call a drift dive, which means you are brought by the current. We had never done such a dive before and did not know what to expect, but soon found out that this current was more like an underwater vacuum on top speed! We imagine this is what it feels like to float in space, however we were not just floating, rather being pulled very fast while seeing all sorts of underwater life, including bright yellow amoeba. We also got the chance to see a giant bumper-head parrot fish as well as a black and white stripped snake, known to be 4 times more poisonous than a cobra. This was for sure the funnest dive yet!

What can we say…. Apo was by far the most authentic island we have been to, and and we hope that the trend to over commercialize locations that are beautiful doesn’t reach it. In any case, we are happy to have discovered this little gem.

Once our week was over, we prepared for an important meeting with a big guy, nothing less than one of the world’s largest underwater mammals…