camiguin: paras beach resort

paras beach resort.

no. we didn’t stay here while we were on vacation in camiguin august of last year. we simply could not afford it.

we only had pictorials there. LOL!!! us 4 after our lovely dinner.

if you have money to splurge, i suggest you book yourself a room here. as i mentioned in my last entry, the resorts in camiguin don’t have beach fronts. i loathe to say that for one to enjoy the waters of camiguin, you’ll have to travel to the famous white island, unless you don’t mind jumping in rocky waters with black sands. [camiguin locals, please correct me if this is a misguided information!]. so if you plan to be in the water any time you want, you’re better off with a resort that has a pool. of course, if you’ve money to burn, you can always go back and forth to white island. it’s only PhP400 [less than $10] per back/forth trip.

anyway, here are a few pictures of the resort. i wasn’t kidding when i said we only went there for some photo ops, hehe…

kidding aside, we arrived in yumbing mambajao a little past lunch time. we thought it wasn’t practical to rush to seeing the sites of camiguin at that hour. the sun was at its mightiest then. thus, we decided to while away our time here while waiting for our 3 o’clock appointment to head to white island.

the tiny speck of white in the pix is white island as seen inside paras

let the pictorials begin.

moi. this is what i meant when i said the resorts don’t have beach fronts.

dennis with his classic pose

juliet with her take a pic of my back drama

the charming and demure jacky

paras, viewed from the beach

some mountain [mt. hibok-hibok???] viewed from paras

cio and budlat, what’s the drama here?

my travel isn’t complete without taking a pic of my “vetlongwalks” mark

haha. i wasn’t really kidding when i said we were at paras for the photo ops..

the beautiful pool

the beautiful innovation called timers

tinkering with the timer again

cio with his classic and ever consistent facial expression

jacky enjoying her ube ice cream

my watermelon shake @PhP60 [less than $2] and the resort’s menu. hmmm, now that i see this, i wouldnt say that paras is THAT expensive. perhaps it’s only their rooms we can’t afford as we’re BUDGET TRAVELERS.

night scenes at paras

the pool with a few of the resort’s guests enjoying the water

the tower on the left is where we had our dinner. warning: SUPER BREEZY…

the pool, viewed from the white tower

accommodations, accommodations

ordering for dinner

L-billiards/al fresco area– R-budlat helping out cio decide what to eat

playing table tennis while waiting for our dinner [@PhP50/hour – a little over $1]

our dinner [jacky’s spaghetti in pomodoro, budlat and cio’s beef and mushroom, and spicy mixed seafood, my beef lasagna]

dinner didn’t stop us from grabbing this photo op
hmmm, their food isn’t bad, but they’re not excellent either. i’ve had better. theirs is just so-so.

that’s paras beach resort for you folks. click on this to take you to the resort’s official site.

will post next our day tour of the island. probably in installments also.

credits: some of the pix used here are dennis’ [night scenes] and budlat’s.

for other travel stories, visit my other site —> HERE.

camiguin: dine in

one of the greatest things i look forward to when traveling is food. although, i don’t mind eating skyflakes or cream-o while on the road, settling yourself in front of a table laded with sumptuous food somehow erases the weariness that traveling does to the body. interestingly, when you get to the part of mambajao where we stayed [in yumbing], the locals will have no problem telling you that restaurants are aplenty in the area. that is, you’ll have no difficulty finding food. despite all the assurances, our experience proved otherwise. there aren’t many restaurants in the area. carenderia are not even aplenty. in the market alone, there were only two establishments selling ordinary lutong-bahay and the usual grilled food. across the market, is the “kainan sa tulay” [literally, restaurant by the bridge, also a few meters away from aying’s place]. although a bit big, this place only offers lutong-bahay food. nothing fancy, so don’t expect much. the sole restaurant we came across while there was “Luna Ristorante” – they serve brick oven-cooked pizzas – the yummiest pizza ever [promise – a lot of foreigners were even there]!!! unfortunately, we were unable to try their other food, so i can’t offer much info here.

so if there aren’t many food places in the area, where then did we feed our hungry stomachs?

one place. PARAS BEACH RESORT. as i said, the place where we stayed is just walking distance to the fancy paras beach resort. so we ended having our breakfast, snacks, and dinner there. interestingly, every time we visited the resort, we do so without having to pay anything. AS IN, no entrance fee collected and staff are very friendly even though we weren’t actually guests of the resort. we didn’t check-in or anything. haha, even if we’d want to, i think PARAS caters the high-end market. a lot of their guests were foreigners, actually. but like i said, it’s perhaps the camiguin people’s hospitality that we didn’t feel discriminated at all. what can i say, camiguin people are generally friendly and very accommodating.

anyway, before i show pictures of PARAS BEACH RESORT, let me show the breakfast fare we had at aying’s place and a few pix at LUNA RISTORANTE.

as i mentioned in my previous entry, one of the good things at aying’s place is you can actually ask her to have someone prepare food for you. they’ll charge you with the exact cost of the ingredients. would you believe that for all these food in the picture, they only charged us PhP150??? haha, as much as we’d like to offer more, we too didn’t have enough extra to be generous so we only paid PhP200.

haha, i don’t think for PhP150, you can have 4 servings of egg, corned beef and beef loaf for 4, rice, and instant coffee at any restaurants. they’re even delivered to our room at the time we specified. amazing, really. my PhP150 here in cebu will only get me a serving of coffee, rice, and corned beef over at cafe de france [ a serving of one, imagine that!!]

this is the establishment that the locals keep telling us serves a lot of food. KAINAN SA TULAY. again, nothing fancy here – so don’t expect much. the locals didn’t lie when they say that this place offers many food. yep, in the area, that is.
it’s interesting to note though that it’s also in this area that i witnessed an “only in camiguin” experience. would you believe that when we had our lunch here, manang celia [the local who became our tour guide minus the fee], brought a potful of rice? and some kilawin fish??…. as far as i know, here in cebu, you’re not allowed to bring food when you’re in a restaurant or even in a carenderia. it’s just a no-no to bring food outside. but here, not only manang celia was allowed to bring a potful of rice, they even allowed her use of their kitchen implements so she can prepare the kilawin – at NO EXTRA COST!.. so yeah, we only bought viands as we ate the rice that manang celia brought with her.

yumbing public market. this is across kainan sa tulay. the partially seen structure on the right has at least 2 carenderia [food stall is more like it].
we had our dinner here on our first night in mambajao.

not quite satisfied with the grilled food we had at the market, we prodded dennis to treat us pizza at the restaurant we passed by on our way to the market. luckily, he gave in as it was in this restaurant that i had my taste of the yummiest pizza. it being cooked in an original brick oven, the pizza had this aroma that you don’t find in pizzas served by yellow cab, shakey’s, pizza hut and other pizza houses sprouting in cebu. again, the yummiest ever..

don’t be fooled by their smiles, but they actually enjoyed their pizza and ice-cold beer

menu of the restaurant. me thinks the price is affordable given that they serve delish pizza..

jacky at luna ristorante. my cam sucks at nighttime photography, so didnt have much pictures of the place

the pizza i can’t seem to stop praising – pizza luna, if my memory serves me. or just ask the waitress for their specialty of the house

luna ristorante in broad daylight.

haha, i got so hungry very early in the morning, that i scoured the place in search of food. guess what? i ended up grabbing breakfast at paras beach resort alone. my three travelmates were still asleep as we had a late night over some bottle of rum.

snapshots of yumbing as i searched for food in broad daylight! i think i had a terrible headache then as i lost count of shots i had of rum the previous night. the street behind the sign leads to aying’s place
if you face the shed, the street on the left is the path leading to luna ristorante.

camiguin’s tricycle. i think it’s called motorela in cagayan de oro.

the side of paras beach resort

my breakfast of tapa, scrambled egg, coffee, and fresh watermelon over at PARAS beach resort.

the price of my breakfast

but with this view, can’t complain

opppsss… this post turned out lengthy. i’ll just post more pix of paras beach resort in another entry.