Hotel Description

Welcome to Hippocampus Beach and Dive Resort 
Located directly on Malapascua Island’s beautiful, white sandy Bounty Beach the resort faces the turquoise waters of the Visayan Sea with a colourful garden including orchids, flowering trees and many coconut palms on the backside. The shallow water in front of the resort is only gradually getting deeper, so swimming possibilities are excellent. A few meters further from the beach a coral garden including blue staghorn corals can be found, which attracts numerous colourful small reef fish and offers good snorkelling possibilities. Hippocampus is named after the Latin genus name of the threatened seahorse family, out of which various species are commonly found in the coral reefs around the island.

Activities
Malapascua Island with its white Bounty Beach, the turquoise blue water and abundant coconut palmtrees comes close to the cliché of a tropical paradise. Many people travel here to enjoy sun, warm sea, delicious food and the fiendly philippino atmosphere. Swimming and snorkelling are excellent.

Those looking for more action have the choice of a number of activities. Main attractions are island hopping and scuba diving.

Exploring the island
Malapascua is a rather small island, about 2.5 km long and 1 km wide. There are no roads nor cars and surrounding the island by foot takes about three hours. Just follow the beachline, which will lead you to tiny fishing villages with friendly inhabitants and lonely bays. Shell collectors may find their paradise here. The lighthouse is located on the opposite side of the island and when the air is clear the view from its tower reaches across the neighboring islands of Leyte, Biliran and Maripipi until the mountains of Samar.

Island hopping
Hiring a banca, that is a local outrigger boat, for a day will make some of the remoter places around Malapascua accessible. Several small islands with excellent snokeling can be found and quite often the boat will be accompanied by dolphins and even wales on times. One possible destination is Calanggaman, about 75 minutes by boat. With its large sandbank, the many coconut trees and the unreal blue colour of the water it comes very close to the dream picture of a tropical island paradise. Snorkelling and swimming are excellent. Besides some private rangers very few people inhabit Calanggaman, whose lives have not changed a lot during the past decades. You might be able to buy a fish for your lunch. Other possible dream islands are Carnasa with its lush vegetation or the more distant Maripipi with its huge and scenic vulcano. On Calanggaman also a likewise simple and romantic overnight stay is possible. All trips may be booked and arranged through Hippocampus, prices are available on request (depend on destination, number of persons travelling and food, anything from a packed lunch to a luxurious, romantic beach dinner is available).

Restaurant
Magellan’s restaurant is located on the beach and the well-stocked bar is the perfect place to watch the sunset, listen to the waves and enjoy a cool draft beer, a cocktail or a glass of wine. The restaurant itself is very attractively located on the first floor. It is well known for excellent fish and seafood dishes. Normally we get daily supplies from local fishermen. Mediterranean and local specialities from various regions of the Philippines complete the manual.
A special attraction are regularly offered dinner cruises with our pirate boat which also serves as a floating bar in the evenings.

Diving
Throughout the Philippines and even South-East Asia Malapascua is known as a diver?s highlight. Diving season is all year round. All the small marine kritter South East Asia is famous for, like numerous nudibranch species, crabs including the rare harlequin shrimp, ghostpipefish, frogfish, various seahorses and Mandarin fish are very well represented around the island. Good divesites to look for these philippine specialities are Lapus-Lapus, Bantigi or Chocolate island. But Malapascua is also the place in the Philippines to look for larger fish:
Calanggaman island, about 60 min by boat, offers superb walls and mostly excellent visibilities. Larger pelagics like eagle ray, tuna, mackerel or trevally are frequently seen.
Gato island, a marine sanctuary, about 45 min by banca from Bounty beach, is a superb critter place but also breeding ground of black banded sea snakes and home to a large population of grey bamboo and white tip reef sharks, which can be easily observed. More experienced divers may cross the small island in an underwater tunnel.

Monad shoal, a sunken island, 30 min by banca, is the place to look for large pelagigs like tuna or barracuda. There is an excellent Manta ray cleaning station and the site is world famous for daily sightings of Thresher sharks, which ascent from deep water to their cleaning stations at about 22 m early every morning.

Large wrecks like Dona Marilyn Ferry, sunk in a typhoon in 1986 and now lying in a depth of 16 to 32 m, complete the picture of Malapascua as a top diving destination

Getting there – Air connections
The main gateway for Malapascua is Mactan-Cebu International Airport in Cebu City.
There are plenty of domestic flights to and from Manila, but it is also possible to take an international flight directly into Cebu.
At the time of writing (2011) five international airlines have direct Cebu connections: Cathay Pacific, Malaysian Airlines, Qatar Airways, Singapore Airlines (Silk Air) and Cebu Pacific. Mactan/Cebu International Airport is a small, easygoing airport on Mactan Island, about 15 km from the city centre.

We will be happy to arrange a pick-up service from the airport with transfer to Malapascua (about 3 1/2 hours travel time) and/or book a hotel room in Cebu City. See the prices chapter for transfer details.

For all independant travellers here is how to reach the island:

Cebu – Maya by bus
From the airport take a taxi for about 250 PHP to the Cebu North bus station and board one of the frequent buses to Maya (e.g. Ceres, mostly not airconditioned, but the few aircon buses are quite new). These will take you for 150 PHP in about 4 hours on mostly good roads directly to Maya pier at the northernmost tip of Cebu Island.

Cebu – Maya by taxi
Hiring an air-conditioned taxi from Cebu City to Maya will cost about 2200 PHP. This is a more comfortable option, saves about one hour travel time and makes the trip on a scenic road, which partly follows the shoreline, quite enjoyable.

Maya – Malapascua
On the Maya pier you will find a tiny booth selling regular boat tickets for 50 PHP. Also porters are waiting to bring your luggage for a few pesos on one of the outrigger boats servicing Malapascua. At low tide these pumpboats cannot dock, so small crafts will ferry you to the boat. Be prepared to get wet feet wading through some shallow water! Regular boats leave for Malapascua until about 5 p.m. every 30 – 60 minutes, but only if enough passengers are on board. An immediate special ride is available for about 1000 PHP. After 5 p.m. it may be difficult to find a boat, so rather plan an overnight stay in Cebu City then or make use of our pick-up service. The boat ride to Malapascua will take about 30 minutes. Hippocampus is located at the eastern end of Bounty beach about ten minutes walk from the boat landing point in the islands main village Logon.

Dive Shop
A dive shop, operated by SeaQuest is very conveniently located underneath the restaurant and offers everything a diver can think of. SeaQuest is one of the oldest and most experienced dive operators in the country with sister shops in Moalboal/Cebu and Alona/Bohol. Tanks are silently filled outside the resort using a powerful WF compressor and a Nitrox mixing unit. 15 complete and state of the art Cressi Sub diving equipments are ready for rent. With his team of local diveguides and boatcrews Roland, manager and instructor of the Dive Center, offers four boat trips every day, on demand also to parallel destinations. All PADI courses up to divemaster level are available. Nitrox is standard and in addition to typical outrigger boats also a fast speedboat is used in Malapascua, which makes most dive sites accessible within just minutes. SeaQuest emphasizes on personal service and for example individually cares for photographers and non-photographers. All dives are accompanied by experienced, mostly local guides, who know the specialities of Malapascua’s underwater world extremely well. Diving is generally in small groups of about four and regarding the superb dive sites around the island (also see Diving page) exceptional experiences can be almost guaranteed.

Environmental and Nature Protection
Hippocampus plays an active role in a conservation project initiated in 2009, which aims at protecting important dive sites and underwater sanctuaries by armed patrol boats. Since May 2010 daily patrol runs are carried out and very encouraging results are already visible now. Hopefully illegal fishing activities can be completely eliminated soon. A key success element is also a better education of the local communities.

In several aviaries in the resort philippine birds are kept and bred, including the endangered nicobar pidgeons (Hippocampus is also a registered wildlife farm).

All rates include two full breakfasts (please deduct 3 Euros in case of single occupancy).
Also available is half pension for an additional 5 Euros per day per person.
A small ‘Marine Environment Fee'(about 0,30 Euros per person per night), which remains on the island and is used 100% for the protection of our marine environment, is collected in the resort.

Transfer
A pick-up service in Cebu City (e.g. at the airport) and transfer to Malapascua is available. After a road transport (small limousine or van) to Maya an the northernmost tip of Cebu island, a private boat will take you directly to the resort on Malapascua Island. At low tide it may be necessary to use a small banca boat in Maya before boarding the larger outtrigger boat. The entire journey takes 3 to max. 4 hours depending on traffic, weather and tide.

Hippocampus Beach Resort offers best Interline rates for Crewconnected members

Make your booking request here – cebu.hippocampus@yahoo.com Quote “Crewconnected” to ensure Interline rates