There is a lot of travel/transportation involved in getting to Boracay, but it's worth it (even with two 18 month olds)! First, of course we began with the 45 min car ride to the airport, then the two hour wait at the airport, followed by a 4 hour plane ride, and then a two hour bus ride (after spending a hour in the airport waiting to clear customs and collect luggage). Once the bus ride is over you have a short wait for your, in our case, private hotel boat for a 10 min boat ride and then one last 10-15 min car ride once on the other side and then you have finally arrived at your hotel. Whew...we made it, thank the Lord! The kids also survived...barely. They were actually pretty good, I think all the different transportation modes kept them interested in their surroundings. (However, on the way back, not so great. They did good up until we got on the plane, I think since that was last they were fed up with travel at that point. Oh well, can't win em all)
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| The Flight |
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| The Bus Ride |
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| Our Boat (the one just right of the middle) |
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| Boat Ride |
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| The Car Ride |
We stayed at the Sea Wind Resort, the rooms aren't the best and neither is the food, but the drinks are great, the staff is great, and the beach was fantastic! We had one of the widest sections of beach from the hotel to the ocean. We chose this hotel solely because they offered beach front rooms, while it wasn't exactly beach front it was close to the beach and the bar which is what we wanted so that we could put the kids down for nap or bed, lock the door, and go sit at the bar with the baby monitor and still have a visual of our room. For that reason alone, this hotel was perfect! It's everything we wanted to do. We wanted a nice relaxing vacation. This was it. We didn't have to sit quietly in the room while the kids napped or slept for the night, we actually got to enjoy ourselves with alone time once the kids went down. Our first night, we got in and got settled, Eric went to get us some food and once the kids went down we ate dinner and then sat by the bar drinking champagne and fruity drinks :) a very nice way to end such a long day of travel, and we arrived at night so we still hadn't seen the ocean yet...morning had a lot in store for us!
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| Double Fisting :) |
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| Austin hated the sand, lol |
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A local girl playing with Austin  
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Day three was a little different, as it decided to be overcast and rainy...boo, but it did give us a chance to head over to D'Mall and walk around and see a few things and shop a bit. We took a tuk tuk down to the mall and had a nice breakfast and hit the shops! After all that and naps we just walked along the beach and in the water and enjoyed ourselves and the view!
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| not a happy camper |
playing in the water
still not happy (never came around to the sand)
yummy Moroccan restaurant by our hotel
last night
last morning before our 10am pickup
the seashell lanterns we bought
Even though we got rained out one day, we loved this trip, actually I think the rain was a blessing. It gave us a chance to check out a few things and shop, had the weather been perfect we may have skipped that part. There is more to do here than sit on the beach, we just choose not to do anything else as we wanted a super relaxing vacation and we also were toting around a couple 18 month old kids...they kinda hinder you in some aspects. ;)
A little side note...if you do end up basking in the Philippine sun, please remember to tip your wait staff / bar staff well if they are taking good care of you. The bartender that took care of us told us that they make like $4 (US) a day without any overtime pay when they work extra and they live in staff housing and their families are hours away by bus and it's very hard for them to afford the bus fare to go see them. We gave our guy a good tip at the end, plenty to go see his wife and daughter at her preschool graduation, so please remember to take care of them if you can.
