A Coconut Falls From the Sky

Early morning beach walk — my ritual on every trip. The wind was strong, the waves high. I was walking along the shore when I heard a heavy thud behind me.

I turned around: a coconut, freshly fallen from a tree, sitting right where I’d just been walking.

My first thought was how excited I was. My second thought was: that thing would have knocked me out cold. Coconuts are heavy — bowling ball weight, easy.

I carried it back to the hotel and tried to open it. Pried at the crack with a fork. Got it slightly wider. Tried to wrench it open barehanded. Impossible without a machete. But I managed to collect a few drops of juice from the crack. Buko juice — the Cebuano word for coconut — sweet and cool, exactly as expected. A little gift from Camiguin.

Katibawasan Falls

Camiguin has several waterfalls, most of them swimmable. I picked Katibawasan Falls — a 70-meter drop, one of the tallest on the island.

Entrance: 75 pesos. A cat at the gate welcomed me in. The air inside the park was noticeably cooler and fresher — after daily life in Cebu’s traffic and exhaust fumes, breathing clean forest air feels almost medicinal. Deep breath in. Everything clears.

The falls came into view almost immediately past the entrance. A single white thread falling through a wall of green — striking against the blue sky. Some visitors were swimming at the base. I stayed back and just looked.

Lanzones Farm

Lanzones is Camiguin’s signature fruit. Small, pale brown, round — like a large grape. The flavor is close to lychee: sweet, slightly floral, thin skin. They come into season around September, and you start seeing them sold in Cebu around that time.

The farm has a café that makes lanzones mille-crêpe cake. That got my attention. The deal: buy a cake slice and get a drink included. Since I wanted to eat the cake on my hotel balcony while watching the sunset, I ordered the cake to go and had my cappuccino on the open-air terrace.

It was too early in the season for the fruit to be ripe, but I could see the lanzones growing on the trees — the fruit clusters look similar to grapes but grow completely differently, hanging directly from the trunk in dense bunches. Worth seeing just to understand how the fruit grows.

White Island — Cancelled

The afternoon plan was White Island — a sandbar that appears during low tide, one of Camiguin’s most photogenic spots. I’d timed the visit for low tide.

But the sea was rough all day. Every anchor boat was pulled ashore. I went to the dock anyway. Nobody. Everything closed.

Honestly? Not that devastated. Sandbars appear all over the Philippines. And I wasn’t sure I’d know what to do for three hours on a sandbar with no shade (there’s apparently a 3-hour time limit). I made peace with it quickly and used the free afternoon for something I’d only half-planned.

The Old Church Ruins

Google Maps said it closed at 4pm. It was 4pm. Worth trying anyway.

Still open. Turned out it closes at 5. Don’t blindly trust the internet.

Entrance: 50 pesos. Through a weathered stone gate, into an open space roughly the size of a basketball court. Stone walls on all sides, trees grown tall beyond them arching overhead like a living ceiling. Vines creeping across the old stone. The long passage of time visible in every crack.

It’s a powerful place — the kind that earns the word “sacred” without trying. Human construction slowly being reclaimed by nature, the two so intertwined they’ve become one thing. A Camel’s Foot Tree (Bauhinia) at the center, 400 years old, its massive roots spreading wide enough to shelter five adults inside. Not old by the standards of Japan’s ancient cedars, but commanding in its own tropical way.

Glad the White Island was closed. I wouldn’t have come here otherwise.

Dinner in the Room

Back at the hotel, I set up dinner at the table (too windy for the balcony tonight): tuna carpaccio and shrimp in garlic butter from the tuna restaurant, eggplant salad from the karenderia. Plus the lanzones mille-crêpe, waiting patiently in its box.

Whiskey after, hoping the clouds would clear for stars. They didn’t, quite. But the day had been full enough.

Continued in Camiguin Day 3 — Mantigue Island & Hot Springs…