So we arrived at Coco Grove Dive and Beach Resort, our home for the next 3 days at Siquijor .It is along the main highway of the island which made it more accessible for travellers. Actually, most of their resorts in the island are located along the highway so it's easy to look for a place to stay. The resort has 2 entrances, one leading to the main resort and the other is at the Casa Coco Hotel - the hotel part of the resort.
The resort is big enough to have several
cottages (with aircon), 3 swimming pools, a gym, a spa, a floating bar, a
volleyball court, diving shop and school, 2 restaurants, a pavilion, a souvenir
shop, game room, 800-meter beach and many more! For more information, you may
check out their website at http://www.cocogrovebeachresort.com/.
When we arrived, the resort staff served watermelon juices to
welcome us. (Wow! Did I tell you guys that watermelon is my favorite?)
Here's Macky to welcome you to the resort
The resort itself offers tour packages and various water
activities that you can enjoy but it’s a little bit pricey here, as you can see
on the picture above. We did not avail of the tours and activities because we had
our own arranged tour the following day care of Levin.
We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring this big resort that
we almost got lost. HAHA! The rooms are actually just along the pathway when
you take stairs from the shore. Once you get to familiarize yourself with the
landmarks, you have nothing to worry about. :) However, it's advisable to use a
flashlight when you're out and wandering during night time. There are lamp
posts, yes, but it's still pretty dark going back to your rooms at night. Good
thing flashlights are provided in each room.
Front view of Salamandas
The resort takes pride its Tubod Marine
Sanctuary which is a home for various schools of fish and corals. When the tide
is high, you can just actually gear yourself with your snorkeling stuff and do
a little swimming from the shore and voila! - you'll be surprised how beautiful
LIFE is, under the sea. During the last morning of our stay, our group was
fortunate enough to have Levin with us who taught us the basics of snorkeling.
He even took care of renting our snorkeling gear at the in-house Dive Shop for free.
Haha! Anyway, you can also bring your own gear to enjoy swimming with the sea
creatures. But you have to be careful of some Sea Urchins along the shallow
area of the beach. It's advisable to have a pair of diving shoes for this
activity. For me, I don't have this gear yet so what I did was to walk
carefully towards the snorkeling area
and swim (with our life jackets on) once possible to avoid those Sea Urchins.
We were on the water for more than an hour that made some of us felt itchy.
According to Levin, it was the school of (little) fish, biting us and saying
"Good morning!" Hahaha Silly. Anyway, during our activity, we were
able to see VARIOUS kinds of fish, weird starfishes that are blue in color and
beautiful corals. What a way to start our day, right? :)
Below, you can see other pictures taken at the resort during our stay:
When it comes to food, it’s quite hard to
stay on a budget. We have to eat at
in-house restaurants because they do not allow food bought outside the resort.
Also, there are limited stores nearby for you to buy food. But if you are a
backpacker and a budget traveler, there are plenty of different cheap resorts
in Siquijor. You might want to rent a motorbike to go around the island because
you can actually do it within a day, as they say. That's how small the island
of Siquijor is.
On my next post, I'll talk about how our
day tour went.
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