About a third of the way up the west coast of Cebu is the sleepy little market town of Moalboal. About five kilometers outside the town, down a dusty track, is Panagsama Beach, which was one of the first places where scuba diving caught on in the Philippines. In the early 1980s, it was one of the most popular and highly regarded diving destinations in Asia, which led to dive resorts having sprung up all along the adjacent coast. From Moalboal, you can dive straight off Panagsama Beach. All you need to do is swim out a few meters and drop down onto a beautiful, sloping wall that descends to 35 meters. Panagsama Beach is home to an extraordinary array of coral, anemones, sponges, and a swarming host of brightly colored reef fish.

Cebu Island is one of the main tourist destination in the Philippines because of his safety, the friendly people and the choice of destinations on the island, which can easily fit together for a unforgettable vacation

Moalboal is a comfortable small province town, approximately 3 km away is Panagsama Beach, the main diving-spot on Cebu Island.

The advantage of Moalboal:

• easily to reach, approximately 2,5 hours driving from the International Airport Mactan Cebu, no weather-dependent ship – or boat transfer
• No mass-tourism, but with many regular guests, year after year coming back because of the favorable diving conditions and the Philippine ambiance.
• accommodation of all price ranges, good and affordable restaurants,
• casual Nightlife

Panagsama was starting to become a destination for backpackers in the 70’s. There have been a few accommodations at this time and a lot of sand on the beach. Because of the excellent diving the place developed quite fast, a set back was when a strong Taifun in 1984 took away almost all sand of the beach. Worse the rough sea damaged the famous house reef and some shallow areas of Pescador.

The reef recovered of cause, but the huge amount of sand did not come back. Depending on the season some sand is coming every year, but unfortunately some Filipinos are too poor to buy river sand for mixing with cement, what is coming will be collected in nighttime. So Panagsama keeps a place for divers and snorkels plus some adventures people looking for action (see that page). There is another group of visitors, who spend the wintertime here and some long time travelers stay here for some month because of the good familiar atmosphere and the reasonable accommodation prices. There are a lot of foreigners permanent living here so it is easy to get in touch.

In front of Panagsama Beach is a shallow reef, at lowest tide you can walk to the drop off reef witch is in a average distance of 50 m from the high tide line. difference between low tide and high tide is depending on season and moon up to 1.90 m. There is a lot of small marine life you can watch easily walking over the reef at low tide.

How to get here

The international airport of Cebu (Mactan Airport) is at the small island Mactan
located and is served by

1. Singapore Airlines (by Silkair from Singapore) from Singapore
2. Cathey Pacific from Hongkong,
3. Malaysian Airlines from Kuala Lumpur.
4. There are also direct flights from Japan, Korea and Taiwan

You can also fly to Manila, there are a lot of domestic flights to Cebu, sometimes it might be cheaper, because a lot of airlines with nice airfares are flying to Manila. If you arrive in Cebu not too late, you can leave straight to Moalboal, otherwise you have to spend one night in Cebu or you are really tired until you arrive in Moalboal

More pictures here