Seaview Villa

Sand Island Ecolodge and Dive Resort's cliff villa with stunning overlooking sea views and large roof deck above. Enjoy the beach, snorkeling on the reef, free kayaks, and fast Starlink satellite wifi. Island hopping and scuba diving available. Queen bed (and extra queen foam mattress on floor if needed), ensuite, kitchenette, dining table, ceiling fan, veranda. Meals available or cook your own. Easily accessible by speedboat from Coron in 30 minutes. Private and peaceful and beautiful.

Thank you for booking a stay at Sand Island Ecolodge and Dive Resort! We are entirely solar-powered and wind-powered. Feel free to ask us any questions. In the meantime, here's our basic info:

We offer free use of kayaks and snorkeling gear, including dive lights for night snorkeling. We have beautiful beaches and reefs and islands right in front of our houses.

We can arrange a shared van from Busuanga Airport to Coron. It costs 250 pesos per person and takes 30 minutes. A private van is 2000 pesos for a group of up to 10.

Then we can pick you up by speedboat from Coron, meeting at the "I Am Coron" sign in Lualhati Park. The ride takes 30 minutes and costs 3500 pesos for up to 2 passengers plus 500 pesos for each additional passenger.

For payment for transfers, food, and activities such as island hopping and scuba diving, we accept cash pesos and several online services.

Extra queen foam mattresses are available for extra guests.

We provide free filtered drinking water in the local blue jugs.

Menu:
Breakfasts are 450 pesos per person.  Eggs to order with bacon or sausage or pancakes or potatoes.  Oatmeal with raisins and soy milk also available.

Lunches and dinners are 650 pesos per person and include a main course, vegetables, and rice or potatoes (except for pasta dishes).  A wide range of dishes are possible,  both Filipino and foreign.  We have good ribeye steaks and sausages (Hungarian,  Mexican Chorizo, etc), pepperoni, imported cheeses, etc from a great local German deli.  We also can get fresh local tuna, prawns, and crab.  Filipino favorites include chicken adobo, pork or fish sinigang soup, local vegetables, mango float for dessert, etc.  Just let us know what you prefer and we can cater to your tastes.  We can grill on the BBQ also. Some items, such as steak and seafood, cost extra. We also have a menu for fruit, desserts, drinks, and snacks.

ISLAND HOPPING

We have three 22-foot fiberglass speedboats which can travel at 25 to 30mph (48kph), more than twice as fast as local boats. Island hopping is 7,000 pesos per day for up to 2 guests, plus 750 per extra guest after 2. Price includes boat, captain, gas, and snorkeling gear but not entrance fees or lunch. We can provide a packed lunch for 650 pesos per person or you can bring your own. We have 3 standard routes we offer and one farther route that costs more:

1. NORTH SHORE CORON ISLAND
This is close to Coron town, so it's best done on your pickup day or dropoff day, so that you save and don't pay for the transfer between the resort and Coron. The tour includes the most famous sites here, including stunning Kayangan Lake (300 peso entrance fee per person), Barracuda Lake (200 peso entrance fee per person), and Twin Lagoons (200 peso entrance fee per person).

2. LUSANG, CORAL, AND PASS ISLAND
This route is our most popular and is possible even on windy days. You start at Lusang Gunboat, a shallow World War Two shipwreck which is the best shipwreck for snorkeling in the entire Philippines, and then snorkel at Coral Garden, the best-preserved coral reef we have in the area. Then off to Pass Island, a gorgeous round sand beach with palm trees and picnic tables (250 peso entrance fee) that also has a good reef for snorkeling. Before Pass Island, you can also stop for lunch if you wish at Marina del Sol, which has an excellent restaurant.

3. MALCAPULYA, BANANA, AND DITAYTAYAN ISLANDS
These three islands to our south all have gorgeous sand beaches and good snorkeling. It can be a bit wavey getting there. They have entrance fees of around 200 pesos each.

4. BLACK ISLAND
Black Island is twice as far from us as Pass Island, at least an hour by speedboat, so the cost is 15k pesos for up to 4 guests, plus 500 for each additional guest. But it's the most beautiful island I've seen in the Philippines or maybe anywhere. It has the steep cliffs and jungle like Coron Island but with an enormous mountain of white sand beach in front. It also has caves you can go into and even swim in, palm trees and picnic tables, excellent reef snorkeling, often with big schools of thousands of small fish, and a shipwreck dive right off the beach. It's really paradise. 200 peso entrance fee. We can also stop at South Cay and North Cay on the way, which have beautiful beaches (and entrance fees of 200 or 250) but much smaller. I recommend spending almost all your time on Black Island. Route getting there is mostly protected and not windy or wavey. Final crossing of 10 minutes or so is in ocean swells which usually are slow and rolling and not uncomfortable.


SCUBA DIVING

Scuba diving fun dives are 1500 pesos plus gear 650 per day, tanks 400, and gas and captain if you use a speedboat to go out to shipwrecks (2500 to 3500 pesos for the day). There's an entire World War Two Japanese fleet sunk here, so there are many shipwrecks to explore. Also a lot of reefs, including our house reef, which is especially great for night dives, which are 250 pesos extra. A lot of species of crabs and shrimps, including decorator crabs, many seahorses and cuttlefish, purple bobtail squid, frogfish, nudibranchs, turtles, etc. We also offer PADI courses, which include all gear, tanks, and instruction:

Discover Scuba Diving 6,500 pesos, includes 2 dives

Refresher 6k, includes 2 dives

Open Water 24k

Advanced Open Water 22k

Rescue Diver 23k



Dive sites:

Okikawa, our largest and nicest wreck, is a World War 2 Japanese oil tanker 160 meters long. It is suitable for Open Water and even Junior divers, starting at 9 meters and going to only 12 to 14 meters for its decks. Deeper diving to 25 meters is also available. The wreck has the most fish and coral life, like an aquarium. It sometimes has strong current.



Akitsushima is near Okikawa, both near Busuanga Bay. It's a deep dive, to about 28 meters, so the dives here are only 30 to 35 minutes instead of 50 minutes to an hour. The ship was one of only two seaplane tenders in the Japanese navy, and its diesel engines are still intact. The best dive day in the entire Coron area is to dive “Aki-Oki,” Akitsushima and Okikawa.


In the bay to the west of Sangat Island, between Busuanga Bay and Coron town, are most of the sunken Japanese wrecks. These include:



Morazan, to 22 meters to go through the propeller shaft into the boiler rooms. There's a lot to see inside this British ship which was stolen by the Japanese, and the superstructure makes a kind of lattice for sea life.



Kogyo, a deep dive to 30 meters to go inside the cargo holds where there's a tractor, bags of cement, bales of fencing wire, etc. As with all the other wrecks, there are a lot of fish and corals.



Olympia, starting at 18 meters and going down to around 27 meters for a dive through the holds, has bags of rice still decomposing 80 years later. Oil drums, also, and a big school of jacks, usually, at the superstructure.



Irako is a deep dive and some of it collapsing, dangerous, so we don't normally dive there.



Lusang Gunboat is very shallow, starting at the surface and going to 10 meters. We snorkel it on our Pass Island route, and it can also be a dive, though it's a small wreck so we also go along the reef.



East Tangat Gunboat is on the east side of Sangat Island, a shallow wreck dive and reef dive less than 20 meters.



Reef dives:



Our house reef is awesome for night dives, not to be missed. As mentioned above, we have lots of crabs, shrimp, seahorses, cuttlefish, and often see frogfish, turtles, sometimes octopi, etc. During the day we have also seen dugongs, though they are more rare.



Mid-channel reef, only a mile out from us, is a large shallow seamount with so many beautiful sand and coral grottoes and lots of blue coral. Not as many fish as on the wrecks, but still beautiful.



Titans, only a couple hundred meters from us, has a lot of towers of hard coral and we've seen rays here. Coral in excellent shape.



Dynamite Point, only about a mile from us, is great for soft corals and is often a drift dive with current.



Malcapuya, Banana, and Ditaytayan all have good reef dives that can be combined with island hopping. Ditaytayan and Banana are great for snorkeling, also, with large areas of shallow reef.



Cathedral is an amazing cave dive into a huge cave at the end of Calis Point, the southern end of Coron Island, but is accessible only on unusually calm days.



The north shore of Coron Island has several dives, including Barracuda Lake for a geothermal dive in which the water gets hotter, to 38 degrees celsius, as you go deeper. There are also two islands out front which have good reefs for diving.



Black Island has very clear water and large schools of thousands of fish since it is the farthest out of the islands, and it has a nice shipwreck, in the mid 20's for depth. It's between the size of the gunboats and the larger wrecks and has a very intact electrical room.



Pass Island has a nice reef dive, shallow, to combine with island hopping.



We are exploring other new reefs all the time and are flexible in our trips. We promise you a great and memorable dive experience!

Water-skiing and kneeboarding also available, 3000 pesos for 30 minutes.