Napaling Reef — Attraction in Panglao

Beautiful reef. We rented a moped and turned in right before the “official” entrance. There is a spot where you’ll see many other bikes and locals parked there. You can enter to the right where there is a hidden trail obscured by tall grass and foliage. If you drive all the way to the abandoned house, you’ve driven too far and need to turn around. You can lock your items in your bike and walk down towards the spot. There are some stairs that lead to the reef.

We entered by the stairs and swam down to Napaling reef and the “sardinde run” which is right in front of some resort I believe, where they charge people to swim in this small area. We snuck inside without anyone noticing to swim with the sardines, then swam all the way back to where we entered. Current was a little strong and the swim may be a little too rigorous for those who aren’t the best swimmers.

Napaling reef is a good spot to get away from the crowds and tourists who can’t swim and float around in life jackets or worse, need a guide to pull them with a rope tied to a tube. If you also think that these people are literally the WORST, the drop off and wall here is just too deep and you won’t see them here. You can’t just stand straight up, making it a little less accessible to the Chinese and Koreans who can’t swim and float around in bright orange life vests. You can’t see its full beauty without diving down and swimming into the crevasse, making it a freediving haven and a boring spot for the life jacket gang.

I recommend wearing booties/swim shoes to get down safely. Also many sea urchins hiding in shallow waters before the reach the reef, so make sure to swim as quickly as possible to avoid stepping on one, and to prevent from damaging the corals. (Don’t step or touch corals, you will kill them and when the coral goes, all the beautiful fish and marine life will go with it).

Let’s be respectful of marine life and work together to keep the oceans beautiful. Unless you are floating around in a life jacket, you should learn how...

The place itself was really nice as a gorgeous natural spot. But…. This is really not pleasant experience itself. We came by ourselves 2ppl. I was surprised. First some people stopped our car and asked to pay fees (200PHP/person for environmental fee and guide). Okay. But then in all reviews you can see that lot of people recommend to go to Kalikasan resort. I personally think this is not a good option. As our experience wasn’t good. They charged us 200 PHP/person AGAIN (I provided receipt, but they told these 200PHP are “entrance fee” (entrance fee for water?! What?!). Okay. Then 150 each mask (they were quite good though), 150 for fins (we had one pair only). Total 850 for Kalikasan. The guide is not guiding, this is just a man who will tell you when to come out of the water. So what for we need to pay I don’t know. In total we paid 500PHP round transfer from/to Alona beach, 400 PHP to some people for environmental fee+guide, 400 PHP for Kalikasan, 450 for equipment rental. This all for 1h of swimming in this spot (total 1750 PHP for 2 persons). The snorkelling was nice, and sardines are fantastic, but I felt like this wasn’t transparent and we paid twice for same things, but no one will be there by your side as they making money on you. Not the price is a problem, but the approach, when you feel bad as someone is making profit on you… So, Kalikasan didn’t work perfect for us. Maybe try other providers or come with a organised tour to avoid any sort of uncertainty. But still recommend to visit and you will be amazed of...

SCAM!!! A really awful experience with MOLAVE COVE RESORT. It cost us around 900pcs for two people to enter the site and hire snorkelling gear with a guide. The first cost is at a makeshift “govt checkpoint”, where you pay an environmental fee and guide fee which was compulsory, 400pcs. We were then taken to Molave Cove Resort by our guide and then had to pay their resort fee and snorkel hire which was 500pcs, total 900pcs. We’ve since seen online, other people pay different amounts. Seems like they’re just total chancers. We were snorkelling for around 15 mins before a storm hit and it became completely unsafe to swim. Our guide still tried to continue the tour and we had to tell him to stop because of how dangerous the conditions had become. We’re strong swimmers but the lack of concern for our safety was the worst we’ve experienced in our last 3 months travelling. After we’d got back to the resort our guide left on his motorbike. So we asked the lady we’d paid our entrance/snorkel fee to for a refund or to come back tomorrow as our tour had been cut short. She flat out refused that we had even had a tour and didn’t know who we were our who our guide was. She started looking through cctv to see who are guide was and check that we’d even been on a tour! She then said if we want money back we will need to go back to the govt stop point up the road which unsurprisingly was empty by the time we drove back past. Please do not waste...