Isla Boracay - Part 2

Villa de Oro is the name of the resort where we stayed during our trip. It's located between Station 2 and 3, near the police station. Josh's relative owns the resort so we were given a hefty discount for an air conditioned room with 2 beds, private bathroom and cable TV. And did I mention it's a beach front resort? Yeah, coolness! Aside from the fact that its beach front, their cottages were so cute. The landscape, the exteriors, the way they conceptualized the place was so rustic and homey and I liked it. The resort itself has a lot of photo opportunities for photographer wannabes like us haha!

I think the only letdown for the resort was its location. It's too far from party places in Station 1. Since we don't like walking that much because it's time and energy consuming we needed to hire trikes to get to Station 1 which cost about 50-60 pesos depending on the driver. But then again Station 1, 2 and 3 offers plenty of party places. I guess it all boils down to your preference.

Overall , the place was really nice and I can't understand why there's not much good reviews about Villa de Oro. Before going to Boracay, we tried to do some research on the internet about the resort. Most of the reviews we were getting were not so nice and because of that we had second thoughts if we really wanted to stay there. Well, so much for the bad reviews. It's a good thing we stayed at Villa de Oro and I'm definitely giving them a thumps up for a nice place and good service. Pardon the photos for we got a really bad camera and most of the time we have to rely on our phone's camera :-( Anyway, its better than no pictures at all, right?

our room...

...on a different angle

looking outside...

jellybean at the veranda...

...nicey chairs for chilling out

After refreshing ourselves, we started to explore the island and tried to find a resto where we can eat our heart out. You just can't imagine how freakin' tired we were from ZestAir's "amazing" flight and super hungry because our last meal was like 9 hours ago and that was our breakfast from Jollibee. Yeah, our flight was delayed and to make up to that ZestAir served us with some corned beef meal from some unknown Chinese resto. No, but thank you. It happened that Josh and I were not fans of corned beef so we didn't eat it.

Okay enough of ranting. Back to business of searching for food. We're in Boracay and its just fitting to have seafood, right? It's our first time in Boracay and we noticed that its so hard to concentrate looking for a place to eat when there were so many distractions. There were locals selling crafts and souvenirs, offering boats to rent, different activities you can try on the island, body massage, henna or tattoos and the list could go on and on. Then I saw the booth of Sunny Fun Tours. I've heard of them from some Boracay forums so we decided to check it out. A guy named Jorge filled us in about the activities included in the fun tours. He knows good sales talk and before we knew it we were making reservations.

A few feet away from Sunny Fun Tours we saw the signage for D'Talipapa. Happy, happy, joy, joy!!! D'Talipapa is Boracay's version of Dampa. You search for fresh goodies and they will cook it. We settled for this resto called Sunset Turo-Turo and Grill. We make turo-turo the seafood we like and they will cook it the way we wanted.

josh, delirious from hunger nyahaha!!!

And our food...eyeluvit!

super yummy sinigang na hipon

lip smacking buttered shrimp...

delish grilled tuna belly...

All the dishes were soooo good. The sinigang had just about the right sourness on it and they didn't use those instant powder base sinigang mix. The buttered shrimp was excellent. It tasted a bit sweet. Not sure if they put some sugar or peanut butter(?)on it. Anyhoo, we lurve it. The grilled tuna was perfect. It actually tasted like steak. They probably used really good marinade. Now, now, the turn off here is the prices of their soft drinks. A 1.5 liter Coke costs 75 bucks. An 8 ounce Coke costs 25 bucks. Super duper RIP OFF!!! So my tip, bring as much water and soft drinks as you can. Apparently, this isn't just in Sunset Turo-Turo but the entire Boracay island.

That's it for now. I promise to post more next time. Cheers!