My getaway in La Isla Bonita

My second time around in Talicud Island had me joining a specialized workshop on tourism and travel photography as hosted by the Department of Tourism XI last September 26-27. The venue was quite exciting, featuring a new beach resort in the island, La Isla Bonita (LIB), which is owned by a good friend Miss Araceli Ayuste, the same person who manages the famous Punta del Sol Resort in Peñaplata, Island Garden City of Samal (IGACOS).

Just like some common resorts in the island, LIB can be a good setting for those who love to be in isolation for at least a night or two. The island has very limited cellphone and internet signal and it is situated in a distant location of sitio Cogon in Talicud.

The very purpose of choosing the island as the venue of the workshop is to make sure that participants would be able to internalize photography principles as imparted by our resource person, master photographer Rhonson Ng. We stayed for one night in the place and we eventually succeeded our expectation to learn travel and tourism photography.

The resort is cool. It has clear blue waters facing the huge Davao Gulf and is uniformly contrasted with the fine white sand, a trademark in Talicud. It also offers panoramic view of two major mountains in Mindanao – Mt. Apo and Mt. Matutum and the vast mountain scape of the south western Mindanao. The tall coconut trees formed part of its charming beach landscape.

While traveling to and from the resort as part of the itinerary of the workshop, we were oriented to some interesting spots in Talicud such as the mangrove sanctuary and the remarkable “friendship road” as locals would put it.  

As a portion of Kaputian, Talicud Island promises to be the next destination in IGACOS. Although LIB is the lone resort in the place, it won’t be too long for this place to be a haven of tourists and visitors because of its natural but attractive beach attributes.

Thank you very much to the Department of Tourism for inviting me there in the workshop. Photography, indeed, gave me another way to play inside this beautiful part of the universe.