Making Boracay Two Hours Further Away

The wonderful thing about Caticlan Airport is that it's THAT close to Boracay. Flying in just before touchdown on the airstrip, and as long as you are on the correct side of the airplane, you can catch a bird's eye view of Bora's beautiful white sands. With a thud you come down, and after a few minutes collecting your bags, you take a 5 minute tricycle ride to the pier, take a 15 minute boat ride to the island, and less than three hours since you started your journey from your home in Manila, you are on the beach sipping your Mojitos.

What can ruin the vacation is not the hordes of tourists and the crowds. It's the experience after. Last week, instead of flying out of Caticlan airport, I had to take a van to Kalibo, a 90-minute journey, where I got on a PAL plane to get back to Manila. Instead of a quick flight back to the capital, my body, weakened of course by too much alcohol in too short a time, had to endure an added road-trip beating. The only explanation I got was that the winds prevented a safe takeoff, even though the PAL Express plane had managed to get in and was sitting there in the airport. (Did that mean it made an unsafe landing?)

It turns out that the diversion to Kalibo by airlines happens quite often. For consumers, beware that what you pay for -- the quickest way to get in and out of Bora -- is not necessarily what you always get.