Camotes Island: Cebu’s promising tourism area!

Last Friday morning, I boarded an Agusta A109A helicopter owned by my good friend Bobby Urgello, piloted by Capt. Felipe Verula and co-piloted by Mactan Cebu International Airport Authority board member Winglip Chang for the 60-kilometer, 20-minute flight to the island of Camotes, the only major island municipality in Cebu province that I had never set foot before. We flew to San Francisco, Camotes for the inauguration of its old decrepit airstrip, which the MCIAA, together with the province of Cebu under Gov. Gwen Garcia, refurbished back into operational use.

On hand to grace the opening of the 1,200-meter, five-hectare airstrip was Gov. Garcia, Rep. Red Durano of the fifth district of Cebu where Camotes falls under; Department of Tourism regional director Dawnee Roa, San Francisco Mayor Alfredo Arquillano, Cebu City Councilor Sylvan "Jak" Jakosalem, and retired Maj. Gen. Adelberto Yap, general manager of the MCIAA. Like I’ve said, I had never set foot on Camotes soil until this trip… though I had flown over Camotes Island before and passed by it during our SuperCat trips to and from Ormoc City.

What I saw on Camotes Island is a big potential for tourism because I could see from the helicopter a lot of unspoiled white sand beaches. It is not like what you see in Boracay which has a three-kilometer long white sand beach… it is rather much like what we have on Mactan Island — white sand beach enclaves perfect for hotels or resorts to use.

Camotes Island also boasts the only freshwater lake in the province of Cebu. However, due to its distance from the mainland, it is largely unspoiled and undeveloped. In the United States, freshwater lakes are tourist and recreational spots as hotels or resorts located beside them offer various water sports like sailing or jet-skiing. I gathered that crocodiles used to infest this lake in the old days. Well, I guess most of them have already moved up to the halls of Congress.

Arriving at the still unpaved airstrip, I could see that many private planes had also flown there to grace the inauguration. I saw 15 assorted aircraft lined up on the tarmac. That Camotes Island is poised to become part of Cebu’s great promise of tourism is due to the effort of Gov. Gwen Garcia who has always insisted that Camotes Island be included in Cebu’s tourism promotion. Last year, she began her "Soroy-Soroy sa Cebu" program where a lot of our fellow Cebuanos went with her to see the beauty of our own province. Indeed, many Filipinos have gone to foreign lands, yet they have seen very little of their own and that’s exactly what Gov. Garcia has been pushing for.

The problem with Camotes is the lack of access. It is not out of the way of the shipping route… in fact, as we’ve said, the SuperCat passes by Camotes on its way to Cebu from Ormoc and back. But because most of the people there are poor, they cannot afford to travel as much as other people do. Since Camotes is a huge island (it is much bigger than Bantayan Island), it is therefore sparsely populated. But it has a potential for growth.

The airstrip now operational in Camotes is a boon to general aviation since the Mactan Cebu International Airport has become very busy these days with the upsurge of international flights arriving in Cebu on a daily basis. Among the dignitaries with the Cebu governor was a Korean businessman whose business is aviation schools. With Manila and Cebu getting so crowded, Camotes Island seems to be a perfect location for such an investment by this Korean businessman.

I also gathered from Gov. Garcia that a German skydiving school was also looking for a place to establish a presence here in Cebu. If and when that happens, Gov. Gwen told me that in the next inauguration she’ll attend, she’s going to arrive by parachute! Knowing that the governor isn’t scared of heights (her first presscon at the Provincial Capitol was held impromptu at the forehead of the Capitol building she was inspecting), I wouldn’t be surprised that someday the governor would float down from the sky in one of her sorties around the province.

I have been to a lot of airport inaugurations, but this one was perhaps the best in the sense that Roy Bruce flew in his spectacular Extra 300L aerobatic plane… the only one in the Philippines. Actually, there is another aerobatic airplane in Manila, but I’m not sure what kind of aircraft it is.

Indeed, Cebu is blessed to have a pilot like Roy Bruce who flies his plane and does difficult maneuvers, from rolls to gut-wrenching loops and flips that you only see in the movies or on TV. He flies his plane so low to the runway and shoots up vertically into the sky and after a few thousand feet, suddenly flips the plane on its back and it barrels straight down toward the earth to the horror and eventual delight of the crowd.

Yes, the Camotes Island airstrip brings a new promise for Cebu and its people who got their first taste of aviation. It made me wonder what my grandparents might have thought when the Lahug airstrip was opened to bi-planes in the early 20s. Of course, the crowd last Friday made it a bit dangerous for the aircraft to take off because they all wanted to look at the planes from the side of the runway… and yes, including their dogs. But the Camotes airstrip is being fenced so that this won’t be a problem when small planes use this strip for their touch-and-go landings.

It is interesting what a single runway can do to change the lives of people. Thirty years ago, Sen. Sergio "Serging" Osmeña, decided that if Cebu were to take its place as one of the great cities in the world, it would have to abandon the Lahug Airport and transfer to the American airstrip in faraway Mactan Island. This brought a howl among Cebuano businessmen who could not grasp the vision of Serging. Of course, they had a right to howl because flying to Manila in those days meant crossing the Mactan Channel as there was yet no bridge to Mactan Island.

Transferring to Mactan was considered the big leap that brought to Cebu international flights and its present tourism boom. With the arrival of tourists, soon direct foreign investors flocked to Cebu, spurring new developments and making Cebu one of the biggest contributors to the nation’s economy. More importantly, the tourism industry in Cebu has helped our neighboring islands like Bohol, Negros and Siquijor.

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.thefreeman.com. He also hosts a weekly talkshow, "Straight from the Sky," shown every Monday, at 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable.