Cebu travel info

Midnight at Mactan's Terminal 2. You step outside and the sticky sea air hits first. Twenty minutes in a resort shuttle and pool lights glow between palm trees; next morning the bangkas, outrigger boats with bamboo wings, are waiting off the beach. Half of what visitors call 'Cebu' is really this island, Mactan.

Cross the bridge into Cebu City and the air changes. Jeepneys idle in rows trailing exhaust, and street stalls hang bunches of puso, rice cooked in woven palm-leaf pouches. Lunch is lechon, whole roast pig with skin like crackling glass; dinner is sutukil, where you pick fish at the seafood stalls and have it grilled, simmered and cured raw. Outside the Basilica del Santo Niño and Magellan's Cross, people with candles never stop coming.

Get up early one day and head down the island. At Moalboal you swim a few strokes off the beach and a sardine shoal spins into a silver tornado; at Oslob the boats go out at dawn to see whale sharks. The two bridges between the city and Mactan jam every rush hour, so where you sleep decides half the trip.

Mactan-Cebu International Airport (CEB)