Carabao Island in the Philippines - Ivy’s Vine Beach Resort

My friend and I had been staying in Boracay for a week and a half and decided we would like to travel to some of the quieter areas nearby. I found out online that you could get a ferry quite easily to Carabao island. I googled the island and immediately saw references to Ivy’s place on every page. After finding their website i sent an email for more information. Trent, one of the owners, emailed me back later that day saying they had availability and telling me the times and prices of the ferry from Caticlan.
We arrived into Lanas a day late, due to hangovers!, and we were met by Trent immediately off the boat. He walked us up the beach a few meters to the resort. We were delighted to be given the nearest bungallow, facing out onto the beach, literallly 10 steps from the sea…perfect! We had a big room with comfortable bed and clean and big bathroom. Outside our door we had a little table and bench which became our favourite spot for reading and watching the sunset.
After dropping our things we went over to the bar area for some breakfast and met Ivy, Trents wife and Sean his nephew who was also working there. There is a really nice menu for the daytime, full breakfasts, noodles, sandwhiches ect.. but our favourite part of our stay was the evening meal. Having been travelling for the last 2 months we were getting sick of eating in restaurants and were dying for a home cooked meal. Our first night at Ivy’s vine we went over for dinner and a big table was set up for everyone. We were delighted to join Ivy, Trent, Sean and his parents who were visiting. Dinner was delicious, fresh fish with sweet and sour vegetables and rice. Each night was something different and equally as nice. We were very excited about being able to ask “whats for dinner??” instead of trawling through the endless menus we had gotten so used to.
We had decided that after a quite active stay in Boracay we were happy to do absolutely nothing during our stay here…and we had the perfect setting. There is, however, loads to do. There is a dive shop in the resort and many dive sites. Horse riding or mountain bikes can br arranged too. On the rare occasion we did decide to do something, we chose to take a walk into the little village behind the resort. There is a school and a few hut type 
houses with pigs and chickens wandering around and loads of incredibly friendly people, we walked further inland and saw lots of paddy fields and the odd cow or goat pottering about, we took at least 50 photos on our short walk!
On our last day, Ivy made a call and arranged for us to have massages in our room. If we thought we were relaxed beforehand, we learned a new meaning of the word. Afterwards we headed for dinner, BBq tuna, salad and rice…yummy, and had drinks with Trent, Ivy, Sean and a few of the locals. It was a lovely end to a lovely few days. I would definately reccommend a stay here, a gorgeous retreat from the busier tourist areas nearby.

Beach in front of IvyChildren helping out

Michael was one of our first visitors and he took lots of pictures. this is just a small sampling if you want to see more go to his face book.  If you want to see more of our guests comments or photos go to our web page.

One of our first GuestsA view from the top of Carabao

One of the many beaches to be foundJust one of the different sunsets

A coconut plantation from up highVery old tree

One of many sunsetsApplying what they learned.

A rooster doing classroom work

Many agricultural animalsLocal spear fishermen

Great Pictures we enjoyed having you here.  Come Again!!!