How do I get to Apo Island from Dauin?

Apo Island is a barangay of Dauin and lies a few kilometres offshore. By road you go about 15 km south to the boats at Malatapay in Zamboanguita, roughly 20 to 30 minutes, then cross by banca in about 30 to 45 minutes. If you are diving with a Dauin resort, its own boat usually goes straight out from the resort beach.

Resort dive boats do, from their own beaches. The public bancas leave from Malatapay in Zamboanguita, about 15 km further south, which is where independent day trippers go.

Yes, and there are two different sets of them on a Dauin and Apo trip. Our quote covers the private car and the waiting driver. At Malatapay the boat hire and the Apo Island marine-sanctuary fee are arranged and paid on the spot, and they vary with boat size and group. Back on the Dauin coast the sanctuaries there carry their own municipal user fee, charged per dive rather than per stay and normally not inside your dive package, settled in cash at the dive centre. Neither of them goes through us and we never mark either up.

Early, and the reason is both ends of the day. The sea off Malatapay is usually calmest before mid-morning, which means better visibility and a smoother crossing, and you share the shallows with turtles rather than with the later boats. The return is the harder constraint: the last boats off Apo leave between about 2 and 3 in the afternoon, and 4pm is the latest the coast guard allows. Dauin is only 20 to 30 minutes from Malatapay, so leaving your resort by about 7am costs you nothing and buys you the full day rather than the end of it.

Yes. Your boat brings you back to Malatapay, where your driver picks you up for the road leg to Dauin over the same ~15 km. The banca is arranged and paid at Malatapay, as on the way out. Ask for both road legs in one quote request and we price them together. If the way back ends somewhere other than where you started, say where in the Anything else? box on the quote form and we quote that leg instead of the reverse of this one.

Usually yes. There is no minimum notice on this route and no cut-off hour, so a request for tomorrow, or for later today, is worth sending rather than writing off. What settles it is whether a vetted driver is free for the time you need, and you will have the answer and the price by email the same day, usually within a few hours. An early start is routine here rather than a complication. The part that gets harder with less notice is choice - holding a particular vehicle size or an exact pickup hour - not whether the journey can happen, so send the date and, if the timing is tight, the hour you need to be moving.

Nothing to ask for a quote. Once you are happy with the price it is two steps, not a choice between two: a booking fee paid online (card, bank transfer or GCash) confirms the trip and is what gets you your written confirmation, then the balance goes directly to your driver at the end of the journey. The fee is part of the all-in figure you agreed rather than an extra on top of it, and your quote states it before you pay. Free cancellation more than 72 hours before pickup refunds the fee in full.

Neither of us books it ahead, and that is the useful part: nothing has to be reserved before you travel for Apo Island. The boat hire and the marine-sanctuary fee are arranged and paid at Malatapay on the day, so what you need from us is the drive there timed to the morning sea conditions and a driver who waits. We quote the private road leg each side; the boat and the fee are not in our figure and we do not mark them up. Tell us roughly when you want to be on the water in the "Ferry or boat" box and we will set the pickup.