When in Bohol: Isola di Francesco

One of the perks of having a local contact in Bohol is that they'd know the best places to visit in the area. And if they have their own boat, you don't even have to worry about transportation. And that was pretty much what happened when R and I visited Panglao. It is still one of my favorite vacations to date as everything was well prepared by R's dealer, I. And for our second and last stop for island hopping, we went to Isola di Francesco. 

Hello, Isola di Francesco. 

Isola di Francesco is located at Pontod Island and owned by St. Pio devotee, Mr. Ramon Rodriguez. Designed to be a place suitable for retreat and reflection, the place is adorned with several religious sculptures. It also holds regular mass in the island's chapel. 

Though this is often not included in island hopping packages in Bohol, you can easily visit this place by riding one of its shuttle boats from the port. As for the fee, it is up to you. Yes, Isola di Francesco practices the pay what you want scheme as you could avail anything from this island by donating any amount of money. 

Wonder what you can do in the island? 

Aside from the chapel where you could pray or attend mass, you can also visit its museum (which I totally missed as I was distracted by the doves and its eggs), kayak, or eat some local delicacies or even sea urchin. You can pay as little as PHP1 to get a banana cue but please don't be like that as the donations go to the maintenance of the whole island. 

The highlight of our trip there though was the long sandbar. We spent about half an hour just by the sand bar. We didn't swim much as there were some trash in the water. (I saw an island keeper trying to fish out the trash though.) 

As much as I wanted to take more photos, heavy rain hit the island we we were forced to run to the nearest roofed area and got stuck there for about 15 minutes. We left as soon as the rain turned to drizzle. 

I do hope that visitors will be more respectful and keep the place clean. And can someone tell me what kind of fruit this is???