After several days of either riding the waves or simply watching others take them on, your mission to decompress and take it easy accomplished, it’s still difficult to pack up and leave. Siargao (shar-gao) is the kind of place that seems to give off a magnetic force, transforming weekend-long stays into weeks or for the handful of foreign surfing lifers now calling the island home, forever. Time spent here makes you ask the existential question, ‘Why can’t I do this every day for the rest of my life?’
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Sprawling Mindanao, the world’s 19th-largest island, is known for dazzling scenery, primitive hill tribes and an almost complete lack of tourists because of political unrest and occasional fighting between the government and Muslim separatists. What most tourists don’t realise is that the lovely coastal stretch of northern Mindanao between Cagayan de Oro and Siargao Island is Catholic, Cebuano (Visayan) speaking – and quite safe. The area is known for first-rate surfing on Siargao and a peaceful island-life existence on Camiguin. Elsewhere, Mindanao offers up plenty of cherries for the intrepid traveller, including the Philippines’ highest mountain, Mt Apo (2954m), accessible from Davao in southern Mindanao. Exercise caution if you are heading south or west of Cagayan de Oro. 
In a country of thousands of islands it’s hard for one to stand out. Camiguin (cam-ee-gin) manages to distinguish itself, at least in part because of its fortuitous location. It’s far removed from any threat of violence, but because it’s part of Mindanao, many people scratch it off their itinerary. Because it’s uncorrupted by large numbers of tourists, those who do come tend to feel proprietorial about this little jewel and guard news of its treasures like a secret. 
Endowed with an impressive name (the ‘Oro’ part, after all, refers to the gold discovered by the Spanish in the river here), the city unfortunately has the usual traffic-clogged streets and is primarily a stop to or from Camiguin Island or the departure point for the road journey south to Davao. That it is comparatively wealthy becomes obvious when you’re inching forward on the northern access road lined with new car lots. Today, much of the city’s economic activity centres on the vegetable gold of the Del Monte pineapple processing plant a few kilometres north of town, and the company’s plantations in the hills above Cagayan. Every Friday and Saturday night Divisoria or Golden Friendship Park is closed to street traffic and lined with food stalls and street cafés. The presence of Xavier University explains the significant student population cramming the Internet cafés.