Gumasa Beach

Tags: Asia, Latest, Philippines, Travel

The famous boxing champion Manny "Pacman" Pacquiao is from General Santos City and his favourite local beach is probably Gumasa.

Overloaded multivans ply the route between General Santos and Glan. After one hour we arrived Glan and transferred to a tricycle which took us the last few kilometres to the beach. There is only 2-3 resorts here and we decided to check out Coco Beach Resort. It was Monday and the resort was deserted, still it was impossible to knock the room price down. We had no other choice than shelling out a staggering 1500 pesos (37 USD) for a basic nipa hut, because we already knew that the other resorts would certainly not going to be less expensive.

On the bright side, our nipa hut was only a few meters away from the beach. It was a sunny and hot day so we went swimming to cool down. The beach is beautiful but the sand is not perfect white. So to classify this as the "Boracay of Mindanao" is probably an overstatement. But unlike Boracay, which is the busiest beach destination in the Philippines, I might still prefer the solitude of Gumasa Beach. We were in fact the only ones on the vast beach today, maybe because it was Monday.

Forget about restaurants on the beach, bars, shopping and so on. You won't find anything here. We spent only one night here, anything longer would start to become boring. For us it was a short but nice retreat after the hike to Mount Matutum.

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