Mindoro Island · The Philippines
Oriental Mindoro
Reef, ridge and river within an hour of each other — on the quieter side of the island most visitors never reach.
Photo: View of Puerto Galera Bay from Casalay Resort by TheFrirish, CC0 via Wikimedia Commons
Where you are
An hour from Luzon, and a world off the usual route
Mindoro is the seventh-largest island in the Philippines. Its eastern half — Oriental Mindoro — faces Luzon across the Verde Island Passage, with the provincial capital at Calapan City.
Most international visitors to the Philippines go to Palawan, Boracay or Cebu. Mindoro sits closer to Manila than any of them and gets a fraction of the traffic. You reach it by road and ferry rather than a second flight, which is the main reason it stays quiet.
The island narrows into a spine of mountains, so you can dive a coral wall in the morning and stand under a waterfall in the afternoon without a long drive between them.
- From Auckland
- ~13–18hTotal travel, routing dependent
- NZ passports
- 30 daysVisa-free for tourism
- Time difference
- −4hNZST; −5h during NZDT
- Driest months
- Nov–MayTyphoon risk Jun–Oct
See it first
What the place actually looks like
Photographs only get you so far. Here is footage shot by people who have actually been — every clip credited to the channel that made it.
Three ways in
Pick your version of the island
Most people come for the diving and never leave the coast. The interior and the culture are the parts that surprise them.
Beaches & Diving
The Verde Island Passage holds some of the densest marine biodiversity measured anywhere. Puerto Galera is how you get into it.
Into the water
Nature & Adventure
Mount Halcon has a reputation among Filipino climbers as a genuinely hard mountain. Tamaraw Falls needs only a roadside stop.
Head inland
Culture & People
Eight Mangyan groups live on Mindoro. Two of them still write in a script that predates Spanish arrival.
Meet the island
A note on timing
Our summer is their wet season
The New Zealand Christmas break lands squarely in Mindoro’s dry months. January and February are about as good as it gets — which is convenient, because that is when most Kiwis can actually take leave.
When to go, and what it costsPhoto: PH - Puerto Galera - White Beach - sunset 1 by Eugene Alvin Villar (seav), CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons