Puerto Galera

People were trading along this coast long before Spain arrived. Chinese traders are thought to have known these sheltered inlets before the Spanish arrived, although no evidence of a Chinese settlement here has been found, and northern Mindoro lay on the routes that linked the islands to China and the wider Malay world. The Mangyan peoples of the interior, among them the Iraya, were the island's earlier inhabitants and still live in communities inland from the coast.

The Spanish name records what the harbour was used for: puerto de galeras, the port of the galleons, a refuge deep enough and enclosed enough for ships to shelter and be repaired. Spanish ships came through the passage from Batangas in 1570 and named the place; a settlement grew around Muelle Bay and served as the island's seat of government until 1663, when the capital was moved to Baco. It was also exposed: raiders from the sultanates of the south attacked the Mindoro coast repeatedly, and coastal towns were built and rebuilt around that threat. In the Second World War the island was fought over, with American forces landing near San Jose in south-western Mindoro in December 1944.

Puerto Galera's modern life began under water. Its reefs and the currents of the Verde Island Passage attracted divers from the 1970s onwards, and Sabang grew from a fishing village into a strip of dive shops and guesthouses. In 1973 the area was designated a UNESCO Man and Biosphere reserve, and the bay is the only one in the Philippines on the list of the Club of the Most Beautiful Bays of the World. The opening of faster boats from Batangas turned it into Manila's nearest beach weekend.

The town's culture has two layers that rarely mix. One is that of an ordinary Tagalog-speaking coastal municipality: the church on the plaza, the fiesta, the basketball court in every barangay, karaoke at family gatherings, and a calendar shaped by Catholic feasts. Holy Week and the Christmas season, with its dawn Masses in the weeks before the 25th, are the fixed points of the year.

The other is the international diving community that has grown up at Sabang since the 1970s. A number of foreign divers settled permanently, married locally and opened shops and restaurants, and the village has an unusually mixed population for a town of this size, with menus, signage and conversation to match. The relationship between resort business and municipal life — water, waste, building on the shore, the fees charged to visitors — is a constant local subject.

Inland, the Iraya Mangyan maintain their own language and traditions, and are known for their basketry, sold from a community settlement near Talipanan. Mangyan groups across Mindoro have historically been pushed away from the coast by lowland settlement, and their land rights remain a live issue. Visitors are generally welcomed in the villages, but the ordinary courtesies apply: ask before photographing, and buy directly from the weavers.

About 42,000 people live in the municipality, the figure the 2024 census gives, spread across the Poblacion and its twelve other barangays, coastal and inland. Tourism is the dominant employer — resorts, dive shops, boat crews, tricycle drivers, construction — and much of the work is seasonal, busiest from December to May and thin in the monsoon months. Fishing continues alongside it, as does small-scale farming of coconuts, bananas and calamansi on the slopes behind the coast.

The day starts early. Boats go out before dawn, the market by the pier is at its busiest in the first hours of the morning, and by mid-afternoon the heat has emptied the streets. Ferries from Batangas set the rhythm of arrivals, and Friday evening brings a wave of weekenders from Manila that recedes on Sunday night.

Growth has brought familiar pressures. Water supply, sewage and rubbish disposal struggle to keep up with the resorts, and the state of the reefs and the coastal water is watched closely, since both the fishing and the tourism depend on them. Power cuts occur, the coast road is narrow and steep in places, and heavy rain can cut it. Many young people leave for Manila or for work abroad, and remittances support households here as they do across the country.

Seafood is the foundation. Tuna, tanigue, lapu-lapu and squid are grilled over charcoal or fried and served with rice, and kinilaw — raw fish cured in vinegar or calamansi with onion, ginger and chilli — is the dish most associated with this coast. Sinigang, a sour soup soured with tamarind or calamansi, and paksiw, fish simmered in vinegar, use the same catch. Prawns and crab appear when the boats have had a good night.

Beyond the sea the food is standard Tagalog home cooking: adobo simmered in vinegar, soy and garlic; pork lechon kawali; pancit noodles at celebrations; and rice with everything. Carinderias in the Poblacion serve a few pots of whatever was cooked that morning, chosen by pointing. Mindoro's calamansi, the small green citrus grown across the island, goes into drinks, dipping sauces and marinades, and the local bananas are eaten fried as banana cue, rolled in caramelised sugar.

To drink there is San Miguel beer, fresh buko juice straight from the coconut, and tuba, the fermented sap of the coconut palm, which is a village drink rather than a resort one. Halo-halo — shaved ice with sweet beans, fruit and milk — is the afternoon answer to the heat. On the beach strips the cooking broadens, with long-established foreign-run kitchens turning out European and other dishes alongside the Filipino menus.