Buyong Maribago Beach

Buyong Maribago Beach sits on Mactan Island’s eastern shore, within Lapu-Lapu City — the same general stretch of coast as Maribago and Abuno, the barangays that made Mactan known for handmade guitars, a craft trade still running out of small workshops a short distance inland. At the beach itself, the draw is more conventional: a stretch of resort-backed shoreline set up for water sports and quick access to Mactan Channel’s reef and sanctuary sites.

Resort-based tourism is now the dominant income source along this stretch, layered on top of older fishing livelihoods that still work the same waters.

• Water sports run the standard Mactan lineup — jet-skiing, parasailing, banana boats — launched straight from the shoreline.
• A short boat ride reaches nearby marine sanctuaries for snorkeling.
• Renting a local outrigger boat is the more affordable way to string together a private island-hopping run.

Buyong is the barangay name, and it sits close enough to Maribago proper that the two are often used loosely to describe the same run of coastline, even though they’re technically separate. The guitar-making history attached to this stretch goes back further than the resorts: Spanish friars brought guitars from Mexico during the colonial period and had local craftsmen in what was then called Opon repair and eventually build them, which is the root of a trade that later concentrated around Maribago before moving further inland to Abuno and Pajac as beachfront land here was bought up for resort development. A handful of guitar shops still trade on the Maribago name for that reason, even with the workshops now sitting a short drive away rather than on the beach itself.

That inland shift is a fairly direct trade-off: land that once supported small guitar workshops and fishing households now supports beach resorts and the water-sports operators who work this shoreline, and the income has moved with it. Jet-ski and banana-boat concessions, boat rentals for the marine sanctuary runs, and the resort staff working the beachfront hotels are now the more visible economy here, though outrigger fishing hasn’t disappeared, it just shares the same water with recreational traffic more than it once did.

The marine sanctuaries reachable by short boat ride from Buyong, part of the wider Mactan Channel network shared with Nalusuan, Gilutongan, and Hilutungan, are the reason the snorkeling here holds up better than an unprotected stretch of reef would after decades of resort development next door. Staying inside the marked snorkeling areas and skipping any feed-the-fish routine a boat crew might offer helps keep those sanctuaries functioning rather than just decorative.

For a beach day built around activity rather than quiet sand, Buyong Maribago is one of the more straightforward stops on Mactan’s east coast: water sports on demand, a boat to the reef a short ride away, and enough beachfront infrastructure that very little needs to be arranged in advance. Morning still tends to bring calmer water for the boat crossings to the sanctuaries, with afternoon winds picking up enough by mid-afternoon to make the jet-ski and banana-boat runs the better fit for that part of the day.

Explore More in Lapu-Lapu City

• Chobby-Chobby Restaurant
• Cebu Nature Park
• Ronda Wharf