Esoy Hot Spring

Esoy Hot Spring sits in a jungle canyon above Catmon, where geothermal pools collect in a stream cut through the highland limestone. Cebu has no active volcanoes — unlike Negros, home to Kanlaon just across the strait — so warm-water springs here are generally attributed to heat rising along fault lines rather than volcanic activity, which makes a spot like this a small geological anomaly on an otherwise cool, forested slope. The trek in is short but uneven, cutting through canyon forest before reaching the pools.

Esoy is one of two Catmon sites carrying the name — the other, Esoy Spring Falls, sits further up the same general highland area but is a separate stop reached by a longer river trek to a cascade rather than a short walk to still pools. Visitors sometimes assume the two are the same place under different marketing, but they’re distinct experiences: this one is a soak, that one is a hike to a waterfall. Worth knowing before planning a day around just one of them.

Catmon’s highland barangays run mostly on subsistence farming — corn, root crops, some upland rice — and a spring like this brings in a modest, irregular stream of income on top of that, mostly through the families who maintain the trail and the cottages rather than through any large operator. That arrangement is common across Cebu’s smaller nature sites: tourism supplements the local economy rather than replacing it, and the people collecting a small fee at the gate are usually the same people farming the surrounding hillside during the rest of the week.

Warm mineral water carries the same folk reputation here that it does across much of the Visayas — a soak for aching muscles and joints, tied to generations of informal use rather than any clinical claim. Older visitors especially treat the pools less as a novelty and more as a continuation of a habit passed down from parents and grandparents, alongside other traditional remedies like hilot massage. That reputation is part of why sites like this keep getting visited even without formal promotion — word travels through family networks more than through marketing.

The canyon setting means shade for most of the day, which keeps both the trek and the pools noticeably cooler than the open coastal road below. That tree cover matters beyond comfort — canyon forest like this helps regulate how much water reaches the stream and at what temperature, so a cleared hillside upstream would change the spring’s character over time in ways that aren’t easily reversed. It’s a small reminder that a site this quiet stays quiet partly because the surrounding forest hasn’t been touched.

• The mineral water runs warm rather than hot, and is used the way springs are traditionally used across the islands — to soothe muscles after a day of travel or trekking.
• The trail to the springs is short but requires sturdy footwear for the rocky sections.
• Private cottages by the water can be booked; arriving early on weekends improves the odds of getting one.
• Don’t confuse this with Esoy Spring Falls nearby — same general area, different trek, different experience.

Explore More in Moalboal and Southwest Cebu

• Tuble Marine Sanctuary
• San Roque Hot Spring
• Lake Pingganon