PapaKit's Horse Ranch

PapaKit’s Horse Ranch sits inside PapaKit’s Marina and Fishing Lagoon in Liloan, roughly 45 minutes to an hour from Cebu City depending on traffic through the northern coastal towns. The horses work a set trail through the property’s pond grounds — Silot Bay and the towns around it have run brackish-water fish farming for generations, and PapaKit’s built its eco-park around that existing pond system rather than filling it in.

Handlers lead every ride, so the pace suits first-timers and children as readily as anyone with riding experience; this isn’t a gallop-at-will operation. The trail stays flat and slow, which is the point — it functions as a wind-down activity, not the property’s adrenaline draw.

The horses themselves come from stock commonly used at riding operations around the Philippines — sturdy, mixed-breed animals bred for steady temperament over speed, better suited to a slow trail with young or nervous riders than to any kind of racing stock. Feed, farrier visits, and daily care for a working stable add a cost line the ranch carries year-round regardless of how many riders show up on a given day, which is part of why the activity gets bundled into the wider marina complex rather than run as a standalone business — shared staff and shared land costs make more sense spread across several activities than carried by one alone.

Building the horse trail around the existing pond grounds rather than clearing new land kept the fish-farming infrastructure intact — a decision that runs through PapaKit’s whole layout, where new activities have generally been added around the ponds rather than at their expense. The brackish ponds function as both a working aquaculture operation and, now, part of the scenery for riders passing along their edges, an arrangement that’s more common in this stretch of Silot Bay than either pure fish farming or pure tourism running on its own.

For families, the ranch is often the activity that closes out a day at PapaKit’s rather than opens it — after a morning of ziplining or the wake park, a slow horse trail gives kids and tired adults a lower-key way to finish before the drive back to Cebu City. Handlers size horses to riders where possible, though very young children typically ride in front of or alongside an adult handler rather than solo.

PapaKit’s runs the horse ranch alongside ziplining, fishing, and wall climbing, so it works best as the calmer half of a full day out rather than the reason to make the trip on its own.

[FACT NEEDED: number of horses and breed or stock details at PapaKit’s Horse Ranch]

Rides typically run in short blocks rather than an open-ended session, since a working stable needs to rotate horses through rest periods across a full day of bookings rather than keeping the same animals out continuously. That rotation is standard practice at any riding operation handling repeat daily traffic, and it’s part of why arriving earlier in the day — before weekend crowds peak — tends to mean less waiting between the time you pay and the time you’re actually mounted.

The ranch’s setting among working fishponds rather than open pasture makes it a slightly different experience than a countryside horseback outfit elsewhere in Cebu’s uplands; riders here are moving along pond dikes and level ground rather than climbing hillside trails, which keeps the pace naturally flatter and the footing more consistent regardless of recent rain. That’s a practical trade against the more scenic elevation gain a mountain trail ride would offer, but it also means the ranch stays open in conditions that would turn a hillside trail to mud.