By Benjamin Layug
THERE is a saying that “the older the wine, the better its taste.” I would say this description is also quite apt for the 7-hectare, family-friendly Bluewater Maribago Beach Resort & Spa (www.bluewatermaribago.com.ph), a pioneer luxury resort within the Maribago District in the beautiful island of Mactan, Cebu. The resort opened in July 1989 and last year, it celebrated its milestone silver anniversary. A member of the Bluewater Resorts group, a chain of resorts owned by the wholly Filipino Alegrado family from Butuan City in Mindanao, this Class “AAA” resort has managed to keep up with the times and the competition, remaining very elegant and sophisticated while still highlighting traditional Filipino hospitality with a few modern twists. Just two years after it opened with 30 rooms, it expanded with the new 64-room Garden Wing.
When spas became a huge trend in the wellness industry, it added in January 2007 a third wing—the 50 Amuma Spa Suites designed by architect and wood artist Benji Reyes. Today, the resort, particularly the spa, pavilions and swimming pool area, bears Benji’s signature mark on modern contemporary Filipino architecture (thatched roofs, airy verandas, capiz shell windows, etc.) and you can discern his constant fascination with recycled wood salvaged from old ancestral houses. Lots of it is used all over the resort. As in the past, they worked around the existing decades-old balete and talisay trees when they constructed the new rooms, spa and pavilions. Benji also designed the room’s cantilevered “floating beds,” a Bluewater trademark, as well as other very Filipino wooden sculpted furniture throughout the resort.
Today, the resort has 158 well-appointed, spacious and clean air-conditioned rooms designed in the native Filipino concept—20 Premier De Luxe Rooms, five Royal Bungalows, 83 Deluxe Rooms and 50 Amuma Spa Suites. Room amenities include a mini bar, a wall-mounted flatscreen cable TV, NDD/IDD telephone, a large skylighted bathroom with free-standing bathtub, closet, bidet and separate shower with rain shower head, private veranda and coffee/tea making facility plus free Wi-Fi. Guests are transported to their respective rooms and suites via eco-friendly golf carts.
Bluewater Maribago is also distinct from other resorts on Mactan Island. For one, it has, at 110 meter, the longest beach of them all. Its white-sand beachfront, like that of any other resort on the island, may not be spectacular as Boracay’s (it now being the unfair standard), but it is still quite nice and clean. The addition of the 1.1-hectare, man-made white-sand Bluewater Private Island, located 65 meter offshore from the beach, also provides resort guests with an additional area to bask under the sun. It is also rented out for romantic, intimate and exclusive weddings (it can seat 1,300 guests) and/or private dining.
Of its five top-notch food and beverage outlets, the cool and breezy Cove Live Seafood Restaurant, Bluewater Maribago’s premier restaurant, is the only one on the island to offer a wide variety of the sea’s bounty live, housed in seawater aquariums, and these are prepared to your liking. The others outlets include the 24-hour Allegro Restaurant (the main restaurant that offers a variety of theme dinners and entertainment throughout the week), Molto Italiano (an Italian cafe offering brick oven specialties), Amuma Spa Café & Juice Bar (offering healthy fare) and the open-air Oyster Bar (offers Happy Hour specials).
The resort also has the Bluewater Gallery, a fully functional and updated art gallery that is a venue for local Philippine artists to showcase their works to both local and international audiences. It also hosts events and workshops as part of its art appreciation and educational goals.
The Amuma Spa—“amuma” means “to pamper” in Visayan—only hires single mothers as spa therapists to provide the traditional Filipino hilot, pik pik kawayan sa siki (foot massage using bamboo poles), all best enjoyed in the comfort of your room, as well as Western and Asian massage therapies such as water shiatsu (watsu), Swedish, Namikoshi Shiatsu, Duot, Hot Stone and Travel Revive Fusion, their quality right up there with the best spas in the country.
The three inviting, beach-inspired, lagoon-shaped swimming pools are set amid landscaping that is a feast for the senses. The resort is also known for its Marine Wildlife Saltwater Lagoons which are filled with assorted tropical fish including black tip reef sharks, groupers and clown fish.
