Candijay: Waterfalls and Rice Terraces on Bohol's East Coast

Candijay sits on Bohol’s eastern side, facing the Bohol Sea and bordered by Guindulman to the west and Anda to the east — less visited than the western Bohol circuit, but home to two specific draws worth the trip across the island: Can-umantad Falls and the Cadapdapan Rice Terraces. The poblacion is a typical mid-sized Bohol town centre with market, church, and municipal hall; the wider municipality of about 25,000 residents spans coastal barangays fronting the sea and upland barangays holding the terraces, running on agriculture, fishing, and modest ecotourism employment.

Terrain shifts from flat coastal land in the south to steeper hills and small valleys inland and north, with the Can-umantad River draining a significant catchment through the upland barangays before reaching the coast. The rice terraces, in Barangay Cadapdapan, sit on sloped terrain at higher elevation than the poblacion — a pre-colonial agricultural tradition maintained across generations, small-scale and community-managed rather than formally heritage-designated, unlike the Cordillera terraces they’re sometimes compared to. The paddies are irrigated directly by the Cadapdapan River, the same watercourse that drops over Can-umantad Falls just below, and Candijay ranks among Bohol’s top rice-producing municipalities, meaning the terraces are still working farmland rather than a preserved landscape. Candijay’s parish, dedicated to Nuestra Señora del Carmen, dates to 18th-century Augustinian mission expansion into eastern Bohol’s interior; the 16 July fiesta draws a strong Carmelite devotional following from surrounding towns. Upland communities still organize planting and harvest around cooperative work arrangements (abot-abota).

Can-umantad Falls itself is generally credited as Bohol’s tallest waterfall, with a drop of roughly 60 metres over horizontal beds of the Carmen Formation, a calcareous and tuffaceous sedimentary layer dated to the Middle Miocene, some 16 to 11 million years ago — the exposed rock strata are visible on the cliff face beside the falling water. The name comes from the Boholano numeral can-uman, sixty, a direct reference to that height. A stone path leads down in 15 to 20 minutes to the shallow base pool, and the municipality collects a modest entrance fee of ₱20 for adults and ₱10 for children.

Freshwater fish from the Can-umantad River — tilapia and mudfish — appear as sinigang or simply grilled, and upland barangays grow heirloom rice varieties, though not at commercial scale.

Candijay’s coastal side carries its own ecological weight. The Panadtaran Mangrove Forest, on Cogtong Bay, is one of the most species-diverse mangrove systems recorded in the Philippines, with at least 36 species identified and some bakauan (Rhizophora) specimens estimated at a century or more old; the wider Carood Watershed that feeds the bay has recorded 33 mangrove species near its mouth alone, ranking the area as the most biodiverse mangrove zone in Central Visayas. That diversity survived a genuine near-loss: widespread clearing for fishponds through the early 1990s sharply cut local fish catches, and it took a community-based rehabilitation programme, launched with DENR, USAID, and World Bank support starting in 1993, to reverse the decline. The Panadtaran Mangrove Association, founded in 1996 with 40 members and now numbering roughly 160, holds a Community-Based Forest Management Agreement covering 596 hectares and runs a boardwalk-and-boat eco-tour alongside mud crab, oyster, and shrimp culture — a livelihood built directly on the ecosystem its members once helped strain and have since spent three decades restoring.

Local lore attaches to two of Candijay’s smaller natural sites. At Canawa Cold Spring, whose name comes from the Cebuano word for a vat or pan describing its basin shape, residents maintain that no one has ever reached the bottom of the pool and that its water source remains unidentified — a belief rather than a confirmed depth, but one that persists alongside the more measurable fact of the spring’s genuinely cold water, best appreciated during the March–May dry season. At Cantuligsok Hill, the tallest point in the municipality at 307 metres, local tradition holds that couples who reach the summit together will stay together — a piece of courtship folklore attached to what is otherwise an undeveloped, informal hike with views reportedly extending toward Guindulman and Mabini on a clear day.

Barangay Cano-olin holds Bay Daku, a pre-World War II ancestral house with a floor area of 252 square metres, built almost entirely from bajong tindalo lumber and decorated with carved fan and star moldings — a scale of construction that points to a household of some means at the time. Its framing uses flexible joinery rather than a rigid frame, an engineering choice documented across several of Bohol’s older vernacular houses specifically because a stiff structure is more likely to fail under typhoon wind loads or seismic shaking than one built to flex.

What’s here, briefly

• Can-umantad Falls — Bohol’s tallest waterfall at roughly 60 metres, dropping over exposed Miocene-era sedimentary rock; entrance ₱20/₱10.
• Cadapdapan Rice Terraces — hillside paddies in Barangay Cadapdapan, irrigated by the same river that feeds the falls, most scenic during the June–July planting and November–December harvest seasons.
• Panadtaran Mangrove Forest — a 36-species mangrove system on Cogtong Bay, community-managed since the 1990s with a boardwalk and boat tour.
• Canawa Cold Spring and Cantuligsok Hill — a cold spring with a local “bottomless” legend, and the municipality’s tallest hill, tied to a courtship tradition.
• Bay Daku — a pre-war tindalo-wood ancestral house in Barangay Cano-olin.
• Bohol Sea coastline — quiet, undeveloped beach stretches accessible from coastal barangays, including the Kawasihan Sand Bar on Cogtong Bay.
• Nuestra Señora del Carmen Parish Church — the town church, notable for its post-earthquake rehabilitation and surviving Spanish-era stone perimeter wall.

Getting there

From Tagbilaran, Candijay is 2 to 2.5 hours by bus via the coastal road through Loay, Jagna, and Guindulman; buses from Dao Terminal bound for Anda or Guindulman serve the Candijay market stop. From the poblacion, habal-habal covers the last stretch to Can-umantad Falls (20–25 minutes inland) or the Cadapdapan terraces (about 30 minutes north).

Travel tips

Can-umantad Falls is the main reason most travellers stop here — a morning departure from Tagbilaran allows a comfortable round trip. The trail down to the falls takes 15–20 minutes on a stone path; wear footwear with grip. Visit the terraces from February to April (dry season, paddies planted) or November to December (harvest). There’s no ATM in the poblacion; carry cash from Jagna or Tagbilaran.

Other places to consider

• Anda — the beach peninsula immediately east.
• Guindulman — the neighbouring coastal town to the west, on the same road from Tagbilaran.
• Jagna — the port town further along the coastal road toward Tagbilaran.

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Location and travel detail reflect publicly available information as of 2026-07-16. Confirm trail conditions before visiting the falls. bohol-philippines.com earns a commission on bookings made through partner links at no cost to you.