Cliff Haven Resort

Cliff Haven Resort operates as a four-star property in Jagna, on Bohol’s southeastern coast, roughly 70 kilometres by road from Bohol-Panglao International Airport — placing it well outside the beach-resort belt around Panglao and squarely in Bohol’s port-and-ferry country instead. The property backs onto the low rocky headlands typical of this stretch of shoreline, with a garden, an outdoor swimming pool, and a private beach area supplementing the coastal setting. A 24-hour front desk, room service, free Wi-Fi throughout, and an airport shuttle for the Panglao run are listed among its services — the shuttle is worth booking ahead, since few Jagna properties offer one at all.

The restaurant serves American, Filipino, and Asian dishes, with vegetarian, dairy-free, and halal options listed on the menu, and breakfast runs à la carte, continental, or a full English/Irish spread. For a more locally rooted order, grilled tanigue (Spanish mackerel) dressed with vinegar and chili is standard carinderia fare drawn from Jagna’s own morning fish landings — the town’s bangka fleet comes in most days before sunrise.

Jagna’s own poblacion, a short drive from the resort along the coastal road, carries more history than its size suggests. The Church of Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist dates its original coral-stone structure to 1697, founded by Augustinian friars and among the older surviving ecclesiastical buildings on Bohol; its bell tower still shows visible repairs from later earthquakes. The town market’s defining product is peanut butter, made in small batches from roasted local peanuts and sold in recycled jars, and Jagna is one of the Bohol municipalities most closely tied to kalamay — the sticky rice-and-coconut sweet traditionally packed into coconut-shell halves and sealed with colored crepe paper, credited locally to an Augustinian Recollect friar, Fr. Mariano Gutierrez, and dated to around 1825. Ching’s Calamay, based in Barangay Can-upao, is the most commonly cited producer, and the town formalizes the craft each April with its own Calamay Festival.

Cliff Haven sits within reach of two inland attractions on the Lonoy side of town: Lonoy Cold Spring and Kinahugan Falls, both about three kilometres away and workable as a half-day trip by habal-habal. Lonoy carries a heavier historical weight than the cold spring alone suggests — Barangay Lonoy is where, on Easter Sunday 1901, Captain Gregorio “Goyo” Caseñas led roughly 413 Bohol fighters, most armed only with daggers, machetes, and spears, in an ambush against American forces during the Philippine-American War, an engagement remembered locally as the Lonoy Massacre. A historical marker placed by the Philippine Historical Committee in 1958 commemorates the battle, and Caseñas has a separate monument in town. Guests heading out to the falls or spring can take in the marker with minimal detour.

Jagna functions as Bohol’s principal southern ferry gateway to Mindanao — 2Go Travel and other operators run overnight service from Cagayan de Oro (8–10 hours) and a shorter Nasipit crossing (4–5 hours) — which gives the town a transit-driven, working-port character distinct from the beach-tourism economy further west. A four-star property with a pool and full restaurant service is unusual for a town whose accommodation base otherwise leans toward smaller pension houses serving ferry passengers and local business travelers; Cliff Haven reads as a bet on Jagna’s slower tourism growth, a trend that has also drawn a 25-year paragliding development lease near Motu de Lorenzo Nature Park in the uplands and continued municipal investment in the town’s baywalk and storm-surge mangrove belt, built under two terms of Mayor Joseph Rañola. That belt — roughly 1,658 square metres of replanted pagatpat and bakawan mangrove along the port promenade — is credited with buffering the shoreline during Typhoon Odette in December 2021, protecting the same coastal waters that feed the reef Cliff Haven’s guests are likely to snorkel.

Diving from Jagna is a quieter alternative to Panglao’s more developed dive circuit. The town’s stretch of the Danajon Bank, one of only two double-barrier reef systems in the Indo-Pacific, is a buoyed no-anchor, no-fishing zone that has held up better than sections of the wider bank exposed to decades of blast and cyanide fishing. Nausok Point, Pangdan, Canupao Point, and Cantagay Point are the named beach-entry dive and snorkel sites along this coast, largely unmarketed outside Bohol’s own diving community. Cliff Haven does not run its own dive operation — Drift Divers, based further along the coast at Paseo Del Mar, is the nearest dedicated shop, renting gear and running guided fun dives from roughly ₱1,000–1,400 per session — but the resort’s own beach frontage works for casual snorkeling on calm days.

At a Booking.com score of 8.0 (“Very Good”) from 42 reviews, Cliff Haven sits toward the upper end of Jagna’s small hotel stock. For travelers routing Bohol’s southeastern circuit — pairing Jagna with Anda’s beaches or an onward Mindanao ferry — it functions as a comfortable overnight base with more built-out amenities than the port-side pension houses, at the cost of being a short ride rather than a walk from most of the town’s own points of interest.

Getting There & Booking

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