Pura Vida Cabilao Resort

Pura Vida Cabilao Resort: Rebuilt Beachfront Diving on Cabilao Island

Pura Vida Cabilao Resort sits directly on the beachfront of Cabilao Island, the Loon municipality barangay offshore in the strait facing Cebu that has drawn divers to its walls and macro life for decades. The resort reopened in November 2025 after a renovation and rebuild, giving it one of the newer physical setups among Cabilao’s small cluster of dive resorts, even though the property and its dive operation predate that rebuild by years.

That reopening explains an otherwise odd-looking figure in the resort’s current Booking.com listing: a 9.0-out-of-10 “Wonderful” rating built on only four reviews. A four-review count on an island with decades of dive tourism doesn’t mean the resort is new to guests — it means the current listing, rebuilt alongside the physical property, hasn’t yet accumulated the review volume an older listing would carry. Expect that number to climb as recent guests catch up on reviewing their stays.

Rooms and the Rebuild

The rebuilt resort now runs 27 rooms and suites across five categories. Ten standard bamboo cottages sit toward the back of the property, set among coconut palms and garden planting; seven bungalows — two single and five double — are arranged around the pool, with one positioned directly by the beach. Every room comes with an en-suite bathroom, air conditioning, television, and an in-room safe. Guests who stayed through the rebuild have specifically flagged the new rooms as larger and more comfortably finished than what they replaced, with balconies sized for actual use rather than as a token feature.

Diving

Pura Vida runs its own dive operation, the Sea Explorers Cabilao Dive Centre, on-site — a fully equipped setup with a retail shop, a classroom for course work, a camera room for underwater photographers to rinse and store gear, and a separate room for guests’ personal equipment. That level of dedicated dive infrastructure is standard for Cabilao’s resorts generally, where diving is the primary reason most guests book rather than an add-on activity.

The island’s diving centers on wall sites and macro life rather than big pelagics: gorgonian sea fans and soft coral along the drop-offs, with pygmy seahorses, ornate ghost pipefish, frogfish, and scorpionfish among the reef’s better-known residents for underwater photographers. The Lighthouse site near the island’s point adds night dives to the rotation, timed around bioluminescent plankton blooms in the water column — a different dive from the same site’s daytime wall profile. Several of Cabilao’s barangays maintain community marine protected areas restricting fishing across parts of the surrounding reef, part of why the macro life here has stayed dense enough to keep drawing repeat divers across decades of dive tourism, on an island with no other real industry beyond fishing.

What Changed in the Rebuild

The scale of the 2025 rebuild — a full renovation across all 27 rooms and suites, plus new balconies and finishes guests have specifically called out — points to a resort making a deliberate reinvestment in its physical plant rather than a quick refresh. On a small island where every construction material, from lumber to tile, has to arrive by boat, a rebuild of this size is a slower and more expensive undertaking than the equivalent project on the mainland, which makes the timeline itself worth noting: a resort willing to absorb that cost and closure period is generally staking its future on Cabilao’s dive tourism holding up.

Food and Practical Notes

Restaurant service at the resort has been described by recent guests as attentive, with a bar and dining room handling the bulk of meals — a necessity on an island with no supermarket and nowhere else nearby to eat. Food quality is generally rated well by guests, though prices run higher than mainland Bohol, reflecting the cost of bringing supplies in by boat rather than a markup aimed at tourists specifically. That’s the standard economics of any small-island resort in this part of the Philippines: everything from bottled water to cooking gas arrives the same way guests do.

Getting There

Reaching Pura Vida from Bohol–Panglao International Airport takes roughly an hour and fifteen minutes by road to Mocpoc pier on the Loon mainland, followed by a boat ride of under thirty minutes to the resort’s beachfront. Resorts on Cabilao typically help coordinate this transfer as part of a booking rather than leaving guests to arrange a banca independently, since there’s no fixed-schedule public ferry serving the crossing.

Rates

The quoted rate for Pura Vida — 8,512 PHP — is a genuine live rate pulled directly from Booking.com in July 2026, averaged across two real 2026 dates rather than an estimate, and it sits alongside a 9.0 “Wonderful” score from Booking.com guests. That puts Pura Vida toward the higher end of Cabilao’s small resort cluster, consistent with its recent rebuild and beachfront position.

Who Should Book Here

Pura Vida fits divers and snorkelers who want a newly renovated room and a beachfront position specifically, and who don’t mind paying a premium over Cabilao’s older, more basic dive lodges for it. Its five-category room mix — from garden-set bamboo cottages to poolside and beachfront bungalows — also gives it more flexibility for small groups or families traveling with divers and non-divers together than a single-category dive lodge would offer. As with any Cabilao stay, it’s not the right choice for travelers wanting restaurant variety, nightlife, or easy mainland day trips; those needs are better met by a base on Bohol’s mainland coast, with Cabilao treated as a dedicated diving excursion.

Getting There & Booking

Book on Stay22 or Booking.com for real-time availability and confirmed rates.