EXPLORE MINDANAO - “Mati, Davao Oriental”

Hello Steemians! Let me take you to a quick tour in Mati, Davao Oriental.

I am living in a city of Mindanao called Cagayan de Oro — the City of Golden Friendship. It’s basically 9 hours from Davao Oriental (via bus). Mati, officially the City of Mati is a 5th class city and capital of the province of Davao Oriental, Philippines.

“Amihan sa Dahican” in Mati is famous for wave-riding. Plus, you’ll definitely fall in love with it’s beautiful ombre ocean and long white-sand beach.


It’s also a surf spot but only seasonal. It’s where I actually caught my first wave and wow that feeling of stoke was real! I fell in love with surfing since then.

Baby waves are no problem as long as you got a fun-board!

By the way, you can pass by this beautiful view. They call it the “sleeping dinosaur”.

Can you see it, too? Aint this baby a cutie??😍

It was holy week of 2013 when we made our trip to Mati and as expected, there were quite a lot of people. We stayed at our old friend’s house, in a small province just 15 minutes away from the beach (Dahican beach resort) and 3 hours away from Davao City. We did the “palengke” or the grocery in their very affordable wet market early in the morning to make sure we can buy fresh fishes and be able to prepare our food before hitting the beach all day.

Always feed your stomach first before anything else.

We would ride a “tricycle” that can fit 6 passengers and to make sure we make our way to the beach more fun and exciting, we usually ask the driver to drop us off and follow us while skating in the wonderful “trafficless” road. Yes, we brought our skateboards, too, just in case there’d be spots we could skate on.😂

Mini boards are handy you can bring it anytime to skate anywhere!

Dahican’s highlight is wave riding. It is well-known for this and you can literally see the riders fly as they hit the wave.

It was awesome, really.

Plus, we were lucky it was surf season and we enjoyed paddling and riding through friendly waves with the help of friendly locals.

Don’t worry about getting wiped out, Dahican is beach break, once you’re under, it’ll all be sand with no corals or reefs.

We also played with local kids who were also good in skating and skimboarders/surfers played us some Jack Johnson music with their ukulele and trust me, they sounded very good.

No wonder why tourists always have a hard time leaving and going back home.

They say it’s not the place that you go to that makes you appreciate the whole fun, but the people you’re with. Yes, that’s true, because aside from this really beautiful and fun place, it was more beautiful and fun because of the people that I was with. Full of happiness, music, laughter, good sense of humor and a lot more. This will always be one of my favorite beach trips because of these crazy bunch!👌🏻