Davao Oriental

The coast was part of the historical region of Caraga, partly under the Sultanate of Maguindanao, and the Spanish settled there as early as 1591. Even so, colonial control remained thin for centuries.

The later twentieth century brought road connections to Davao City — a critical development that finally linked the eastern coast to the regional economy. Before these roads, communities along the Pacific shore were often more easily reached by boat than by land.

Davao Oriental's cultural life is organized around the tension between the Mandaya and Mansaka indigenous traditions of the interior and the Cebuano Christian majority concentrated in the coastal towns. The two worlds intersect at the markets, schools, and festival grounds of the provincial capital.

Mandaya Weaving

Mandaya abaca weaving is produced on a backstrap loom using fiber from the abaca plant, dyed with natural pigments derived from roots, bark, and minerals. The patterns — called dagmay — are geometric and encode cosmological meanings. Each piece is unique, taking its maker weeks to complete. The cloth is worn at significant life events and has become a marker of Mandaya identity in contemporary cultural politics.

The Mansaka people, concentrated in the interior municipalities of Davao de Oro adjacent to the province, share cultural practices with the Mandaya including ritual music performed on agung gong sets. Healing ceremonies called pamanhik involve specialists who communicate with ancestral spirits on behalf of the sick.

The Pacific coast provides Davao Oriental with abundant seafood — tuna, reef fish, squid, and shellfish from the waters around Pujada Bay. Inland, the Mandaya and Mansaka communities rely on rice, root crops, and forest products, with wild game supplementing the diet in more remote areas.

Cebuano dominates the coastal towns of Davao Oriental, serving as the language of commerce, education, and local government. In the upland communities, Mandaya and Mansaka are the primary languages of daily life, though most speakers in these communities are also Cebuano-competent.

Mandaya is a Mansakan language of the Central Philippine group, with about 250,000 speakers in 2010, and it may be intelligible with Mansaka. Ethnologue lists varieties including Cataelano, Karaga, Sangab and Mangaragan Mandaya. It is spoken in Manay, Caraga, Baganga and Cateel, and also in Davao del Norte.

Davao Oriental is reached from Davao City by road around the head of the Davao Gulf; Mati is about 165 kilometers from the city. The drive is scenic and takes three to four hours depending on road conditions.

Pujada Bay

A large bay south of Mati City with clear waters, coral reefs, and several small islands. The bay is a site for diving and snorkeling, with reef systems relatively intact compared to heavily fished areas elsewhere. Bangka boat rentals are available from Mati City harbor.

Dahican Beach

A long Pacific-facing beach in Barangay Dahican, Mati, popular with tourists and locals. Mati's festivals draw competitors from across the country for events including skimboarding, and the city launched the BAY DEEP MATI freediving festival in 2022.

Aliwagwag Falls

In Cateel, the Cateel River tumbles down 84 steps, each 2 to 33 meters high, for a combined drop of about 340 meters, often called the highest waterfall in the country. It lies inside the Aliwagwag Protected Landscape, set up in 2011, whose forests shelter the Philippine eagle and some of the tallest trees in the Philippines, the Philippine rosewood or toog.

Davao Oriental's Pacific Cordillera holds two of Mindanao's great protected forests. Mount Hamiguitan, 1,620 meters high, has a pygmy forest of century-old trees on ultramafic soil, Philippine eagles, and pitcher plants found nowhere else; the IUCN Red List counts at least 11 threatened vertebrate species there. Farther north, the Aliwagwag Protected Landscape in Cateel protects the headwaters of the Cateel River, the Philippine eagle and other threatened birds, and toog trees, the tallest in the Philippines. Mati itself has three protected areas, including Pujada Bay.

Philippine Eagle

Pithecophaga jefferyi

Critically Endangered

The national bird and, by length and wing area, the largest living eagle. It hunts in the forests of Mount Hamiguitan and Aliwagwag, and each pair needs a very large home range, which makes it highly vulnerable to logging.

Field note: Report sightings or nests to the Philippine Eagle Foundation and keep well away.

Hamiguitan Pitcher Plant

Nepenthes peltata

Known only from Mount Hamiguitan (not yet assessed by the IUCN)

A scrambling carnivorous plant with ovoid pitchers and hairy leaves, recorded only on the upper slopes of Mount Hamiguitan, where it grows on ultramafic soil in full sun.

Field note: Never collect pitcher plants or seeds; all Nepenthes are protected and trade is regulated.

The Bonsai Forest of Hamiguitan

On the upper slopes of Mount Hamiguitan, near Mati, the trees stop growing tall. The mountain's soil is ultramafic, and on its exposed ridges century-old trees stay small and stunted. The patch is known as the pygmy or "bonsai" forest, and it is one reason the Mount Hamiguitan Range Wildlife Sanctuary became, in June 2014, the first UNESCO World Heritage Site in Mindanao.

Plants found nowhere else grow there. Nepenthes peltata, a pitcher plant with a tendril attached under its leaf like an umbrella's handle, is known only from the upper slopes of Hamiguitan, and so is Nepenthes micramphora, which grows between 1,100 and 1,635 meters. Botanists count 462 plant species in the montane forest alone and 45 kinds of orchids.

The sanctuary was protected by law in 2004. It is managed with the provincial government, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, local communities and indigenous peoples, who together guard the mountain's forests, its Philippine eagles and its stunted, ancient trees.