Guimaras

Guimaras was populated before Spanish contact as part of the broader Visayan maritime world. Its old name was Himal-os. Spanish missionaries arrived in the late sixteenth century, and the island was long administered from Oton and Iloilo.

The Solar 1 spill was a turning point. Recovery took years, and the disaster drew national attention to the risks that shipping poses to small island economies.

Guimaras shares its cultural foundations with Iloilo — the province speaks Hiligaynon, practices folk Catholicism with the same intensity found across Western Visayas, and maintains the same cycle of fiesta, planting, and harvest that organizes rural life on Panay.

The Manggahan Festival

The Manggahan Festival, held every May during the mango season, is Guimaras's biggest celebration. Locals in mango-inspired costumes parade mango-themed floats around the island, and mango pastries and fresh fruit are sold everywhere. Its dance contingent won the Kasadyahan Festival in Iloilo City in 2018.

The Trappist monastery near the center of the island draws visitors to its retreat house and shop, where mango products made to support the monks are sold. Navalas Church, built between 1880 and 1885, is one of the few Spanish-era churches left on the island, and pilgrims climb to the Balaan Bukid Shrine during Holy Week.

Mango is the lens through which Guimaras food culture is understood, but the province has a broader table — seafood from its coasts and the strait, rice from its flat interior farmland, and the Ilonggo cooking tradition it shares with Iloilo.

Fresh Guimaras Mango

The ripe Carabao mango of Guimaras is yellow, smooth and very sweet. The proper way to eat it is to score the flesh while in the skin, invert the halves, and eat directly. No accompaniment is needed or recommended.

Mango Float

Layers of graham crackers, whipped cream, and sliced Guimaras mango, refrigerated until set. A simple no-bake dessert made elaborate by the quality of the mango. Found in every bakeshop and restaurant on the island.

Hiligaynon — the language of Iloilo and the broader Western Visayas — is the primary language of Guimaras. Given the island's historical and geographic integration with Iloilo, this is unsurprising. The same vocabulary, the same cadences, the same songs.

Hiligaynon is often described as a gentle-sounding language. It has a significant literary tradition including the Ilonggo awit and corrido, narrative poem forms adapted from Spanish colonial literary models.

Kinaray-a, the language of Antique and inland Iloilo, is also spoken by some families in Guimaras. It is considered a distinct language rather than a dialect of Hiligaynon, though the two are related and share vocabulary.

Guimaras is one of the most accessible island provinces in the Philippines. Ferries from the Iloilo–Guimaras Ferry Terminal in Iloilo City reach Jordan and Buenavista in 15 to 20 minutes, and roll-on/roll-off ships sail from Lapuz. A ferry also links Sibunag with Pulupandan in Negros Occidental.

Our Lady of the Philippines Trappist Monastery

A Cistercian (Trappist) monastery near the center of the island. Visitors are welcome at its retreat house and shop, which sells mango-based foods that help support the monks. The chapel is open for prayer. A quiet place in a province that is mostly quiet.

Guimaras is low and hilly, its highest point only about 272 meters, and its rivers are short; the Sibunag River, the longest, runs 28.8 kilometers. Its richest habitats are on the coast. Off the southern tip, Taklong Island in Nueva Valencia is the main island of the Taklong and Tandog Group of Islands Natural Park, formerly the Taklong Island National Marine Reserve, where the University of the Philippines Visayas has run a marine station since 1977. About 1,100 hectares of mangroves were affected by the 2006 oil spill; on Taklong, 90 percent of the mangrove forest was coated with oil, and after rehabilitation began in 2007 it has recovered.

Visayan Tarictic Hornbill

Penelopides panini

Endangered

A small hornbill of the lowland forests of the western Visayas. The nominate race is found on Panay, Negros, Masbate and Guimaras, but forest clearing has made it rare.

Field note: Hornbills nest in big old trees. Never buy wild hornbills.

Dugong

Dugong dugon

Vulnerable

A sea mammal that grazes on seagrass. Hunting, drowning in fishing gear and the loss of seagrass meadows have left only isolated populations in the Philippines, and Guimaras is one of the places where they still survive. It was the first marine animal protected by Philippine law.

Field note: Slow boats over seagrass, and report any stranded or tangled dugong to local authorities.

On 11 August 2006 the 998-ton tanker Solar 1, chartered by Petron, sank about 17 kilometers off the southern coast of Guimaras. It was carrying about 2.4 million liters of bunker fuel, and the oil contaminated about 24 square kilometers of sea and long stretches of coast.

The Philippine Coast Guard called it the worst oil spill in the country's history at the time. Officials said about 1,100 hectares of mangroves were affected, including parts of the Taklong Island National Marine Reserve. Fishing families, whose income depended on the sea, watched their grounds turn black.

What the spill revealed about Guimaras was the thinness of the margin on which its economy operated. The province had no diversified industrial base to absorb the loss of fishing income. The mango farms — in the interior and not directly touched by the oil — continued producing. But the coastal communities, which had no mangoes, had nothing.

Recovery took years. Today the province promotes the same coast for ecotourism: Taklong Island off the south coast, and beaches such as Guisi, Alubihod, Tatlong Pulo and Natago.