Tangkaan Beach - Leyte

From tripadvisor.com.ph

Tangkaan is synonymous with "clear blue waters" for a lot of tourists who have been there. It has lots of rock formations beneath, so if you're one into reef diving, Tangkaan is for you. In fact, most of Tangkaan is crushed corals driven to shore from the sea. So make sure you put on rubber slippers or sneakers when roaming its shores. But where there's sand, you get it white. Lots of tourists, in fact, go back to Tankaan for its white sand.

It's perfect for fishing and snorkeling.

Tangkaan beach is among places you should see when in Southern Leyte. It's public but you can enjoy peace and quiet on weekdays. Better yet, just dive below waist-deep waters and enjoy the underwater scenery to drown out noise when all the locals are there on weekends. But even the locals there provide good company and fun, according to some visitors. They're fun to be with.

Venturing farther from shore into the deeper parts, you may chance upon dolphins, pelagic fish and turtles (especially turtles). Some say you can enjoy sights of turtles just 10 meters away from shore.

From the beach you can see Limasawa  Island from a distance, which is about 30 minutes away by boat. Tangkaan in Padre Burgos is close to Tacloban. Actually, Southern Leyte has Sogod Bay as the main body of water supporting the beaches. So you'd never run out of good beaches there---Peter's Dive Resort, Michael's Resort and Dive, Padre Burgos Castle Resort, Sogod Bay Scuba Resort and of course Tangkaan.

While enjoying a dip in Tangkaan, why not sample their sweet and famous "Budbod" which is sticky rice wrapped and cooked in banana leaves. And then have a full-meal picnic later under a native hut-shed rented out at about P50 each. The entrance to the beach is only P5.

I haven't been to Southern Leyte, not even once, though I've been hearing about how good the places there are, especially if you love eating seafoods. Being Juan Hiker, I "hiked" to places in Leyte on the Net, especially when I was still working for a client with a travel website.

When I was also an artist at the Department of Agrarian Reform, I heard a lot of good things about Hinunangan, Leyte where our housing project for farmers was located.