Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
best beaches, and remains charmingly rural and undeveloped, with carabao in the fields
and chocolate-coloured roads winding lazily into the farming barangays of the foothills.
Brief history
Among Negros's earliest inhabitants were dark-skinned natives belonging to the
Negrito
ethnic group - hence the name Negros, imposed by the Spanish when they set foot
here in April 1565. After appointing bureaucrats to run the island, Miguel López de
Legazpi placed it under the jurisdiction of its first Spanish governor. Religious orders
wasted no time in moving in to evangelize the natives, ripe for conversion to the true
faith. The latter half of the eighteenth century was a period of rapid economic
expansion for Negros, with its
sugar industry
flourishing and Visayan ports such as
Cebu and Iloilo open for the first time to foreign ships. In the last century the
rapacious growth of the sugar industry and its increasing politicization were to have
disastrous consequences that are still being felt today (see box opposite).
ARRIVAL AND DEPARTURE
6
NEGROS
By plane
The main airports on Negros are Bacolod and
Dumaguete, both with flights from Manila and Cebu City.
By boat
The biggest and busiest ports on the island are
Bacolod and Dumaguete, which are connected by regular
ferries with Manila and Mindanao. Bacolod also has ferry
connections with Iloilo on Panay, and Dumaguete also has
services to Cebu, Tagbilaran (Bohol) and Siquijor. Many
other coastal towns have smaller ferries and bangkas going
to neighbouring islands as well as to other destinations on
Negros itself. Boats from San Carlos, on the east coast, head
to Toledo (7 daily; 2hr) on Cebu, while Cadiz has three
weekly boats for Bantayan Island (3-4hr). There are also
regular ferries on the useful crossing from the southerly tip
of Cebu to the east coast of Negros. These ferries sail
between Bato (Cebu) and Tampi (north of Dumaguete) and
Lilo-an (Cebu) and Sibulan, also north of Dumaguete.
Bacolod
On the northern coast of Negros,
BACOLOD
is a half-million-strong provincial
metropolis, known as the “City of Smiles” and famed for its flamboyant
Masskara
Festival
(third week of October). Its tourist attractions aren't significant enough to
make you linger for more than a day or two, but it's a major transit point and a good
base from which to visit nearby historic towns such as Silay and Victorias, or to arrange
more adventurous excursions to Mount Kanlaon.
The old
city centre
, chaotic and choked with tra
c, is best defined as the area
around the
City Plaza
at the northern end of Araneta Street. North of here, Bacolod's
main thoroughfare, and the city's social hub, is
Lacson Street
, which runs past the
Provincial Capitol building and has good restaurants, shops and bars. There are more
places to stay, eat and party 3km south of the town centre at the
Goldenfields
Commercial Complex
.
Negros Museum
Gatuslao St • Tues-Sun 9am-noon & 1-6pm • P10 •
T
034 433 4764
Housed in an elegant Neoclassical building dating from the 1930s (though badly
damaged by a storm in 2012), the
Negros Museum
details five thousand years of island
history. It's only really worth a look though for its “iron dinosaur” steam engine, once
used to haul sugar cane, and exhibited outside. The 1930s Provincial Capitol building
next door is another of the city's few architectural highlights.
Negros Forest and Ecological Foundation
South Capitol Rd, just south of the Provincial Capitol • Mon-Sat 9am-noon & 1.30-4pm • Suggested donation P20 •
T
034 433 9234
he rescue centre at the
Negros Forest and Ecological Foundation
is an unexpected
reprieve from the streets. It's not a huge site, but conservationists do what they can to
care for endangered animals endemic to Negros, including leopard cats, the Visayan
spotted deer and the bleeding-heart pigeon.
