Southern Leyte is a quiet island province in the central Philippines, occupying the southern tip of Leyte island and a scattering of smaller islands in the Bohol Sea. Most travellers pass straight through on the way between Cebu and Mindanao, but for those who stop, the province offers some of the finest underdeveloped diving and whale-shark encounters in the country, along with a strange historical footnote: it was here, on the tiny island of Limasawa off the south-west coast, that the first Catholic mass in the Philippines was celebrated on 31 March 1521, during Ferdinand Magellan's expedition. A cross and a small chapel mark the spot and the island remains an active Catholic pilgrimage site on Easter weekend.
The province is best known to travellers, however, for the whale sharks that visit the waters off Pintuyan and Sogod Bay between November and May, and for the good muck diving and coral walls around the same coastline. Padre Burgos and Sogod Bay have a handful of small dive resorts. Elsewhere in the province, Maasin City is the provincial capital and main transport hub. St Bernard on the east coast was the site of a catastrophic landslide in February 2006 that buried the village of Guinsaugon and killed over a thousand people; a memorial now marks the site. The mountainous interior is largely untouched and offers hiking through rainforest and waterfalls, though it remains little-visited and unmarked.
Destinations in Southern Leyte
- Maasin City
- Bontoc
- St Bernard
- Hinunangan
- Silago
