Guimaras Tres Reyes Islands Snorkelling & Beach Picnic

The Tres Reyes Islands (Three Kings Islands — Melchor, Gaspar, and Baltazar) are three small uninhabited islets rising from the Guimaras Strait off the southwestern coast of Guimaras Island. Named after the Three Wise Men of biblical tradition, they remain among the least visited and best-preserved snorkelling sites in the Western Visayas — the kind of islands that feel genuinely remote despite being relatively accessible from Iloilo City.

The reef systems surrounding the islands were significantly impacted by the 2006 Solar I oil spill — one of the Philippines' worst maritime environmental disasters — but have recovered substantially over the past decade. Today the soft coral gardens along the submerged slopes of Melchor and Gaspar Islands host impressive diversity: giant clams, staghorn and table corals, schools of parrotfish and surgeonfish, resident sea turtles that circle the reef daily, and the inevitable clownfish in their anemone homes that delight every snorkeller regardless of experience level.

Each island has a small white sand beach fringed with coconut palms where the bangka anchors for lunch. The guide prepares the picnic from supplies packed aboard: freshly cut Guimaras mangoes (of course), cold rice, grilled fish caught by the boatman that morning, and vinegar dipping sauce. Eating a mango on a deserted beach in the Guimaras Strait with the Panay mountains visible in the distance and a reef you just snorkelled 10 metres away is — without exaggeration — one of the better ways to spend a Tuesday in the Philippines.