El Nido

An 8-12 hour boat ride from hell going from Coron to El Nido, turned out to be a lovely 7 hour boat ride, where we napped, sunbathed, played cards and read. It was actually really nice. Special thanks to mother nature and her calm sea for that one.

We arrived in El Nido on the 25th of March. This place received a bad review from a couple of people we met in Coron, but we decided to check it out for ourselves and thought it was lovely. Really beautiful place surrounded by tiny islands and lagoons. Beautiful beach and nice people. And I even managed to buy a bathing suit from a really random shop in this tiny tiny, I mean TINY town.

We met up with a Swedish girl (about the 20th Swedish person I've met in Asia) and Canadians (the 2nd and 3rd I've met) and hoped a boat for the day. We left around 9am and spent the day island hoping. We swam in the Twin Lagoons (aptly named Big and Small Lagoon) and shoved ourselves through a hole in a rock wall to swim in Secret Lagoon. Very relaxing day with nothing much to worry about and lots of great scenery. We followed this by a night eating and chatting on the beach. El Nido has a strip of restaurants with good food and excellent chocolate shakes! We also visited Squidos, which had been recommended to us by a couple of travellers and Lonely Planet, and had their famous stuffed squid. It was delicious (stuffed with veggies).

Since we are on such a tight time budget (we're only allowed 21 days if we want to avoid the extra fee and Kate has to be back at work around the same date:() we headed out of El Nido this morning towards Puerto Princessa. We debated about whether we should take the bus or splurge (an extra 200 pesos or 5$) and take an airconditioned van. Thank god we picked the van. The 'bus', which we saw on our way out of town, looked like it was from the 1940's with all the passengers covering their mouths and noses with articles of clothing and masks in an attempt to bloke out all the dust and exhaust pouring in through the windows. Also, the bus ride takes about 8 hours and we made it in the van in 5 hours... mostly because our driver was an Evil Knievel wannabe and barely slowed down for any of the thousands of curves we went around. Big thank you to the wonders of ginger pills as I made it through this ride, which closely resembled the tea cups at Wonderland, without any tummy issues.

No comments on Puerto Princessa yet, except that the hostel we chose is AMAZING! 300 pesos (about 7$) a night for a dorm and they have just about the coolest lounge area I've ever seen with vines hanging down all over, chilled out music and hammocks, excellent WIFI AND a bracelet making station!!!!! I love this place. FYI it's called Banwa Art House for anyone interested :)