21 January
We arrived in El Nido around 17.00 and went for a walk through town. El Nido is bigger and there are alot more tourists in comparison to Port Barton. The place is beautiful and surrounded by limestone rock formations.
We were searching for a place to stay for the next couple of nights, but everything was already fully booked. It was already 20.00 when we walked into the "dragon fly", a place who was runned by an Italian guy named Max. We booked two nights and after that we had Mexican food for dinner. There was a good live band playing as well and after playing some card games we headed to our bed and breakfast, to sleep in our family room 😅

The next morning we had a wonderful breakfast and a friend of Max picked us up to check in at his place. Later the morning we rented a 150cc KTM motorbike and went to Las Cabanas beach which is really good for sunsets. We actually came there to find a accomodation for later in the week, but also everything was fully booked here..
So we went to the most famous beach of Palawan; Nacpan Beach. It was a 35 minute drive from El Nido on bad roads, but with our bike that wasn't a problem. The beach was really gorgeous and we even found a nice place here to sleep later in the week, directly at the beach😊 The prices are a lot higher in El Nido. I can remember we paid €10 together for a bungalow in Thailand and now we payed €30.

23 January
We started the day with Max's breakfast. He said he used to be a baker in Italy. We had some small breads and a pancake. It was nice, but nothing beats my mom's Dutch pancakes so far🙄
Yesterday we met a French couple who asked us if we wanted to do a privat island hopping tour with them. This tours are really touristic with boats full. Normal everyone leaves at 09:00 but we had a "illegal" boat and we took off at 08:00. The result was that we were almost the only one there when we arrived at the lagoon. We rented a kayak and paddlet around while enjoying the clear water and beautiful limestone rocks. After that we visited some other lagoons and beaches.
We were pretty stunned by the beauty of the Philippines. There are SO many islands and one by one they are amazing. Also the snorkeling was great.
In the evening I got sick and we didn't do much more, gladfully Nicole was so sweet and took care of me☺


24 January
Today we checked out and went to our cottage at Nacpan beach. We could left one backpack at Max's place so we didn't have to drive twice with our stuff. We didn't need so much there anyway. When we arrived I got stomach problems again and had to rest. We just stayed around the beach today. In the evening it was better again and we went to a nearby hostel. We ate chicken adobe there and used some WiFi. We hardly can get any, which has it good sides and bad sides. I would like to keep in contact a bit more with the people back "home". After sending some messages we headed back to our beach and watched the amazingly bride sky which was full of stars.

The next morning we wanted to check in to another "upgrade" cottage which was bigger and really in the front of the beach. we made a reservation for this one a couple of days ago. The staff told us the cottage wasn't available and they didn't had place for us. We were dissappointed and after some discussion we could stay in the cottage we had before. Pff they are very unprofessional and can't manage at all. We didn't like the staff but we still had a nice cottage on the beach so we enjoyed it anyway.

After this was being arranged we had coconut pancakes for breakfast and after that we headed off to a waterfall nearby. We only had normal shoes with us and when we came there we had to cross the river a couple of times. We used some stepping stones to get to the other side. The waterfall was nice refreshing and we made some silly videos there. Nicole did some nice modelling as she pulled her hair out of the water 😁

In the evening we met a Turkish man who was taking pictures of the sky. He said he was photographing the star sign "oreo". I'm also interesting on night photography and tried it a few times with the GoPro, but it didn't really work. He gave me some tips and after sharing our Facebook names it was time for Nicole and me to eat some dinner. We went to a place where a French man (Thomas) worked. He just opened "the hammock hostel" across the restaurant. We didn't want to eat Philippine food so we ordered the garlic and cream pasta.

26 January
This morning we got up at 07:00 and went for a jog on the beach. Yeah! FInally some sports again. After satisfyingly eating a banana pancake we headed off for a motorbike tour. We did a kind of a loop which was around 80km total. We visited some beaches and in one of the villages we had a 1 hour massage. It wasn't the smartest thing to do because after that we were so tired. We kept on driving untill all of the sudden we saw alot of parked scooters. We looked to our right and saw a chicken fighting "festival". Nicole didn't like it but i still haven't seen one and I want to see what it is. It turned out not to be a normal fight. The chickens even had a sharp knife attached to their leg to do some real damage. Because of this the fights don't take long and ends in dead. After watching 2 fights we went off to El Nido to prepare for our 4 day Island hopping tour to Coron. We bought some fruits, cookies and soft drinks. After that I went for a haircut and shaving what costed only €3.

In the evening we ate Greek food at a restaurant were we had to pay 1200 Peso's (25 euro). Ahh now I know why we are running out of cash so fast. If you want, you can get a meal for 150 Peso's, but we booth just love (good) food😅

The next morning we woke up at 5:30 to head over to Max. We had a free breakfast there and collected our bag. Excellent service! After returning our motorbike it was time to start our four day's expedition to Coron. More about this in our next blog..... 🏝🏖🌅🚢🏕

Geschreven door FrankArends