Friday 27 January
Day 1
In my preperation for the Philippines I was reading a blog about El Nido. The blog also said something about a multiple day expedition to Coron. It would be basic where you sleep in tents on lonely islands. This is exactly the kind of things that we like and in the beginning of January We booked a 3 nights 4 days tour at Buhay isla. We were lucky and got the last spots on the boat.

This morning we left the harbour at 9:00 to start the expedition. We were with a group of 14 people and the majority of the group are Dutchies. We started by going to the big lagoon where Nicole and me already where when we did the privat island hopping tour. This time there were way more tourists so it was not special for us. I just snorkeled a bit and Nicole stayed on the boat. After that we had lunch on the boat and continued our way up to the North.

We crossed the whole west coast from El Nido up and we arrived at Base Camp around 16:30. We were going to sleep on the most northern edge of Palawan in small huts, with toilet close by. The plan was that we had to go to the beach with a little boat. The first 3 people went in a small motorboat and headed off to the beach. The sea was pretty rough at this time and all of the sudden the boat got caught in a wave and people fell overboard, shit!! Gladfully they were all okay but we were definitely not going to get at the beach there. The tour guide got a bit stressed and we had to go to another island to sleep. We arrived there around sunset and it was dark when everyone was on the beach.

This place was not a "Base Camp" at all. There were no facilities at all. We had to wait quite some time for dinner, so the first thing we did was drinking some rum cola, since this was included in the tour😉 After that the men of the group collected wood from the forest and we made a bonfire. Googi, a Irish guy from our group was mixing the drinks tonight and we were having a good time around the fire. As the evening continued we lost count of the bottles of rum and started to get a little bit drunk. Most of the group already went to bed when at 02:00 someone came up with the idea to do armwrestling. The local guys (our crew) where in as well and me and Googi. Tried to beat them, they are 2 heads smaller and weight half so easy ehh?? I gave all but couldn't win 😂 After that we all (tried to) make our way to bed. We all slept in tents on the beach with good matrasses. The first night was very nice and we have a cool group.

Day 2
We woke up early and I did not feel to good. How could that be?? 😫 suffering from a major headdick I found out that last night with the arm wrestling I scraped off the skin from booth of my elbow and knee's. It didn't feel to good with the salt water but after 20 min in the water it was fine. We visited some beautiful islands today. There are so many of them and all of them have a beautiful beach and palm trees 🏝 We also snorkeled at some places which are known to have the clearest water in the world, it was really fantastic. Nice corals and alot of different fishies. Together with Diko and Joost I spotted some nice fishies.

We had lunch on a beautiful island with a view to kill for. In the afternoon we went to our Base Camp which was a beautiful place with nice huts. We first watched sunset and then settlet in our huts. After that we took a shower and I needed a power nap. I was feeling a bit sick in general, like the flue.
We had dinner after and we only drunk very little cola rum. The night was very beautifull. The sky was somehow a bit lighted which looked like the polar light's when I made a picture of it with the GoPro. Today everyone was pretty tired and we went to bed at around 23:00.

Day 3
We woke up around 07:30 and had breakfast all together. Today it's Diko's birthday and we started the day with chocolate cake. After feeding our bellies we took off. I still didn't feel so good and stayed on the boat when we arrived at the first snorkel site. Nicole went in and made some beautiful shots with the GoPro she said. Our tourguide (Barrock) had a speargun with him and he shot several fishes and a lobster. Nicole also tried to shoot a fish, so cool!
Later the day I went in the water as well and did some snorkeling together with Nicole. We saw beautiful corals and Nicole captured a sea snake with the GoPro 🙄

We then took off to the last spot to do.. cliff jumping! Nicole really wanted to do this during traveling so this was a great opportunity to get it off the bucket list. She climbed up the rocks and jumped off the cliff which was about 8 meter high. After this adrenaline rush we headed for a 2 hour journey to our last Base Camp. We arrived at a beautiful island with white sand and nice palm trees. We went straight to 1 of the 2 shops on the island to buy some chocolate and chips, the ocean makes you hungry!
In the evening one of the shops was turned out into a karaoke place. Some people of the group sang some songs which the locals loved. Nicole and me didnt sing, I still wasn't feeling good.

In the night I woke up completely cold and shaking. I didn't know what was going on but I felt miserable. It just got worse the last 2 days. After taking some paracetamol and lying on the beach, the shaking went away. The next morning we decided to end our expedition and we went to Coron straight away with a local fisherboat to see a doctor. When we arrived we went to the hospital where they wanted to keep me for the night. I didn't want to, it looked pretty bad there in my opinion. The doctor gave me different kind of antibiotics and medicines and I rested a lot at the hotel.
Nicole met up with the group the next day and hiked up a little mountain. In the evening I got a chance to say goodbye to them. Things doesn't always turn out the way you want to. I was really looking forward to the expedition, but couldn't enjoy it 100% due to my health issues. Gladfully Nicole took good care of me, without her I would be doomed😚

The next day we flew to Manila and we just took it easy. We stayed 2 nights in a comfortable red planet hotel. The last day we spend a lot of time in the shopping mall. I was feeling pretty better already and needed some warm clothes for South America. In the afternoon we watched a comedy in the cinema and in the evening we chilled in our hotel room and ordered a pizza🙄 A relaxing way to end our adventure in Asia... We are now going to fly to Taiwan, Los Angeles, Mexico City and will then finally reach it to.. Ecuador!! 🌋
We are looking forward to see what South America has to offer and hope we can do everything in good health for our last weeks of travelling.

To be continued, ciao bella's!

Geschreven door FrankArends