Forgotten Paradise

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The journey from Puerto Princessa to Palawan's tip, the archipelago El Nido, was a rather pleasant but crampy 6 hour minivan ride. We arrived in the early afternoon, picking a random accommodation from wikitravel on Corong Corong beach, a quiet and tourist-free beach about 2,5 kms down the road and hopped into an overpriced trike to take us to Lorenzo. Lucky for us, Lorenzo had one beach cottage for 800 pesos left and we took it. We enjoyed the quietness and clear waters of Corong Corong before heading back into town to check out the restaurants.

The next day we decided to buy a snorkel and head out into the water of Corong Corong beach to check out the coral just off the coast. It wouldn't be the best snorkelling we we going to do on this trip, but it was still amazing compared to anywhere I've snorkelled so far. The water is crystal clear and the visibility excellent, the corals were alive and colorful and the fish plentiful. This kept us busy almost all day, at least until the early afternoon when it started to drizzle.

We used the time of bad weather to go into town and book ourselves one of the 4 island hopping tours for 900 pesos for the following day. Luckily, the weather cleared and we had the most beautiful sunny day the next day, perfect for our tour around the archipelago. A trike picked us up to take us to the main beach, where we hopped onto a typical Filipino style banca boat and set off into the turquoise blue waters. Our first stop was Helicopter Island, which had probably the best snorkelling I've ever done or will ever do, except for Sequihor Island, which exceeded anything you could ever imagine seeing with a mask and snorkel.

We snorkelled on Helicopter Island for about 45 minutes, enjoying the beautiful and colorful underwater world at perfect visibility, and I was even able to spot a turtle. We continued far out into the archipelago, stopping at several other islands, one more beautiful than the other. After a very long lunch break with lots of delicious, freshly barbequed meat and fish, salads and fruit. With a happy and full tummy, we continued to an island where we just jumped off with our mask, snorkel and fins to swim through a small hole in the rocks. At first I noticed a few rather large jellyfish swimming around the boat. And then I swam through the hole to get to the so called "secret beach" and had to swim through hundreds, thousands, millions of small jellyfish. The water was swarmed by them! It was very scary at first, but after I realized that they don't sting I just made my way through the water as quickly as possible and chilled at the beach for 20 minutes before we headed back to El Nido town. On the way, we caught a stunning sunset.

We finished out stay in El Nido with a relaxing beach day and headed back to Puerto Princessa to board our flight to Cebu, from where we were about to discover the Visayas.

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