Laid back Coron & nightime sailing

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I was very anxious to make it to the Philippines… mainly to visit the city of El Nido on the island of Palawan… the only issue with El Nido is that getting there takes some time as you can only get there by A) flying into the city of Coron on Busuanga island and then catching an 8 hour ferry to El Nido or B) Flying to Puerto Princessa and then taking an 8 hour jeepney ride from there to El Nido. We opted to fly into Coron as the town has its own attractions and a 8 hour boat ride seemed more scenic than 8 hours stuffed in a Jeepney driving from Puerto Princesa to El Nido.

Coron
Flying into Coron and looking out the window you got a good vibe about the place. As we approached it was kind of like a tourism commercial looking out of the window as we flew over countless islands and bays with amazing water, from the air the islands looked empty… no tourists… not hotels… just unspoilt coastline.

Once we made it to town from the airport we were dropped off near our hotel and after dealing with the hotels flighty desk staff (who had no record of our reservation… but them bumped someone else for us) we checked into our room and got comfy. The following day we did a snorkeling tour around the island and visited some awesome coral beds (bright purple coral) at siete picadas and visited some different locations, the tour ended at a WWII shipwreck in relatively shallow water. During WWII many Japanese warships were sunk near Coron (attracts lots of divers), but this one just happened to be in shallow enough water to be accessed by snorkelers. The other highlight of our time in Coron was visiting Banol beach which had nice white sand and crystal clear water and we kind of just relaxed much of the day away.

Nightime sailing...
After our time in Coron we booked our 8 hour boat ride to El Nido… it seemed simple enough on paper, a boat departs daily from Coron at 9am and arrives in El Nido at about 5pm. As everything had been running smoothly (minus some rain) I guess I should have been expecting something to come out of the blue and turn everything upside down and sure enough our 8 hour (cough cough) boat ride to El Nido provided all the belligerent lateness, low tech nighttime sailing and fear of sinking at sea at nighttime one could ask for… and then some.

We arrived at the departure point for our trip at about 8:45 am and awaited our 9 am departure... however 9 am turned to 10 am and in typical S.E. Asian fashion, the boat had not even arrived yet and nobody shared any information with the 20 or so passengers there waiting to depart. Shortly after 10 am the hotel manager appeared and was indignant that we had not left yet, he said that he had spoken to the ship’s captain about 9 am and was not informed of any problems. A bit of a pissing match ensured between the manager and the boat captain and it came out that the boats transmission had broken the day before but the captain never bothered to tell anyone about it. In the end the ships original captain stormed out of the place and the hotel manager decided to repurpose one of his scuba boats for the run and get one of his scuba boat captains to take us on the trip to El Nido… the only problem was that the ship needed to be cleared by the Philippine coast guard which took a while and after that was accomplished… we didn’t set sail until 1:40 pm… tack 8 hours on that and we’re looking at an ETA in El Nido of 9:40 pm.

We set sail for El Nido and it was a scenic (albeit slow) ride… Venny and I found some space on the 2nd floor of the repurposed scuba boat and watched islands, bays and small communities pass us by as our boat hugged the coastline and sailed onward toward El Nido. After a few hours we reached a point where there was a break in the islands and we would have to travel a fairly wide channel where the ocean got (presumably) deeper and more turbulent and I started to get a little seasick as the boat bobbed up and down in the ocean… after maybe an hour or so we passed that channel and began hugging the coastline again which was comforting as the open water was unnerving. We continued on our way and the rest of the trip was fine before the sun went down… but after nightfall is when things got fun. After nightfall I began to get the distinct feeling that the captain, who does not normally make the Coron-El Nido run, might not know exactly where he was going. Every time I walked past the captain’s cabin they seemed to be looking for landmarks themselves to help guide them along the way and as northern Palawan is an archipelago there were small islands and rocky outcrops sticking up out of the water intermittently and (as I tend to think in worst case scenario) I could just see us running into rocks and going down titanic style…

I spent much of my time walking the deck and looking for rocks sticking out of the water and watching the coastline to see where we would have to swim if we did go down (worst case scenario Redmond strikes again)… at one point the captain made one of his frequent trips to the front of the boat and was peering out into the darkness for a landmark when I saw a pile of rocks jutting out of the water off to the front of the boat… but the captain didn’t appear to see it until it was much closer than I felt comfortable with and he then started yelling to the crew in the captain’s cabin that he had seen the landmark they were apparently looking for. After a while of sitting on the edge of my seat and scanning the ocean for ship sinking rocks, I noted that nobody in particular was asking for my help and I didn’t know how to captain a boat so it was really out of my hands… if we ran aground then we just ran aground (that part would come later).

Once I started thinking of the situation like a plane flight (once you’re in the air there’s nothing you can do) I kinda relaxed some and just made my way up to the upper deck of the boat where Venny, I and this British guy just talked and watched the horizon for signs of civilization on the islands we passed. Once I stopped trying to steer the ship telepathically it was actually a very tranquil night… eerily calm and quiet and our solitude was only broken by the odd fishing boat out to sea and a few times we encountered what looked like a city on the horizon… but as we got closer each time what looked like a city at a distance, was about a hundred or so small boats fishing in clumps during the night… I tried to take some shots but it was too dark and nothing came out. In the end, we reached El Nido in complete darkness at 11:40 pm and upon entering the harbor bottomed the boat out twice before captain and company, standing at the front of the boat with flashlights, noticed a bouey off to the right and realized that we had to go in reverse and approach the harbor to the right of said bouey… in the end we made it alive… all’s well that ends well I guess… then we just had to try and find someplace to sleep for the night.

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