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Published: March 8th 2010
El Nido is the crown jewel of Palawan, and rightfully so. It is surrounded by over 1000 islands of the Bacuit Archipelago, many of which are a short boat ride away from town. The island hopping is amazing.
The boat ride from Port Barton to El Nido took about 5 hours. It was pleasant enough, but the longer ride when compared to the Sabang-Port Barton trip had us dreading the much longer El Nido to Coron trip to come. As we got close to El Nido we marveled at all the karst limestone islands. The cliffs go straight down to the water, with an overhang 5-10 feet above the water due to erosion. Most islands have little hidden coves of white sand beach. The town of El Nido is surrounded by limestone cliffs, making it a pretty dramatic scene as well.
After landing in El Nido we left my mom to watch the bags while my dad, Steph and I looked for a place to stay. Steph REALLY wanted hot water (we didn't have it in Port Barton or Sabang), but it is hard to come by in El Nido, especially on our budget. My parents didn't care so much about hot water but they wanted an ocean view. We ended up finding the perfect place: my parents got an ocean view and hot water, steph and I got a cheaper room in the same place without an ocean view or hot water, but we got to use my parents' shower whenever we wanted. Win win.
The beach in El Nido is nice, but there are a lot of boats coming in and out so we wanted to find a better place to swim. My dad stayed back at the hotel while Steph, my mom and I headed north in search of "Sunset lover's beach" which was supposed to be nice for swimming. I think we found it, but we were underwhelmed so we decided to venture further to a strip of sand that we could see further north. We ended up walking through village full of very friendly locals, getting a little lost, but then finding the sand we had seen. It really wasn't any better than El Nido but we went for a swim anyway.
The next day we all went out on our first El Nido island hopping tour. Since El Nido has so many islands, all of the tour companies have agreed on a set of four tours, named Tour A, Tour B, Tour C, and (you guessed it) Tour D. Tour A has some must-see places like the big lagoon, small lagoon, and hidden lagoon, among other things, so we decided to go for it.
We left a little late, which ended up working out because we were the last ones to leave most places, meaning that we often had the place to ourselves. Our first stop was the Small Lagoon. The boats dock outside the entrance, and you have to swim in to an opening that is probably only 6 feet wide. The snorkeling there was pretty good, although so many people visit it that most of the shallow coral is dead from people trampling it. You have to dive deep to see anything good. My favorite part was a swim-through hole about 4 feet deep.
The next stop was the Big lagoon, which we had all to ourselves. The karst cliffs going in to the water were awesome, but we were still operating on only my mom's camera (without a charger) so we were very selective with the pictures. No snorkeling there, just sight seeing.
We stopped for lunch on another island, and had our own little isolated cove to ourselves. Our guides cooked us bbq chicken, fresh on the beach. We also had cucumber salad, and they cut up a pineapple for us. While we were waiting someone came by with two fresh lobsters and I bought them together for 200 pesos (4 dollars). Our guides threw them on the grill also, and we had a feast.
After that we checked out Secret Lagoon. The lagoon itself was kind of cool - you have to climb through a hole in a wall to see an isolated lagoon of salt water. The beach there was pretty nice so we relaxed for a while. Our final stop was Seven Commandos beach, which is actually on Palawan island but is only reachable by boat. It was also a good beach, although by that time it was crowded with all the other island hoppers doing Tour A. All in all a really good day.
That evening I bought an allen wrench, a small screw driver set, and did some surgery on my camera. After unnecessarily damaging and removing the lens cover, I found that some of the gears that control the lens cover were jammed. All I had to do was loosen one screw to relieve some pressure and it worked fine. I put it all back together, minus the lens cover and one screw that I had lost, and it was back in action.
The next day we rented two double kayaks and paddled around the point south of El Nido. As soon as we made it past the point we came upon a pretty strong tail wind. It was weird because the day before had been really glassy all morning. The wind pushed us along, which was nice, but we knew it wasn't going to be easy coming back.
The limestone cliffs are really pretty, and the water erodes an overhang right at the water, so you can actually paddle under many of the overhangs. Steph and I also found a cave and I paddled us into it pretty far until she made me back out.
We rounded the point and soon found ourselves paddling against the same wind that was helping us before. We were in front of a beautiful beach, which we later identified as Ipil beach, so we decided to make that our halfway point of the trip. We tried to make a sand castle but the sand was a bit rough so it didn't turn out that great. I gave up on the sand castle and swam out a ways with my mom's goggles, and found that the coral was really good off of the beach. I saw a really pokey 10 legged star fish that I thought might be soft, but when I went to touch it it drew blood. I sucked on my finger and spit out a few times in case it was poisonous. No harm done.
On the way back the wind helped us for a while. Steph and I found an arch and paddled through it. Soon enough we were facing the wind head on, and it was a difficult 30 minute paddle to El Nido.
My dad and I decided that we still needed more exercise for the day so we got a pair of guides to show us the way up the Marble Cliffs, which overlook the town of El Nido. The day before we had gone in search of the trailhead, and when we asked around people laughed at us for trying to go on our own. As soon as we started up with our guides we could see why they had laughed. There is really no trail to speak of, and most of the "hike" is actually bordering on rock climbing. You definitely need both hands and feet to get up. The karst formations are also extremely sharp so you have to be really careful. Amazingly both of our guides were wearing flip flops.
It was a pretty strenuous one hour climb up to the top but it was totally worth it. My dad kept up with me the whole time - not bad for a 64 year old. The views of the town below are awesome. Here's a little panoramic video I took at the top:
The next day we went island hopping again. This time we picked out a customized route that was loosely based on Tour D. We started at a nice beach on a really small island, which ended up having some good coral for snorkeling. Then we went counter clockwise around Cadlao island, and stopped at the beautiful little cove with really dramatic karst formations jutting out of the water. By this time we still hadn't seen any other island hoppers, so that was a nice change from Tour A. After that we went to Helicopter island, which I guess kind of looks like a helicopter without the blades, and had lunch on the beach there. We had the same thing as the other day, minus the lobster. The snorkeling was really good at Helicopter island, although we noticed that we were being stung by something so we returned to shore. We never did find out what they were but we suspect they were small jellyfish, as there are big jellies everywhere. After a while on Helicopter island we made one more stop at a white sand beach on Cadlao before finally returning to El Nido.
You could easily spend a week just island hopping in El Nido, and there's a lot of other things to do (a waterfall, hot springs, etc.) but we had to keep moving. We sadly said goodbye to El Nido the next morning for our long boat ride to Coron.
Here's some pictures from El Nido (there's too many good ones to only choose a few!):
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Matt Potterton
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Wow...
The gorgeous turquiose water color is really apparent in these photos. That looks amazing.