Advertisement
Published: January 30th 2012
Edit Blog Post
Happy Monday to you all, hope this finds you all well.
Before we left El Nido we decided to hire a Kyack and do some island hoping. It worked out cheaper than the tourist package and meant that we could visit the islands we fancied and stay as long as we wanted. We packed a picnic and plenty of water to last us the day. So we handed over our 1000 Pesos, and was given 2 minutes worth of instruction which included a map of the islands which we could reach by our Kyack and set sail.
We had been paddling for only a short while when the reality of it kicked in, it wasn't going to be the romantic day trip we had had in mind. I'd done a tiny bit of Kyacking on lakes/rivers as a child but nothing could have prepared us for the open sea. It all looked so peaceful from the shore, the gentle breaks of the waves and the glittering sun off of the water. So 15 minutes in Sarah felt sea sick and I started to day dream about sharks hitting us from underneath, the beach was still easily in view! Half
hour passed, arms and shoulders aching, Sarah turning green, we cleared the bay and into open water... and there we saw the dot of island, our first port of call.
What a difference to relatively still water... fortuantlety we had the wind behind us which blew us towards a much closer beach. So we decided to pull over, only because we capsised and took refuge there :D. We viewed the chosen island from afar and admired its beauty! We ate our packed lunch and as the sky went overcast we decided that staying any longer was only delaying the innevatable and headed back. By now its only 10 in the morning. Head on wind the whole way back we were both feeling extremely sea sick. We never spoke for a good hour whilst we mentally battled the return journey 😊. Needless to say 2 hours later we were back safe on shore, boat man was pleased to see us back, only beacuse he could then rent the boat out again, which he did within ten minutes of us getting the colour back into our faces. To celebrate our return, we went for burger and chips and reminised over a
game of scrabble...
So we left El Nido in search of beaches... Took a 7 hour boat journey to Coron, more sea sickness, skipper took a shine to us (well Sarah really) and gave us some tablets which worked a treat which enabled us to eat the buffet on offer. Majority of the boat came down with sea sickness especially the chinese that were on the boat, see pic...
We arrived in the evening and strugled to find accomodation but settled in a backpacker hostel over the water. Inside the hostel was lovely, all hand crafted from local wood, When morning came, we woke at 5am to the sounds of pigs, dogs, cockrels and a busy fishing comunity. At low tide, the place was a dump, so much rubbish in the water and the smell was awful, see pic. It's a shame really as potenially it could be beautiful place but people it seems are quite happy it seems to dump rubbish into the water. It could be that its washed up there but all the same no harm in cleaning it up, rant over...
One night we setttled down to watch a movie on the laptop
in our room and I saw something out of the corner of my eye crawl up the wall and hide behind our wash bag. As we'd seen plently of lizards I thought maybe it was just a slightly bigger one. Turned out to be rat with a body about 8 inches long and a tail like a piece of rope!! Safe to say, we were a bit on edge after that. Luckily the maintenance guy was there at the time and he had a good attempt at catching it when it popped its head out. It out ran him and went down between a missing slat under our bed. Good on him though, he went back to his house and got some wire mesh and made a temp fix. The next day we saw Roland's cousin dead in the water outside of the hostel...lovely...
Picture of the pig is one of the many in close proximity to our hostel which acted as our 6am wake up call. It's enough to turn you into a veggie, the way they keep them was disgusting, a make shift sty and no water throughout the day, not much of a life.
On
the plus side we had a kitchen so we took full advantage of going to the local market for produce and cooked our meals back at the hostel. No pork though!;0)
For a couple of days we hired a moped and visited a few local sights, including a natural waterfall and a hot spring pool. The roads were a bit rough as much of Coron is still be developed with neighbouring towns being linked with a proper road. I took the driving seat and what looked like supergran (for those who know the childrens programme) on the back!
Coron town is geared up for diving rather than beaching but all the same we were glad we stayed for the 5 days. Met some lovely people and the lady who ran the hostel was a jem. Yesterday she treated us to some home cooked Philipino food, a right treat for us.
Today, being Monday, we've caught two flights, one back to Manila and then straight onto Dumagette where we hope to do some more snorkling and hopefully some diving, watch this space.
See you all!
PS. HAPPY BIRTHDAY FOR TOMMORROW LINZ!!!! XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Advertisement
Tot: 0.098s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 10; qc: 52; dbt: 0.0564s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Brenda Britnell
non-member comment
The Last Week
Loved reading this blog... although it was very worrying to hear about the kayak trip :( and poor Babe was disturbing to see. On the small photo... I looked at the picture "Scrabble with Swedish guy" and thought it was Sarah!!!! Only when I enlarged it did I realise it was a bloke. Apologies Sarah it was the blonde hair that did it. Looking forward to the next blog .... enjoying the reads SOOO MUCH. Love to you both and STAY SAFE!!!!! XXXXXXX