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Published: August 5th 2015
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Palawan
Our next venture was to swim with whale sharks off the coast of Puerto Princessa, Palawan. Out to sea the fisherman act as watchman to spot schools of fish feeding on plankton at the water's surface. This, along with seagulls circling overhead are the areas where you are most likely to find wild whale sharks, also feeding on the cryll and plankton. We left the Puerto Princessa port in search of these spots with the hope of catching a sighting of a wild whale shark.
After a few failed attempts, the crew instructed us to quickly jump into the water with our snorkels. As I nervously looked down, approximately two metres below my feet I could see the distinctive spotted pattern of a 9ft whale shark gracefully gliding through the water. Unfortunately, this rare and amazing sight didn't last long before it swam down into the dark depths of the water below. Although brief we were also lucky enough to see a pair of dolphins swimming alongside the boat.
Having arrived back at the port we grabbed our bags from the hostel and rushed to the bus terminal in a trishaw to depart for El Nido in
the north that afternoon.
At the terminal a minivan driver convinced us into buying a discounted ticket from him for a bargain price of 300 pesos (£4.50), which was just about to leave. As expected, this offer was too good to be true and after an hours' drive around Puerto Princesa looking for customers to fill up the empty seats in his van followed by four and a half hours of reckless high speed driving; overtaking abulances and weaving past school slow signs we made it in record time to El Nido's bus terminal.
The next morning looking through the island hopping tour options we suddenly realised we only had £65 cash left between us for the week and to our dismay that El Nido doesn't have any cash machines. The closest ATM being in Puerto Princesa... where we had just come from! We agreed a money arrangement with our hostel and spent the remainder of the afternoon drinking mango shakes, chatting to a friendly English couple and looking out to the karst limestone mountains dotted around El Nido's bay. As expected, El Nido was touristic and its beachfront was crammed with hotels and restaurants, however the spectacular
views from the bay more than compensated for it.
El Nido is famous for its tours to the surrounding islands and after some recommendations we booked ourselves onto a boat tour (route A). Our small group of 8 set sail from the El Nido beachfront and headed for the small lagoon. The boat sailed in and around the stunning lagoon, giving us the oppotunity to see the charasteristc charcoal-grey karst formations up close. We stopped to have a barbecue lunch on a deserted tiny strip of sand, followed by a short swim to the secret lagoon. We finished the day at the big lagoon where we opted to swim out to the lagoon but hitched a ride back on a kayak being paddled by a group of Filipino tourists. Throughout the day we stopped at numerous places to snorkel and saw many types of coral and species of fish including the Moorish Idol (Gill in Finding Nemo!) and a vicious looking black moray eel baring its teeth from a little dwelling it had found for itself in the coral.
We rented a bike and drove 20km north from El Nido to the blissful Nacpan beach. We spent a
couple of hours swimming and relaxing in the crystal clear water until the sky darkened from a looming thunderstorm overhead. We decided to leave and contiune further north to Duli beach and after asking numerous people for directions we finally found the sandy dirt track leading to the beachfront. Unlike the more popular Nacpan, we were fortunate to have the entire stretch of beach to ourselves. It was refreshing to see this natural beach still in it's original state with just a few scattered palm trees and fallen coconut shells lying on the sand. The only downside to the stunning views were the hoards of hungry sandflies relentlessly biting us.
Our last stop for the day was the Makinit hot springs, east of Nacpan beach. The temperature of the spring is too hot to swim in but we had been told by a local that we could try boiling eggs instead.
Eggs in hand we walked through muddy forest and acrross a sodden irrigtion path draining from the nearby rice field. The air was filled with the pungent smell of sulphurous steam and the flowing river glowed a luminous green colour, which led us to the hot spring.
The steaming pool of water, surrounded by soft grey sand, was too hot to put our hands in so we enthusiastically hung our plastic bag filled with eggs, from a stick, into the water. However... after eagerly waiting for an hour, our eggs were still more or less raw so we decided to pack up our things before it got too dark to find our way back! To ease our hunger we stopped for a pork skewer from a roadside barbecue vendor (a popular snack in the Philippines) before we made our way back to El Nido.
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