El Nido

El Nido is a really small town, located next to the Bacuit Archipelago, and is the best jumping off point to go island-hopping along the limestone cliffs and snorkeling in the bight multi-colored waters. That night there was a beautiful sunset, which marked the first time in almost a week the sun had finally appeared from the clouds. We were pretty optimistic that we finally lucked out and would get some nice weather during our island-hopping tour. The weather in the morning wasn’t spectacular, but by mid-day the sun finally came out exposing the water’s magnificent colors.

Our tour boat from Alternative Guesthouse consisted of Jessie and I along with three other Germans (straight out of an SNL skit). The day consisted of visiting different secluded beaches and islands along with snorkeling, fishing, and eating a really great lunch prepared by the on-boat staff. The day in itself was very similar to our island-hopping trip in Ko Phi Phi; however, this was even better in every aspect. In Ko Phi Phi, the island-hopping mainly consists of visiting different beaches and lagoons within the second main island Ko Phi Phi Ley, while in the Bacuit Archapelago, there are seemingly hundreds of islands all scattered around providing more interesting visits and much better snorkeling. The food even was way more impressive. They bbq’d large squid, chicken, and a whole fish, along with rice, vegetables, and a massive fresh fruit platter. All of this from 9am-4pm for only around 14 dollars is unbeatable! After the trip, we spent a while trying to decide what our next course of action would be.

There were tons of options available and since staying in El Nido would mean simply doing another island-hopping tour to different islands, we were ready to leave the following morning for another destination. We could either head north to Coron, which required an expensive boat ride to reach. Here the main attractions are more island hopping along with popular wreck-site diving. We finally came to the consensus that due to the weather and constant rain we had been experiencing, that getting scuba certified would be the best option, since in rain or shine, diving is still fun. Therefore we needed to choose a location for the dive school and we considered both Marapascua Island off the northern tip of Cebu in the Vasayas, or Puerto Galera, a 5-hour journey south of Manila. In the end, while Malapascua seems to have some more interesting dive options and is considered the next Boracay, known to have the best beaches in the world, Puerto Galera is the most popular place to get certified in the Philippines, and it’s much closer to Manila, so in the event of lousy weather (a pretty good chance), we wouldn’t have to worry about cancelled flights in order to make the plane ride from Manila to Jakarta. Finally, with the typhoon upon us, we wouldn’t have been able to enjoy the nice beaches in Malapascua anyways, so that wasn’t even a factor.

The following day we were planning on taking the 7am mini-van back to PP in the hopes of getting a flight that afternoon to Manila with Cebu Pacific, but once again, we ran into some transportation problems and didn’t arrive until all flights had already left. We had made a reservation through our guesthouse for the early morning mini-van, and while they later told us that the roads were bad and no vans were available, in reality, vans had arrived but filled up really quickly and left, not honoring our reservation. We found a French couple in the same situation, so lots of scrambling ensued to find an alternative means of getting to PP earlier than the local bus, but in the end the only option was the bus, so we conceded and finally left for PP around 10am arriving close to 7pm - another day lost to travel.

That morning we caught our flight to Manila, jumped on the local bus heading south to Batangas, and then grabbed a one hour boat to Puerto Galera. The different boat companies heading to Galera are absolutely ridiculous with tons of staff members almost attacking you trying to have you purchase a ticket with them.

There are signs warning against the likelihood of being scammed or over-charged, but we didn’t seem to find any other option. We were told on the bus by a nice man to ignore these people and head towards the building marked “Terminal” but even the security guards told us to head towards the blood-thirsty hawkers. We arrived to Puerto Galera after the dive shop, Action Divers, had already closed, so we found a really great guesthouse, which over in this area is pretty much like an apartment, furnished with bathroom, tv, and a kitchen (we were very excited about this aspect). So in a sense, this day was also lost to travel bringing us to a total of 5 days of travel and 3 days of activities. A pretty miserable ratio, but we’re making the most of what we can.