El Nido

Wednesday, May 11

We walked down to the waterfront to a cafe for breakfast and had some spam and fried egg with rice and a side of chocolate cake. Our van to El Nido picked us up promptly at 9 but then went to several hotels, the airport, and a tourist agency at a gas station TWICE before hitting the road. It was almost 11am by the time we started heading north for our scheduled 5 hour drive.

Luckily Carl and I got the front seats so we could actually sit facing forward without losing our kneecaps. Being tall is a huge disadvantage in many countries and this becomes painfully obvious when riding in a van or bus in the Philippines.

At 1pm we stopped at a roadside restaurant for lunch. The food available was displayed behind a glass counter so we could point to what we wanted and they dished it out onto small plates. Carl picked the chicken adobo looking dish and I went for the eggplant because it had been so good at other spots.

The eggplant and mixed vegetables had been doused in some kind of fish sauce that tasted like, well, old fish. There wasn’t even a hint of vegetable taste. Just vegetable texture and 100% foul fish taste. We couldn’t eat it. I tried giving it to a stray dog but she only liked the pumpkin. The chicken was better but mostly fatty pieces. Carl ate most of it and I decided I wasn’t really that hungry.

Before we left we got a Buko pie. Buko is like coconut jelly and is the same as the amazing drink we had on Malapascua. This pie was amazing and we were able to save some of it for a future breakfast.

The road was incredibly windy and it felt like our driver was still learning how to drive on curvy roads. I felt so carsick despite being in the front. Finally we got to a spot close to El Nido where the driver opened a gate and let out the woman and little girl that had shared the passenger seat. It seemed like it was his wife and daughter and he was dropping them off at home before taking the rest of us into town.

We noticed our hostel was on the way so we asked to be let off on the side of the road. He screeched to a halt and let us out at a random bend, barely pulling out of the way of traffic. We grabbed our backpacks and walked along the busy road until we saw Outpost Beach Hostel sign on the beach side and walked down the stairs.

We got there right as another women was getting out of a tricycle and walked down with us, telling us where to go. The wooden stairs went down to the beach and then we walked along the beach for less than a minute, past abandoned looking shacks, to arrive at a two-story wooden building with Outpost written on it.

Our timing was perfect. It was almost 5pm. We checked in and got a couple of beers and a table within view of the ocean and within reach of the WiFi, ready to watch the sunset. One of the reasons we had chosen this hostel over the ones closer to town was its boasting as being a perfect sunset spot. They didn’t lie, because it really was.

As the sun set and the sky changed from blue to yellow to pink, it seemed that everyone in the hostel came out to watch it and take photos. Once it was fully down everyone went back to drinking, dancing, and playing beer pong.

Carl and I strolled down the beach in search of a restaurant we’d seen on google maps called Karl’s BBQ. It took a while but we eventually found it in a yuppier shopping complex that was ghostly empty and desperate for tourism. Three waitstaff said hello and helped us find a table- we were the only ones there the whole time we ate.

We got a half rack of ribs and lechon kawali. Lechon kawali is pork belly fried twice. This time it was a little dry. The ribs though. It seemed the hunk of meat they’d given was combined Baby Back and St Louis ribs and the portion of meat they had served was so generous that it seemed impossible to eat it all. But Carl cannot stand food waste so he sacrificed his health and well-being and ate 99%, leaving some soggy fries.

Grotesquely full, we stumbled back along the dark beach to our hostel and were pleased to find how quiet our room was despite the rave happening in the lobby.

Thursday, May 12

Worried that we might arrive to the hostel too late to book a tour for Thursday, we had decided to book an island tour online beforehand. All the tours seemed to direct through Get Your Guide, which had served us well in Puerto Princesa.

From El Nido there are three island-hopping tours to choose from: Tour A, B, or C. Each includes different locations. We’d heard that A and C were the best and that A included the famous Big Lagoon so we opted for that one. It was 3,000 pesos for both of us (about $60) which seemed like a great deal.

The confirmation email told us to meet at Art House Cafe at 830-845 so we left the hostel around 8 in a tricycle and tried to get some coffees at the Art Cafe first. We’d finished our coffees and it was 8:44am and we’d seen no one tour-guide-like. We walked down to the street and a random person asked us if we were doing the tour that day and he happened to have Carl’s name on a piece of paper. Voilà.

He directed us to a series of folding tables and instructed us to rent water shoes and snorkels. We questioned the water shoes but he assured us that if we stepped on coral in the morning our whole day would be ruined, so we gave in. The woman renting the shoes and snorkels offered to watch our flip flops for the day. This seemed unnecessary but we reasoned she probably wanted some sort of collateral and was asking us politely to leave our shoes, so we did, wondering if we’d see them again. The shoes and snorkel (we had one from Thailand still) were each 100 pesos, about $2, adding $6 to our cheaply booked tour.

Next we were lead to another table where we had to pay the environmental fee and some sort of boat permit. This was 400 pesos each. Another $16. We thought, whatever, it’s still very cheap. Then we were given a piece of paper that had Carl’s name and the name of our boat, Captain Evy, and told to wait until 9-930 for our boat. At 9am it was already blisteringly hot and there was not a lick of shade anywhere on the beach. People were squatting under abandoned building porches and crowding into stuffy alley ways that led back to the street. We found a spot against a building where, if we stood up straight, the shade covered us.

Finally we saw Captain Evy and her crew nudge their way onto the shore area. We got on and noticed our boat was quite full. There seemed to be some issue and one of the staff asked us which boat we were supposed to be on. We said Evy. He said are you sure? And I had to pull out the little handwritten piece of paper to show him. He thanked me and handed it back noting that only 24 people had paid and were allowed to be on the boat, yet he counted 26. He didn’t check anyone else’s paper, and we set out. Later we realized that we were the only non-Filipino aboard and that 3/4 of the boat was from the same family. But still, they never checked anyone else’s paper, letting the two stowaways get away with it…

Our first stop was Seven Commando’s Beach. Carl and I decided to leave all our stuff on the boat and go snorkeling. We asked the guide if there were fish to see here. He said, “yes, there is a fish”. So we were happily surprised to see many fish! And all so shallow and close to the shore. We saw everything including a long, skinny yellow one I hadn’t seen before and some tiny little black ones that each had two iridescent blue dots.

The next stop was the Big Lagoon. Our boat stopped at a cluster of other boats and we were told that to see the lagoon we had to rent kayaks, another 300 pesos. We did, and it was worth it. They only gave us one paddle so I pulled us into the lagoon while barking at Carl to take photos. It was one of the most gorgeous places I’ve ever seen in my life. The hills jutted up around us an the water was a beautiful light blue. It was so clear and some parts so shallow that we could look down and see fish- my favorite parrotfish!

We went into the lagoon and turned left, toward a shallow cove. There was a guide from another boat excitedly telling us to come SEE! He pointed out a baby reef shark swimming in the shallows. It was about 1.5 ft long and we could see it so clearly through the shallow water.

I handed the paddle over to Carl and in exchange took responsibility as team photographer. We had brought those plastic phone cases to protect from water but they’d gotten tainted from sunscreen sweat so we had to take our phones out for photos. I’d snap some photos and go to put my phone back in it’s safety pouch but then realize I HAD to take another photo because it was so beautiful or there was a new angle and I’d be fumbling to take it out again.

The third stop they called Umbrella Beach because of the cool shaped rock formations on the beach. We got out and watched as the staff set up a table for lunch. They brought the food out, dish by dish, carrying it over their heads as they waded through the water from boat to shore. There was a stove on the back of the boat and a chef had been making us lunch since we set sail that morning.

We were so impressed with the spread. Crab, calamari, chicken adobo, fried pork belly, eggplant (good eggplant!), noodles, grilled fish, mussels, seaweed, and of course tons of rice. There was also perfectly ripe pineapple. We were intimidated by the ravenous crowd surrounding the small table, but our Filipino boat mates ensured we each got a plate and knew what each item was. We pigged out and then walked over to a woman selling cold drinks out of a cooler on the beach and got a delicious Coca Cola for desert. We had just enough time for a tiny snorkel session before jumping back into the boat.

The fourth stop was Shimizu island. Carl and I didn’t even step foot on the beach, which looked very nice and tropically exotic. We went straight to the area between two islands where the guide said was good snorkeling. We saw a bunch of things but were most impressed by the live and colorful coral. There was a large bush of spiny blue coral and nearby some wavy, light green rocky coral. We saw some different type of clown fish that had one long horizontal stripe instead of the distinctive two vertical stripes.

As we swam we kept running into tiny jellyfish or pieces of them. The sting wasn’t bad, more shocking and surprising than painful, but it wasn’t pleasant. I realized why all the Filipinos were wearing long black sleeve and pants.

The fifth and final spot was called secret lagoon. Our boat docked in a shallow spot and we followed a guide toward a rock wall where he pointed out a small, human sized hole that we could climb through. The lagoon was shallow, about waist deep, and the water was somehow colder than the ocean water we had just swam through. We tried to take a lot of photos before fear of dropping our phones in the water overcame us and we enjoyed with just our eyes and fleeting memory.

After the 45 minute boat ride back to town it was about 5:30pm- just in time to hurry back to our hostel for another sunset! We got a tricycle up, over the hill and made it to our hostel just in time. There were storm clouds moving just over where the sun was setting which prevented the amazing colors we had seen the day before but added an interesting, moody effect to the sunset.

We ordered sisig from the hostel restaurant and were so shocked with how good it was. We haven’t had bad sisig yet, but we were impressed nonetheless. We drank a couple beers and used the WiFi (which didn’t reach our room) to do some travel planning work. This included figuring out how to deposit our ‘virtual’ checks that were finally given to us from our travel insurance to cover a canceled flight in Cusco (why must every insurance be so difficult?)

With one bar of WiFi I was able to call Karen to talk plans for Australia, apologizing as she picked up because it sounded like I was in a club with the loud music going on behind me at the hostel. Karen, who has been traveling through Central America since we parted ways in Buenos Aires, was completely unphased by the thought that I’d gone to a club to get WiFi and we continued talking normally. Such is the life of an international backpacker!