The quietness and laid back atmosphere of Port Barton is over: El Nido is a buzzing tourist hub, with the non-stop noise of tricycles and roosters. Deemed as one of the main attraction and backpacker “heaven” of Palawan, the site itself is quite magnificent, the town being surrounded by limestone cliffs and lush vegetation. The bay area in particular is quite stunning at first sight and enjoying a beer or two at sunset is quite mandatory.
However, around 5pm when the light becomes nice… bam! the tourist trap is out, and the “hello mam sir, cheap beer”, “hello mam sir, cheap tour”, and so on become very quick the background noise. Anyway, we spent our first 2 days recovering before starting our freediving course at freediving dimension.
First freediving session
Our coach was a french dude that was supposed to make us cool freedivers. The course mostly revolved around the basics (CO2 tolerance, safety), and how to relax properly before a dive. Quite surprisingly we saw progress very quickly, with around 2 to 3 minutes breath hold time after a few tries in the morning.
The afternoon session was at sea for our first dives, but unfortunately Gretchen was still sick from earlier, and when breathing is difficult… well apnea is not so easy… add to that a difficulty equalizing and that first session ended up being not so enjoyable. This was fun anyway, and away from the crowds.
We were supposed to finish the course the day after, but decided to have 2 days “off” instead, to recover a bit more. So first we decided to go for a island hopping tour. Here in El Nido, this is the main attraction, and is kind of like the Moma in New York, you have to do it!
Tour A is the most popular tour, and is basically a rush around the greatest island spots close to El Nido. The pictures will speak for themselves: the scenery is really incredible, with these big limestone cliffs dropping to crystal clear waters.
Tourist styleBig lagoon: follow the leader
White boy getting burnt
“Honey can row please?”
Palawan parking
However, our feeling is more: landscapes and pictures are great, the experience not so much… too many tourists (it is not even the high season), not so much snorkeling (very shallow spots so that our chinese friends can keep their life jackets).
This is the “secret lagoon”, another big joke: you queue 10 minutes surrounded by noisy super cool backpackers.
Floating our way to the secret entrance
The not-so-secret lagoon.
7 Commandos beach, our favorite stop…
The last beach is just another tourist trap. Not really for us..
At the end of the day, we were a bit disappointed by the experience, and decided to stop going on tours for the rest of our stay here.
Luckily for us, the road up north is in really good shape and the traffic is almost inexistent, so we hopped on a scooter and headed to Nacpan beach, known as the “twin beach” with its 2 connected waterfronts. The road is once again really good and makes for a very pleasant ride, and the scenery on the way is clearly worth it (mostly rice fields).
So gooood, no life jackets at sight, no noise, exactly what we were looking for. We are growing old it seems, and so now we are waking up early and sleep early. Pretty good to avoid the crowds. As soon as this gigantic beach gets crowded with more than 10 tourists we decide to head back to El nido.
Behold: Nacpan beach
3 tourists
The typical sight on the road
On the way back we made a quick stop to Nagkalit-kalit water falls:
Quick gastronomic interlude for our favorite spot in town: Bulalo plaza. A bit out of the town center, doesn’t look incredible from outside, but the food is great, and that’s all you need.
“El Nido express”: seafood mix with bagoong sauce
Time to finish our AIDA 2 course (freediving). At first Gretchen didn’t feel super comfy with her difficulty to equalize, and prefered to step back. But our coach fought for his money and managed to sweet talk her ahah.
The coach has too much style
18m aiiiight
Pretty good in the end and the progress are really surprising: around 18m deep, 40m horizontal distance, that’s not the “grand bleu” yet, but that felt really good and motivated us to keep training for later.
Following the advice of our freediving coach we headed to Dipnay and Sibaltan on scooter the day after the course. Those villages are north of El Nido, and are completely deserted by tourists. The beaches are really awesome there, and we would definetely advise anyone looking for a more “off the beaten track” experience to head there.
Our “private” highway to Sibaltan
Santa Monica Beach
Sibaltan
Cool
Gayyyy….
An hour of dirt road on the way back to El Nido town proper.
Lio Beach
CORON
Coron is the second tourist spot in Palawan, and while the scenery looks similar to El Nido, the experience and atmosphere is somewhat different. Five years ago, Gretchen went there when it was still a quiet fisherman town with a vibe similar to Port Barton. Now as soon as you step out of the ferry, tricycle drivers and tour operators literally jump on you… however, past that first impression, the city itself feels more like a real town compared to the touristic hub of El Nido, with more street food stands, carinderias, bakeries, schools, etc…
So anyway, our first activity is of course the “mandatory” island hoping tour, called the “ultimate tour” (there was also the “super ultimate tour”, but oh well, it was too much for us…). First impression is similar as the one from the tour in El Nido: incredible scenery but boats packed with tourists, mandatory life jacket on some spots… There were some french tourists on the boat with us, who were of course as grumpy as I were about all this, which confirmed the cliche.
In the end it was still a bit less crowded than in El Nido, and we got to snorkel quite a bit, which made the experience much more enjoyable.
So here are the highlights of the tour:
Snorkeling “Siete Pescados”
Nemo and dad.
You have to swim only around 50 m to get away from the crowds to get better sights and more fishes.
Kayangan Lake: This is THE famous spot of Coron, maybe one of the most photographed places. It is also supposed to have the cleanest and clearest water. However, the experience there was not so good, as life jackets are mandatory since last year (some freediver drowned) and as tourists are packed inside a small portion of the lake… Not so much to say about it, can’t even think of what it would be during peak season.
Next stop: Barracuda Lake. This one was reserved to the people that booked the super ultimate tour, so not us… we didn’t regret it at all, as we could see with the drone that people were once again parked on a very small area. It’s apparently also a very nice diving/freediving spot though, and doing so you would be allowed to go further in the lake. This would be a good idea next time we come.
They prepped us a feast for lunch, and for the first time, the place was not really crowded and therefore much more enjoyable. Well… as it was a snorkeling spot with a shallow wreck (around 5m), this rapidly changed right after lunch.
We had lunch on one of these huts.
Not so many people were diving to the wreck, however, on the way to the surface, you had to navigate literally through a forest of legs… The pictures don’t really show it, but it was really packed on top of the wreck. Can’t believe also how many people needed a life jacket.
Lol.
Another snorkeling spot, an occasion for us to practice our diving.
The last spot of the tour: twin lagoon, another “iconic” spot of Coron, with 2 lagoons separated by a hole in a rock formation.
Overall we felt the tour was better than the one we had in El Nido, but it was still low season. Must be a completely different story around december/January…
While the snorkeling was ok-ish, we felt quite bitter while diving: on all the spots that we visited that day, all the corals were basically dead, and there were not as many fishes as 5 years ago when Gretchen went there, not even remotely… We had the chance to scuba dive a “proper” reef the day after (see below), and the difference was tremendous. Even though we can’t of course prove it, we felt this was really similar to what we could see on all these very alarming docs about climate change. The scenery captured in the drone pictures doesn’t show that at all and can be misleading: lush vegetation on limestone cliffs dropping to crystal turquoise water, what more could you wish for? but when diving these colorless and lifeless reefs the feeling is definitely different, and we couldn’t help but feel quite sad at the end of the day. This will undoubtedly be a major factor to consider for our life after the trip.
Gretchen contemplating on the drastic effects of climate change.
Bedroom, kitchen and toilet on board.
Back to some more funny thoughts… Coron is famous for having a lot of wrecks dives (mostly japanese war ships sunk during WWII), so we decided to give it a try. It definitely is a must do in Coron: three dives on a private boat with lunch and beer for a ridiculously low price. The trip to the dive site itself was actually enjoyable, and soooo calm. We were the only 2 tourists on 2 out of 3 dive sites, and didn’t even see the other divers on the third one.
So first dive: Malpadon Reef. As mentioned earlier, completely different experience than during the island hopping, with a reef full of life. The colors on the Gopro are sh*t, though, and don’t do it justice… oh and my mask was too small (mandatory french rant).
Second dive: Olympia Maru
Third and last dive of the day: East Tangat Wreck
At this point, Gretchen wants to be a marine biologist.
The scuba dive tour was overall a really great one. It probably is the rule here in Palawan and most touristy spots: for a more exclusive experience, you need to pay a little bit more (around twice the price of a classic tour, but you get to dive, have a private boat, are away from the crowds and get a warm beer in the end of the trip).
For our last day here, we decided to chill. Only at night we booked the “firefly” tour, that was highly recommended everywhere online. It consists of having diner on a floating restaurant, and then one hour spotting fireflies and bio-luminescent plankton in the mangroves. We don’t have pictures as it was too dark and not really fit for long exposure shots. Not so much to say about this one, it can be avoided in our opinion, kind of felt like a scam (although the restaurant was alright).
This concludes the first part of our trip… was fast but felt long at the same time. Next stop: Manila for some paperwork, woohooooo!!!!
27 DEC – 10 JAN It didn’t start really well in Vietnam, with rain and cold temperatures for our first stay in Hanoi. Too bad, because despite this, we enjoyed the atmosphere there, and wished we could have explored more. Ninh Binh Ninh Binh is famous for being the inland Halong-Bay, with its hundreds of limestone cliffs set in rice fields and rivers.
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