El Nido Island Hopping 1/2

Let's continue my Palawan series, I realized I had shared a lot about Coron before but never get to share about El Nido so I am so glad that I get to post them now.

• Reminiscing Puerto Princesa

Visiting Puerto Prinsesa for a half day City tour was almost enough for me and my husband but the best thing has yet to come because we have not reached El Nido which was our dream vacation ever since. We had been dreaming and longing for it for years and now we can't believe we are living that dream already.

We always had that thought that going there was expensive. But we are really glad that we made it possible to get a good ticket sale and planned this trip with a budgeted amount for the entire four day vacation. And again, it is possible to travel here with less than 10k on hand. Yes we did it and because it has been a wonderful experience for the both of us to be able to breathe in the same air which the Palawaneos are breathing and capture these wonders the Almighty above had created for mankind to see and enjoy. It was a great pleasure to embrace El Nido.

I don't intend to make my introduction long so let me show you the beauty which made El Nido the best island in the world.

We traveled in the evening after the Puerto Princesa City tour and got to sleep in the bus because the land trip would take 6-7hours from the terminal of Puerto Prinsesa to El Nido. We are used to the land travel since we always travel 3-4hours to my husband's town. We arrived in the early morning and rested in the super affordable inn by Kuya Digoy of Tatay Milo's Inn but we were a bit unlucky because it was already fully booked although we had reservations beforehand. But God is good because He gave us a better room. They let us stay in a friend's building which was a few walks away from the other inn.

We woke up around six in the morning and I was amazed by what was surrounding us. Since it was still dark when we arrived, we didn't see this view but look at how beautiful these rock mountains view which I later known as Taraw.

It was so beautiful and I was mesmerized that I had to jump on my feet and take the camera immediately. It's just so magnificent and I never thought we had conquered that Taraw too. Story about how we conquered Taraw will be posted later on.

Our booked island hopping tour starts at 9am so we still had time to move around the little town. Yes El Nido's main town is just like our local market where in you can walk around and see stores in every corner. It has souvenir shops all over the place and also tour packages are offered everywhere but the locals are not aggressive and they give you freedom of choice.

By 9am, we were already in the big boat which will take us from island to island. Our tour guide was a good man who became our photographer too.

Small lagoon

Our first stop was at the Small Lagoon. We were inside the small lagoon and here's my husband smiling at the camera.

Can't help but appreciate how beautiful these rock mountains around us. There are lots of these in El Nido even in Puerto Prinsesa.

While most of the tourists rented kayaks, James and I swim all the time and we had taken lots of videos. It was fun! We were taking lots of videos we forgot that it was the first stop and there were more islands to be visited.

Big lagoon

Next stop was the Big Lagoon. Obviously, this one is bigger than the small lagoon and it has wider entrance too! We were advised not to swim here because of sea snakes and the water was also a bit deep. This is the spot where most photos of Palawan are taken and displayed online.

The opening which is really nice although there was a bigger boat in front of us. This boat in front was already grilling for lunch. They got huge speakers and music was blasting too! I hope there were no spirits disturbed by it.

Secret Lagoon

So you might have noticed that there are lots of lagoons in El Nido. Here's another one which is called secret lagoon because it is covered by rocks and the only way to go inside is through the small rock opening. We have to do some ninja moves to get in.

But there's a shore here which allows the boats to dock before exploring the secret lagoon. We still enjoyed the view, most boats are here for lunch.

There's nothing much to do inside the secret lagoon though because the waters were shallow but one can have photos taken here.We had lunch in the secret lagoon island. While we were busy swimming from here and there our boat captain and the tour guide were busy cooking our food.

Here are some of our lunch prepared by our tour guide and the boat captain.

We were lucky to be able to join a group of Bisayas too who were very cheerful and entertaining within the whole trip. They were group of friends and they sang a song for us when they learned that we were celebrating our 7th anniversary and honeymoon.

The food by the way is good! We ate them all. There were more food like grilled fish and pork, some squid, everyone was full!

Cadugnon Point and Cave

This was a cave obviously, the tour guide was telling us something about this place but I already forgot about them right after we stepped out of the cave. All I could remember was how smelly the inside was. Still, it's interesting that they found these kinds of places in El Nido. For those cave buffs, this might be very interesting to them.

So even if it was too dark inside, we still took a photo of ourselves. Alright, we were really not visible here. That was a funny photo.

We didn't really enjoy that much because there's nothing much to do there. The cave though was smelling like the bats' dirt. It was a bit challenging to go inside because the opening was just a small one in the rocks. We didn't spend much time there but we had fun outside where my husband and I did some jump shots.

Since we can just stay here for a few minutes, we tried to take jump shots but my husband can't get to take a good shot of my jump shot. However, I was able to get a good one for him.

Well, it seemed like it is not that very good though but guys, just look at the background, it's beautiful right?

Anyway, this is very lengthy now and I don't want to bore you with all these so I will be cutting this into two articles, next stops will be the following:

• Snake Island

• Cathedral

• Pinagbuyutan Island

• Seven Commandos Island

Thanks a lot for coming with us in this trip. I will share more in the next few blogs.

xoxo,

momentswithmatti

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