El Nido, Day 2 (The Philippines, Part 5)

Our 2nd day in El Nido and our last full day in the Philippines, we went on an island hopping tour. They offer four different tours of the area, each going to 5 destinations and including snorkels and a lunch. We did tour A, which was the highest recommended from everyone we talked to.



Our tour group was one of the largest, with 22 people. Most groups are on small boats with only 6-10. I was skeptical at first, but I ended up liking having a big group, because it meant we got an extra big boat with lots of space to move around and sit in the sun.


One of the islands advertised in a different tour was Helicopter Island, named because it looks like one. We spotted it out on our way to our first destination.


Our first stop was Seven Commandos Beach. It was on the same, main island of Palawan, but is unreachable except by boat. Here we had our first taste of snorkeling in the crystal clear water. Then we also had our first taste of jellyfish stings. The one downside of the beautiful area is the millions of tiny jellyfish that fill its waters. Though not serious or extremely painful, the pesky stings do hurt and turn from being a surprise into being annoying and dreaded.



Though all of the islands and our destinations were very close together, the boat can only travel at a pretty slow speed, so it took a while to get from place to place, but the view was still extraordinary.


The next destination on the list was called Small Lagoon, located on Miniloc island. Our boat had to park at the back of the group because it was bigger, and we had to swim quite a ways (through the jelly fish), but the water was warm and it was really fun.


To get into the lagoon, you have to swim through a break in the cliffs about 4 or 5 feet wide. On the other side, you emerge in a quiet lagoon that extends quite a ways in different directions. There was even a cave half submerged in water! Andrew wouldn't come with me in it though and I was too scared to go by myself.


After a very long stop at the Small Lagoon, they served us a lunch of pineapple, bananas, melon, cucumber, tomatoes, rice, pork and fish. The fruit was delicious, but everything else was pretty mediocre. I even got the feeling as we were eating that the pork was bad, but we ate it anyways because we were starving. Later that day, just as we returned from the tour, we found ourselves feeling extremely sick and found we got food poisoning from it.


Passing through the boats during lunchtime there was a small boat playing music like an ice cream truck. It was an ice cream boat!


Our third stop was the Secret Lagoon. Similar to Small Lagoon, we had to get of the boat and wade through the waist high water among tons of jellyfish. Then we reached a hole in the cliff that you had to climb through. On the other side was a tiny lagoon. Most of it only had water about a foot deep, but in the back, it got up to chest height water.


On the beach area next to the secret lagoon there were lots of crazy rock formations to explore.



As we left the Secret Lagoon, I was able to get a better view and picture of how tall and intimidating the cliffs are.



You can see better in the pictures below how the limestone cliffs of the islands shoot straight out of the water, but also are curved in just at the surface of the water. This is from the erosion of the waves overtime and creates an amazing effect.



After Secret Lagoon, we went to Simizu Island for a very brief stop. This is the island and beach with the best snorkeling views and fish life. However, the water is also crawling with jellyfish. At this point, everyone on the tour was getting tired from the sun and swimming and we were sick of being stung by jellyfish. Only a few of the more hard-core snorkelers decided to take a dip, so it was only a quick stop.

The final destination on our trip was Big Lagoon. Because the tide was going down, the boat was unable to get anywhere near the lagoon in the island, so it was a very far swim. More than half of the tourists opted to stay on the boat. a few decided to take the long swim. A few others and I chose to just do some snorkeling at the entrance in the jellyfish-free water. I saw tons of different kinds of fish, coral and plants here. Some of the ones I was able to name (either then or from looking up afterwards) include angelfish, parrot fish, red snappers, black snappers, some kind of needle-nosed fish that some guy called a trumpet fish, but it definitely wasn't that, and a bunch of these tan fish the size of two hands that live in the sandy areas and attack/bite anything that comes near their turf.


They day ended with us being exhausted from swimming fatigue and too much sun, but we got to watch another nice sunset as we headed back to El Nido. The only problem was we were feeling sicker and sicker the closer we got because of the food poisoning.


By the time we got to the back around 5pm, we were both ready to just lie down, but we decided it'd be nice to take one last photo together with the beach sign.


From the restaurant we chose to relax at through dinner time, I was able to capture on last photo of the colorful sunset over El Nido.


Within the next hour, the food poisoning began to take it's toll and soon enough we were barfing our guts out. Thankfully we met an angel of a person. She was the owner (or manger) of the restaurant and hostel that we went to for dinner before having to get on the bus. When she realized we were sick, she gave us a room for free to sleep in for a while. She picked up some medicine and gatorade for us from the pharmacy next door and then called us a private shuttle to take us to the airport in Puerta Princesa. The shuttle was expensive, but it was much needed because we were able to lay out on the seats and sleep, and the driver was able to stop whenever we needed to.

We reached the airport in Manila in the early morning. Our flight back to Seoul didn't leave until 3pm, so we had several hours of lying on the airport floor sleeping before getting on the plane.

All in all, it was a terrible, long and sickly journey home, but we made it and the rest of the Philippines trip was spectacular. I'm thankful we got sick at the end rather than the middle where we would have missed out on one of our precious few days there.

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