The Philippines - Part 2

We had an amazing week at Verde Safari. The seclusion of the resort and the friendly warmth of the owners and staff made for an extremely relaxing week. Aside from the tourists who would ride in from town for the “lunch rush,” we really had the entire stretch of beach to ourselves for most of the week. However, we couldn’t have traveled all the way to Palawan without spending at least a few nights in the more touristy part of the island. So after our week at Verde Safari, we said goodbye to the local teenagers who worked there, packed our bags, and made the 45 minute trek back into town.

 El Nido

For starters, the social studies teacher in me needs to clear up the municipal breakdown of the island. El Nido is actually more like what we would call a county in the US, not an individual city or town. We were technically in El Nido all along. However, the “county” breaks down into smaller districts called barangays (bar-in-guys). Verde Safari is located in Barangay Bucana while the main town and “county seat” (as we would call it in the US – not sure what they call it) is Barangay Buena Suerte. Although we had/have been referring to “town” as El Nido, it is more accurate to call it Buena Suerte. I think this is a pretty common misconception and we still think of the town as El Nido, so that’s what I’m going to continue referring to it as. Sorry to get technical, but it would have bothered me to not explain it.

Although it’s still quite small, the town of El Nido is very busy compared to where we had spent the majority of the trip at that point. There are tons of local shops, restaurants, and bars and the narrow streets were crowded with pedestrians, tricycle cabs, and full sized vehicles. All the island hopping tours and other excursions were also chartered out of El Nido. To make it easy on the tourists, the local government actually sets the price and the routes of all the tours. So no matter which shop you book out of, all the tours are exactly the same and cost the same amount. This eliminated the hassle of having to shop for the best deal or worry about getting price gouged. There were about five excursions to pick from and we had already traveled to town once during our stay at Verde Safari to do one of the island hopping tours. The prices were so reasonable, though, that we definitely wanted to do another. The trips lasted the entire day and included a delicious lunch which the guides cooked up for us on the beach. Each tour included 3-4 short stops, plus two longer stops at lunch and the end of the trip.

 We also went on a private dinner cruise one evening. A “private dinner cruise” sounds so extravagant and something we would have never imagined doing. Although it was the most expensive thing we did on the trip, it was really about the price of just going to a nice dinner at a semi-fancy restaurant in the US. The guides took us out on a boat similar to the ones for the island hopping tour, but this time we had it to ourselves. They drove us to another secluded beach, set up a table, and cooked us a really delicious four course dinner. It was a ton of food that I can’t imagine any two people being able to eat on their own.

We only spent three nights in town, but with the island hopping, dinner cruise, and a full day just checking out local shops and restaurants, we were satisfied with our stay and prepared to head back to Puerto Princesa for the last leg of our trip.

This was the hotel we stayed at in town and the view from right outside our door. The hotel was literally right on the beach.

The busy streets of El Nido offered lots of little shops, restaurants and bars. My favorite restaurant was this place called Blue Azul. They had really good falafels and hummus. I'm still not exactly sure what falafels are, but they were amazing! When I asked about the portion sizes, the worker responded with..."well, it's a lot of food. But your're a big guy. You can eat it all."

Another great beach right near downtown. You can tell its closer to town because of all the boat traffic. There definitely wasn't that at Verde Safari.

There were several cool bars and restaurants right on the beach. One bar had a live band that play a lot of reggae and Bob Marley covers. They were really good!

 

 

 

More of the island hopping tours. The three pictures above are from one of the several "secret lagoons" they took us to. They were fully enclosed little beaches and the only way to access them were the little crawl spaces like the one in the bottom picture.You could walk up to this particular one, but there was another that you had to swim into. The guides said it was only accessable at low tide because at high tide the opening gets flooded. Obviously it wasn't safe to carry the camera into that one.

 

The second island hopping tour we did included a kayaking trip. Some of the places we kayaked to had the best scenery of anywhere. Those were other times that it wasn't safe to take the camera also. We also did tons of snorkeling at a lot of the stops on the tours.

Our tour guides making us lunch. They made some of the best grilled chicken and grilled fish I've ever had! The fresh fruit (especially the mango) was delicious also!

Our private dinner cruise. The food on this trip was amazing also! One of the great things about the Philippines was how it hasn't been taken over by over-priced big businesses from the west. The price of the trip was similar to just getting dinner and drinks at a medium priced restaurant in the US.

That pretty much sums up our time in El Nido. One more post will be coming soon about our few days in Puerto Princesa.

Thanks for reading,

Hunter