Coron Island Hopping Trip — The road liss traveled

There’s a bunch of cool stuff to do in Coron, namely riding scooters, scuba diving - wreck diving! and the island hopping trips. But instead of doing day trips with the tourist horde, I had signed up for a 3d/3n trip that gets you far away from the mainland to see some of the sights that are impractical to do on daytrips, and you get to sleep on mostly untouched tropical islands!

The company I booked with has pretty outstanding reviews so I was looking forward to it. After a couple days of wreck diving it was time, we all met at a restaurant near the port area, although I was slightly disappointed to see it was mostly couples. Our crew consisted of an American couple who lived in Seattle and were on their honeymoon, a Canadian/American couple that lived in Ohio doing a big South East Asia trip, a British couple from a small town near London, and another British girl from London. And of course my self. It turns out that there were supposed to be more people on our boat, but some people couldn’t make it due to the ferry issues from El Nido. Bummer! Maybe they should have taken the 13 hour quasi-legal bangka!

Hiking up to Kangayan Lake and looking back down to where the boats are parked, damn.

taking the stand up paddle board at twin lagoon, also crystal clear water

We boarded the boat around noon and headed to some of the famous spots closeby, Kangayan Lake and Twin Lagoon. Both are spectacular pools of water nestled in between the sharp limestone formations. Weather was mostly cloudy as usual, so the coor of the water didn’t get that nice pop. These two spots in particular are very touristy, but since we were going in the afternoon most of the day trip boats had already gone through, so we there were only a few other boats around. Our boat was also equipped with two kayaks and a stand up paddle board, so that was a nice perk to be able to take those out in the lagoon. Tough to take good photos on a stand up paddle board though!

crossing from one part of twin lagoon to the other

The next few hours were spent getting out to our little island a few hours away, called banana island. It’s a privately owned island and it has a bunch of bungalows, a little store, some hammocks, and a volleyball net and that’s about it! I guess on the other side of the banana is an expensive resort as well. Whoever owned these island around Coron from way back in the day have been cashing in the last decade or so of development in this part of the Philippines. We dropped off our things, a few of us played beach volleyball for a bit, checked out the house reef by snorkeling, and then enjoyed one of the better sunsets on the trip! Like usual we couldn’t actually see the sun set, but the after colors were great. It should be noted that all the drinks on the trip are also free, so the rum and pineapples were flowing as well! Not long after the sunset they had are our big buffet dinner waiting for us, which looked fantastic The big table was right on the beach, which is how we would eat all of our breakfasts and dinners, listening to waves. Everyone stayed up a while to drink and chat – like almost till 10pm! Haha it’s that kind of trip, not a party boat.

our island. It doesn’t look like a banana from this angle

I had no trouble sleeping, but the UK couple laid down in their bed to find a very large moving lump, which they thought was a rat, but it turned out to be a massive gecko! I guess the locals who stay on the island all know who he is and had a good laugh! We had a beautiful sunny morning and since I was up early I had time to do a bit more snorkeling before catching breakfast, which was eggs, corned beef, sausage, fruit, and pancakes. Not bad! After that we headed out to a sandbar connected to a mostly deserted island, followed by some more snorkeling. That would be how most of the trip would be, beach spots, snorkeling spots, eat, cruise around, rinse and repeat! And fortunately the sun was coming out and staying out!

That afternoon we anchored the boat to an even smaller island this time, with even nicer and softer white sand. A few day trip boats were there when we arrived, but by the time the sun was going down we were the only boat remaining. It was a similar set up, a handful of bungalows and not much else, with 2-3 people there as the island caretakers. The island featured a small mangrove swamp and stairs to the highest point on the island, a whopping 10 minute walk. I enjoyed taking my book, a beer, and a plastic chair and putting it at the far end of the beach which I had all to myself. Dinner was similar, and most of us stuck around afterwards to play some card games before getting to bed.

This was the most picturesque of our islands to sleep on

I feel like it’s getting a bit repetitive, but breakfast was on the beach, it was sunny again, we went to a snorkeling spot that had a sunken ship, then to a mostly deserted beach on a small island, had lunch, then visited a larger island that had large black limestone cliffs. There was a cool cave inside, some big monitor lizards around, and a good outcropping to jump off into the water. We all agreed that this was the best island on the trip.

Certainly the most chill rooster I’ve ever seen. He had no problem being picked up. I even think he liked it!

In the late afternoon we boarded the boat again and headed to an island bit closer to mainland where we would find our bungalows. This would be the last night, so they made an extra large feast! The traditional meal is served communal style on large palm leaves and called Kamayan, which means using hands, or a Boodle Fight, because you compete with all the people around you for all the food! Good thing there was a lot of stuff to fight over! The crew also sat and joined us which was nice. Everyone was also drinking quite a bit as tonight was karaoake night, and participation was not mandatory, but highly encouraged.

A bonfire was set up, and nearby were two large speaker and microphone. We drew straws to figure out the order, as nobody wanted to go first. I don’t think we had any regular singers in the group. Charlotte, the girl from London was the unlucky one, she started us off with a quite dismal rendition of ‘Summer of 69’ which just really isn’t a good karaoke song. So that would set the very low bar for the rest of the night! Almost everybody sucked. Even the Filipino crew! I figured since they’d been singing their whole lives they might be good at it, but nope. But in the Philippines people are just way less shy about sucking. You walk around and you will hear people belting out just some of the worst off squeaky, off key performances in front of a bunch of strangers and they don’t care!

It eventually got to me, and even though my voice is god awful, after watching how terrible everyone else was I didn’t have much to worry much! I’ve had enough karaoke bombs to know to choose a song that absolutely everyone knows, and it has to be upbeat, and you have to get into it a bit (the booze helps). Any slow weird parts or choruses of a song are a total energy killer. So my song was Hit Me Baby One More Time by Brittney (obv) and it went off without a hitch. Just so you know how low the bar was, my performance was voted as best of the night!

So that was a fun grande finale. The one thing that sucked was had to get up early and be on the boat by 6am, everyone hungover and all. But I guess they have to get the boat back into town to get it ready for the next tour. I’d say not being able to actually enjoy the last morning on the beach, which faces the sunrise, was probably the thing that bothered me the most about the trip. But anyway it was still a very nice tour and even though it was pretty pricey by Philippines standards we all agreed it was worth it!