So I had made it to El Nido, probably the prettiest place in the entire Philippines! Well not the town itself, but the surrounding areas that is. I thought it was getting a bit touristy 10 years ago, but now the place is proper tour mall. Mega hostels, resorts, infinity pools, new modern apartment buildings, air conditioned coffeeshops with decent wifi, the whole thing! One section of beach that only had a few wooden bungalows was now completely transformed into all high end shops where they charge you $12 for a smoothie bowl or whatever. But the thing is, the infrastructure can’t keep up. The wifi is mostly terrible, there’s lots of power outages, the streets flood when it rains, they have trouble keeping the ATMs stocked, etc. At least there are ATMs though, I ran out of cash once 10 years ago and had take the 6 hour bus to Puerta Princessa and 6 hours back just to reload! Brutal.
It was also disappointing to find out that the main beach in town was almost gone after it got hit by the typhoon a few years ago. It wasn’t the nicest beach, as it’s used as a harbor with all the boats, but 10 years ago every single restaurant set up tables and chairs and candles on the beach and that’s what everyone did for dinner! It was a really nice setup to eat in the open air watching the ocean. But alas, not anymore.
My first stop was that transformed section of beach I was talking about, about 2km from town. I stopped at a trendy looking place playing soft trance music, a huge bar, ornate wooden furnishings, rope swing chairs, and of course an expensive menu. I ordered the smoked fish salad, which was tasty, small, and overpriced, which is just what I expected! But you don’t find too many proper salads in the Philippines. A normal salad here is like 2 pieces of tomato and some cucumbers.
From that beach I turned the corner and the entire coastline was almost completely empty, just as I remembered it. I was a bit surprised as I thought this area, which has great views of the karst formations and the sunsets, would surely have seen some development by now, but nope! So that was a pleasant surprise.
The next day I joined one of the boat trips out to the islands. This is nothing like the relaxed, uncrowded boat trips in Port Barton! There’s chaos at the beach trying to figure out which boat is yours, and they don’t all come on time. Vendors everywhere trying to get you to rent their underwater phone casings, mask and snorkel, water shoes, etc. Finally your boat pulls in and you wade through the water, climb up the wooden ladder and you can relax a bit.
All of the boats are pretty full and if you’re doing Tour C for example, all of the boats doing Tour C do the exact same order at the exact same time! You have a time limit at each spot and then it’s back in the boat to join the caravan. Perhaps the most scenic spot on the trip is ‘secret lagoon’ which was just a mass horde of people and bright orange life jackets. Most city slicker Filipinos (who make up most of the domestic tourists) are actually terrible swimmers, it’s not uncommon to see them form a chain in the water, holding onto the person in front of them, and having one of their boat crew swim them in a line through the water to whatever lagoon or snorkeling area is the next destination!
The highlight of trip was mostly just being on the water with all the awesome karst formations around. And the lunch. We found a more secluded spot and they cooked us up one of the famous Filipino feasts. And then more beaches and snorkeling. But really it’s not all that great when you’re around so many other people. In El Nido, now especially, its worth it to try and find a few more people and do a private tour. Or also I heard since Tour D is the least popular, it’s actually the nicest!
I had more fun renting a kayak for the afternoon and just paddling myself around to the coast to a nice beach or two, going through some of the rock formations. The beach I chose had just a handful of people there and some enterprising locals with coolers of drinks. Perfect.
Renting a scooter is also great in El Nido. You can get around the island pretty easily in a day and there are some stunning, mostly untouched beaches around. The ring road around the island is paved nowadays, so that helps. Here’s some of the scenery from driving around:
Then there is also some pretty good scuba diving, nothing amazing, but certainly worth a day or two. Just being in a non crowded boat out in the water with the scenery is almost worth the price alone!