10. Tea on the beach!

For my final stop, I am at the beach in a place called El Nido. It’s quite a tourist hotspot but still pretty chilled. The town is on the northeast of Palawan island and is surrounded by towering limestone rock formations. These were formed 250 million years ago under the sea as they were carved out of sedimentary deposits from before then. They rose form the sea around 60 million years ago with tectonic plate movement. My little house hotel is right on the beach - slightly noisy in the evenings as it’s close also to the streets and some of the bars but nothing the sound of the sea and overly noisy ceiling fan can’t drown out! On the day I arrived, I did very little more than have a sleep and then go to a lovely place for dinner, then sleep some more.

Day 1

I was thrilled to find a fridge in my room so first job was obviously to do a trip to the shop for milk and since I have packed adequate teabag supplies, I’m all good …. Except …. Hot water poses a problem. It’s available ‘all day’ from the bar (while it’s open between 8am - 6pm). During those times they produce a thermos of ‘hot water’, which is in different stages of hot depending on how long ago it was boiled and put into the thermos. It can become quite lukewarm and I’m also not convinced it’s drinking water to start with so if it hasn’t been fully and properly boiled and then is allowed to cool, it seems risky. And what are you supposed to do for your first morning tea and evening teas pre 8am and post 6pm? Not enough thought has gone in to this from the hotel. I did a bit of thinking and a bit of researching and terribly cleverly, have solved all my tea problems for the week!

My little beach-side balcony and relaxing beach front chairs that the hotel have are perfect for all my tea drinking needs … and for reading my book all day in the dappled tree shade! I occasionally hot-foot it (literally - the sand is BOILING) to the sea for a quick dip. I also did a little beach comb walk and collected myself a bevy of sea treasures!

In the late afternoon, once the sun had sunk behind the cliffs and the temperature had dropped to slightly more manageable, I wandered out into town to have a look around. It’s tourist trap central, which means there are some lovely places to eat and endless souvenir treasure shops to explore! The town is bordered by one of the the huge rock mountains so even nipping out to the shops is quite spectacular. I also amused myself as I read some of the signage and saw the sights around town. I stumbled across one of the bazillion ‘you wan’ massage ma’am?’ shops so obviously felt I should do my bit for the local economy and say yes! £7.50 for a very blissful and terribly relaxing hour. I have also found the pharmacy as I’ve managed to pick up an ear infection, presumably from diving, but fortunately you can get every drug and treatment you could possibly need over the counter here, all for less that £5 so I’m antibiotic ear-dropped up and already the itching that was driving me mad is subsiding. (It’s more of a swimmer’s ear infection, mum, not an inner ear one so you can research, consult the medical oracle and let me know further best actions or any other treatment advice! I know you like some ‘work’ to do to keep you busy!).

Day 2

For today’s activity, I decided to partake of one of the many tours that this region is probably most famous for in terms of tourist activities! Between 8-9am all of the hundreds of boats that park in the bay overnight approach the beach and pick up their passengers for the day. There are 4 possible tours that you can take here; they are rather imaginatively called Tour A, B, C and D. You can buy your tickets for any of these tours at any of the hundreds of vendors. At every place the tours include the exact same spots, route and price. I can’t decide if it’s an absolute master plan or madness! They’ve distributed what could arguably be the most desirable destinations across the four tours and no amount of money or private chartering or anything will encourage anyone to deviate from the tour. It seems that tour A and C are the most popular but they basically all include visiting 5 places, which are islands / beaches / lagoons in amongst the towering limestone islands that rise up from the sea all around.

At best, the boats will dock at each place near the beach so you can leap into the waist-deep water and walk between the boat and beach. Other times, the boat is in deeper water so you have to swim between! Anyone who can’t swim (all the Filipinos on the trip!), are loaded into kayaks and ferried back and forth in twos. That included the 86 grandma who was with the family and who did a bloody good job of getting on and off the kayak and participating in everything! There was a nice Australian couple of my trip (Monique and Rob), who I initially judged as stereotypical Aussies but quickly discovered I’d got it really wrong. They save all their holiday up and take a month holiday once a year and travel the world; they’ve been all over Asia and America and describe the beer drinking ‘bogans’ sneeringly as ‘typical Ozzies’ + the ones who go to a beach in Thailand or Bali, spend a fortnight in their hotel resort getting drunk and who never expose themselves to any local culture or life. Not unlike some of the Brits who descend on Spain each year!

As we left on our boat, we were encouraged to clap and cheer then had to go round and introduce ourselves with our names and where we come from. The absolute worst - I thought I’d inadvertently found myself on one of those awful training courses I used to go on as a teacher. Fortunately, after that and aside from a ‘manditory’ photo shoot for each of us near the front of the boat (which I found it easier to just go with, follow the quite specific instructions for poses and enjoy) the rest of the day was very chilled and much fun.

Our first stop was hidden lagoon - it turned out to be quite literally hidden. We had to jump off the boat (into water out of our depths - I do not know how I survived without being immediately gobbled up by a raging sea monster), swim towards what appeared to be a sheer rock face where we were directed to take a deep breath and duck down under an underwater archway and swim (while the guides pushed our heads down to avoid smacking them on the rocks) and duck into a totally enclosed lagoon, around 50m square, surrounded on all sides but sheer rock face. The second one there had a tiny arch to swim through but was otherwise the same! Second stop was some snorkelling - some very pretty reef but being on the surface and above it is not a huge favourite of mine so I didn’t partake for long. Stop 3 was, very excitingly, lunch. It was high tide so the little beaches that ALL of the boats obviously stop at for lunch were mostly entirely covered. The guides announced they would set up the ‘lunch table’ and we could all swim to shore and eat. I thought this was just a turn of phrase - until suddenly they produced a large wooden table from somewhere, launched it over the side of the boat and swam it to shore. It was set up with masses on fresh veg, rice and BBQ’ed meats, which we all stood about shallow water eating!

After lunch we visited ‘Big Lagoon’ (a lot of time has gone into the marketing and naming of these attractions), which this time we had to load into kayaks that were towed up to the boat and paddle ourselves around. Finally we went to what is meant to be one of the ‘hidden treasure’ beaches, only accessible by boat. Less of the secluded paradise beach than you might imagine as it’s obviously also hosting all of the other ‘Tour A’ groups and today was also absolutely covered in an army of dead jellyfish. No idea what dreadful thing has befallen them but it seemed pretty severe!

Having said all of that, it was a very enjoyable day spent seeing the cliffs from the sea, pushing my fears of swimming in water out of my depth and chatting with all the various other guests (we came from UK - just me, Australia, Germany, Switzerland, Vietnam, Denmark and Philippines) about travels and other adventures. There aren’t huge amounts of photos of all of the stops as the swimming backwards and forwards to each place was a little prohibitive for ferrying cameras etc!

Back to my little beachside from this evening for delicious - and very much needed - cups of tea and then another dinner overlooking the sea.