El nido day 2

Woke up at around 9am to get breakfast. I was feeling a bit worse for wear! We hired motorbikes and headed off for a tour of the northern most part of the island. I was sharing one with Beth and I decided that she would be best driving as she has ridden bikes in every country she’s been to in Asia so far. A few Kms down the road, the road stopped being tarmac and became gravel road. Beth didn’t like this and so we were driving extremely slowly which was completely fine with me! We made it to the first stop in one piece. At the stop we hiked 25 mins to a waterfall. It was blisteringly hot and so by the time we got to it we were all very sweaty. We had to cross a few rivers and so the boys had to carry some people across as they didn’t want to get their trainers wet. I had my sandals on so I was ok. The waterfall was pretty, nothing overly spectacular but it was really nice to get in the cool water and relax for a bit. Ben and Alex decided to jump in which we all found a bit scary as we didn’t really know how deep it was. Hiked back down from the waterfall and got back on the bikes. It was back to the gravel track again for about 30 mins. Eventually we made it to tarmac and so Beth was much happier. There were a few picturesque viewpoints along the way that we stopped at. Some stunning views! We decided that we needed to stop for lunch and found a place in the middle of nowhere. It was really cute little treehouse style thing up on a hillside with views over to the sea at the top of the hill. There seemed to just be this one Dutch lady doing everything for us and so it took a while to get our food. I had a watermelon shake and vegetable tempura with satay sauce which was delicious. Back on the bikes again and by this point we realised how far we had left to go with not very long left of daylight. We decided to make less stops and just try and crack on with some distance. Plenty more stunning views on the way and a few nice looking beaches. Just before sunset we decided that we should try and find somewhere to stop to watch it. Found a gorgeous beach called Lio beach which was quite quiet and had stunning views. The water was a really nice temperature and so I stood in the water while I was watching the sunset. It was very pretty. Once the sun was down it was just the small matter of getting back in the dark! It actually wasn’t too bad and it didn’t take too long. Once we were back we grabbed some food. It was James’ last night and so we let him decide what he wanted to do. He decided that chilling at the beach with rum again would be fine. We got shouted at for being too loud and so we moved down the beach a bit to outside the cottages that James and Alex were staying in. Stayed up chatting until about 2am with music. Then we said our goodbyes and went to bed.Read more