San Miguel

Yesterday (the 21st) we saw one of the seven natural wonders of the world: the Puerto Princesa Underground River. It was unbelievable!!
The Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park (The Underground River) is a protected area of the Philippines located about 80 kilometres north of the city centre of Puerto Princesa, Palawan. The entrance to the subterranean river is a short hike or boat ride from the town Sabang. The Underground River was provisionally chosen as one of the New7Wonders of Nature on November 11, 2011. The selection was officially confirmed on January 28, 2012.
Luckily we woke up feeling freshER than the morning before (would have been fresh had we not been up for half of the night from the RUDE boys!). We got the 7.15 am bus to the underground river, which was located about 90 minutes away.
The tour guide was crazy (but lovely), she was repeatedly shouting 'ma'am sir' mid-sentence and kept cracking jokes - we were getting so confused about what was a joke and what was serious!
She made us all introduce ourselves - but this was where the FIRST (of many) strange things that happened that day. So the lady in front from Saudi Arabia starts filming us when we are talking and literally holds her camera directly in front of my face. Then we could see that she had put a caption and was snapchatting it?! Maybe she has never seen a white person before.... but we are not performing monkeys haha - it was all very strange (particularly because we still felt half asleep so a camera in our face was very overwhelming!)
Everyone else in our group was from the Philippines - all lovely!!)
After the 90 minute journey to Sabang, we had the morning to do a trip (the lady said that it was because the queue for the underground river was extremely long, but do not think this was the real reason). We didn’t mind though – we got to do an 800 m zip wire over the sea which was beautiful and was so fun (But very painful for poor hope as she was wearing a skirt so the harness was directly pressing on her skin).
The rest of the group did a mangrove boat trip.
We had lunch after the morning trips which was a buffet (but Hope and I had eaten so many crisps we weren’t that hungry haha shock!). We had cucumber, noodles, and some spring rolls.
After lunch, we made our way on the ‘mother boat’ (as they called it) to the island where we got our small boats through the underground river. It was beautiful! We travelled through the massive cave on the longest underground river in the world – declared by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. We saw hundreds of bats (we were told in our individual synchronized audio devices (as you have to be silent in there) that you must close your mouth when looking up at the bats so they don’t poo in your mouth lol), giant monitor lizards were there, monkeys, apparently many snakes (luckily didn’t see any!).
We saw lots of monkeys after coming out the river. Another very strange thing happened on our way back to the beach … we walked past a very … very … strange man.
Anyway, the journey back on the ‘mother boat’ to Sabang was great – the views were honestly breathtaking!
We got back to the bus, and did the 90 minute bus journey back to Sheebang hostel. We were going to see if we could make the final 4 pm bus from Puerto Princesa to Port Barton, but we got back at 4.30.
We checked in to another room as we had originally only booked 2 nights (and apparently the one we were in was booked for that night…even though we saw later that it wasn’t?! strange!). The lady first tried to take us to the 8 bed room next door with the boys in…but we told her we really did not want to stay there so luckily she took us to another one.
We were going to chill for a bit and then go out for a nice dinner and drinks. But after repacking our bags, and deciding that we would get the 6.30 am bus to Port Barton the following morning, we decided to have a chilled night with dinner at the hostel (and have the lovely veg adobo again), and plan the rest of our trip in the Philippines so we could get flights sorted.
The plan of the Philippines was:
Manila  Puerto Princesa, Palawan --- Now completed
 Port Barton, Palawan  El Nido, Palawan  Borocay  Cebu  Manila.
A very busy trip ahead!Read more