El Nido

One of the highlights and a trip I was most looking forward to in the Philippines, a chance to visit Palawan with Janelle. I had everything planned from the accomodation to the activities and thankfully her parents agreed but her mom had to chaperone. We woke up quite early to get to the airport, we waited a bit and got on the plane with a direct flight to El Nido which took a little less than two hours to get there. Even just the scenery from the airplane descending down was unbelievable. Such amazing untouched landscapes, I felt the excitement begin to shoot up. As suggested by our AirBnB host, there was an area where we could get tuktuks and we paid a flat amount going to our AirBnB. It was a private home and it had two rooms, one where Janelle and her mom was staying and the other for me. We had a nice patio where there was a couch, kitchen, and dining area but the icing on the cake was the amazing view of this towering cliff which made our the whole staying experience so much more wonderful. We got to meet one of our hosts, Rusty as well as the people we were working with that day, Ban, our tuktuk driver and Nelson, our contact for island hopping. I was already stoked and the day had just begun. After getting our things all settled, we decided to go out for lunch first. We headed to another recommendation by our host, The Kollektive it was called. Specializing in Filipino food, they didn't disappoint. The wait was long but we were accompanied by two cute dogs so it wasn't all that bad. We had karekare, sisig, and pansit to which we all hungrily gobbled up. We also got some desert, I was already quite full.

Our first activity of the day was doing the canopy walk to see some of the views from above the cliffs. We went to go register but it had started to rain pretty hard so we decided to go home for a bit since we had some time to burn. I relaxed for a while, watching the rain storm on and taper off. Ban drove us back to the canopy walk starting point and thankfully the rain had pretty much stopped altogether. Such is the fickly weather of the islands. We had to go inside the barangay to sign off some stuff as it was part of their territory, we passed by a basketball court where some kids were playing as well. It was a small and easy hike up that took us across a suspension bridge. It felt like we were so deep in the jungle even though we were just in town a couple of minutes ago. All around us were the Tarao cliffs, these huge towering mountains with very unique structures. Our hike to us to the very top where we had a scenic and panoramic view of El Nido's pier. After some more picture taking, we started the hike back down.

The next destination was Nacpan beach, the longest beach in El Nido and unique in a sense that it was also a twin beach, one beach on each side with two different views. It was drizzling a bit but it still felt like we were smackdab in the middle of paradise. I remember seeing the sand stretch for kilometers long, it would take a long time just to reach the other side. We walked towards the other beach, Janelle and I explored the deeper parts of the rocky area which led to some amazing framing opportunities with the unique rock formations. We had wanted to catch the sunset but it was too cloudy and it seemed like it was setting on the other side of the mountain at the end of the island. We still tried to push our luck but gave up eventually. Our walk back was a very peaceful one as there was nary a soul in sight. Photo opportunities were ample and I was able to practice a lot of my techniques, teaching Janelle what I knew as well. She was able to get a lot of cool photos too. There was also blue hour where I was able to get a very cool silhouette shot of the palm trees against the blue backdrop of the night-turning sky. We were looking for Ban but he was nowhere in sight. It took a while to find him as night fell upon us, it had gotten very dark already. Eventually we found him in some random place and were off to Lio beach for dinner. It was definitely a bit more high class kind of restaurant that focused more on grilled food, the prices were a bit on the higher end but and the food took some time to arrive so Janelle and I went for a walk under the starry sky. The beach at night was very romantic with a lot of lights and live music playing. We went to where the water was and just really enjoyed the moment and each other's company. When we got back, the food was all there so we chowed down and finally headed home.Read more