El Nido II

Our first day of island hopping, and I must say that it didn't disappoint. We had to wait for Nelson for a bit as he was supposed to pick us up and drop us off at the tour agency. We got there a bit too early though and had to wait for a long time before being able to get on the boat. Even then, it took a bit more waiting before we were finally able to set sail. Our boat had some characters but the weather was great and my mood quickly shifted back to high gear.

We started off at Seven Commandos beach, it was bright and sunny, there were people playing beach volley ball and the island had all these palm trees shooting upward. Janelle and I swam and played around the water, it was the perfect temperature and it felt so refreshing. Being in the middle of the ocean and enjoying this pristine location just made me forget all the worries of life. We swam for a long time and when people started to clear out, I took the opportunity for some picture taking before getting back on the boat. Our next destination, we went to Secret Lagoon. Going through a small crevice, it led to a lagoon that was surrounded by limestone mountains. I enjoyed floating around here and taking in the surrounding but I also lost my goggles here which was unfortunate as I haven't even gotten to use them for snorkeling. Our third stop, we went to have lunch at a nearby alcove which turned out to be an amazing buffet with delicious Filipino food and a lot of fruits. The weather had turned a bit gloomy by then and it had started to rain pretty hard. We hanged around here for a bit, enjoying the solitude and the waves, a little drizzle was no problem at all.

After lunch, we went to Shimizu Island next for some snorkeling. Our tour guide, Michael, let me borrow his goggles and I was able to see a lot of fish underwater which was pretty amazing. One of our boatmates started to crush and spread some crackers around which attracted a lot of fish. Now, I wasn't so sure about the environmental implications of this but I am pretty sure it's not exactly a good thing to be feeding all these wild fish with man made products but at the same time, seeing all the schools of fish flocking around was quite a spectacle. Lastly, we went to the highlight of the day: Big Lagoon. And indeed, big it was. We rode a kayak around here and it was pretty hard to get a stable photo especially when the boat kept on moving with the water. We passed through a pretty tight squeeze as well which was such a thrilling experience. I was surprised I wasn't getting tired at all from all the paddling. We kayaked our way back to the boat and off we went back to El Nido town proper. Nelson took us back to our AirBnB and we took a shower and rested up a bit before going to Art Cafe, a restaurant Janelle and I saw while we were walking around the docks waiting for our boat. There was really good live music playing and I ordered the house pizza special, we walked our way back, stopping by to purchase breakfast and snacks for the next day.Read more