A Day In El Nido
AND THIS IS WHAT WE WOKE UP TO!
We are staying at the highest villa at Makulay Lodge and Villas just down the beach in El Nido. HEAVEN.
Well, Tim is down and out for the day. The chest infection is in full swing — time to pull out the big guns…the antibiotics we got from the travel doctor. We are a virtual traveling pharmacy — Gastro Stop, antihistamines, 4 doses of antibiotics and malaria pills for months. This travel doctor we found in Perth was really great and thorough, overkill maybe? Not sure, but he explained a lot of the areas we were going truly off the map in have had malaria issues, so better safe than sorry, right?
El Nido is on Palawan Island and we have one day here before we set sail on our very exciting five day sailing expedition. More on that soon…
We got up and explored El Nido for a few hours. Very cute beach town. A bit of the typical madness on the road inland from the beach. One of the people we met said El Nido had really changed from even a year and a half ago — much more built up and more on the way. You can’t fault these towns — once they get on the map and more and more tourists visit, the locals want to take advantage of that and make a living for themselves. But, we’re all searching for that little untouched piece of paradise — problem is, when a good place is found, more and more people want to go and more and more people want to have a piece of it all. But El Nido was certainly cute enough. And we had our first true Filipino breakfast — eggs, corned beef and of course, rice! Yummmm.
Filipino Brekkie
We made our way back along the beach to our little slice of heaven and it was time for Tim to try and sleep this nastiness off. We decided that morning that we did indeed want to document these travels — eleven countries brings a lot of experiences, so let’s journal it and those who want to follow along for the ride can. If you’re reading, welcome!
I had to wake Tim up at 4pm or so as we had to head off to initiation for our sailing extravaganza. So, on that…
We stumbled across Tao Expeditions early on in our trip planning and they are the reason we picked where we were going in the Philippines actually.
When we started looking at everywhere we wanted to go in Southeast Asia, we stumbled across Condé Nast’s top island list for 2016 — The Palawan Islands in the Philippines were number one. And everything about them looked just incredible. And still relatively undeveloped. And just paradise. When surfing around the internet for this area, we came across Tao. It was an immediate — OH MY GOD WHAT IS THIS?!
Five days/four nights of cruising throughout the entire archipelago of the Palawan Islands (the Philippines are made up of over 7,000 islands and over 1,000 of these are in the Palawan area). You cruise/sail during the day and stop at various spots for swimming, snorkeling, beaching, eating, drinking, etc. Then before sunset, we stop on one of Tao’s 10 different base camps set up on various spots throughout the region. Sleep in little huts (many for just two people) on the beach. No power. No internet. Just you, the group and the elements. I remember sending it to Tim thinking, hmmmmm, not sure what he’s going to think of this. I think I got an email back three minutes later saying “LOOKS AMAZING. Let’s do this.”
Tao books up months and months in advance and the one sailing boat we wanted was full (they have a fleet of 16 boats, but only one pride of their fleet — the sailing boat). They are selective in who they choose for these cruises — they are that popular and have that ability, so why not pick the right people — after all, the people make so much of the experience. They make it very clear that this ISN’T for everyone. This isn’t luxury. It can be work. It is sleeping outside essentially. It is swimming and hiking to base camps. But we pitched our case and I asked if they had any cancellations on the sailboat for the dates we needed… and they did! We booked immediately. And then the rest of our time in the Philippines was booked around this — we sailed from El Nido (not easy to get to as you read yesterday) and finished in Coron.
Soooo, off we went to Tao Headquarters in El Nido.
We gathered with our fellow sailors (21 passengers in total plus 9 crew who would join us tomorrow) and were talked through the ins and outs of the next five days by Hinar, our captain. What a fascinating man. A native Filipino, he built this ship and began sailing it about two years ago for Tao. This lasted about an hour and we all ordered any alcohol we wanted and also last minute items — a dry bag to bring ashore at nights, more insect repellent, more sunscreen and we got another sarong for oh so many uses.
We met this great German gal named Ulli and we immediately clicked with her. We chatted for a bit and walked down to the beach in Corong Corong, which was a short trike ride from El Nido where headquarters was. The three of us walked along the beach and chatted on travel, life and this and that. Tao had just opened a beachfront space and was having a party, so we checked that out for a while. Awesome space and we met the Tao owners — Eddie and Jack. Very cool guys. And we got to witness one of the most beautiful sunsets we’d ever seen. Just magical.
We had a few beers then it was time to grab dinner and call it an early-ish night. Ulli headed off for pizza and we went on her recommendation to Happiness, this Mediterranean-style restaurant down the beach. Great food and our first coconuts!
Then we jumped a trike home and tried to get to sleep — so much excitement with what was to come tomorrow… ready for the sailing adventure to begin tomorrow morning at 9am!
