Palawan - Puerto Princesa and El Nido

This might sound a bit ridiculous given what we've spent a year doing, but I feel like we've just had a 2 week holiday! The Philippines (or what we've managed to see in a far too short time) is just beautiful, and we have done little that hasn't involved relaxing and visiting beautiful places. Our first stop in Palawan was Puerto Princesa, which was not in itself particularly interesting - one morning was really enough to see the sights it has to offer. It was, however, our starting point for a day trip to Sabang, the location of the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River. We felt it had been far too long since we had visited a UNESCO World Heritage Site (yes, I got it right this time...) and this one has an extra claim to fame - being currently in the running for a place in the 'New 7 Wonders of the Natural World'. How something formed over thousands of years can be described as new is beyond me, but anyway. The place is quite stunning - the entire river runs for 8.2 km, all underground. The river is surrounded by stalactites and stalagmites, and it is an eerie feeling entering such a long river through a small gap in the rocks. We had a great day trip there - we were the only foreigners on our tour, and we met some lovely people.
We decided that we should save as much money as possible on our travel in Palawan, so chose to travel on to our next destination, El Nido by local bus rather than the twice the price, air-con vans that were advertised all over. The lady in our guesthouse told us, yes, this was fine - and the first bus would leave at around 7am. Perfect. Slightly less perfect when she changed her mind later that day and told us the first bus would actually leave at 5am. I hate 5am. Still, we made it to the bus stop and sat on the world's smallest seat, wondering how this would feel after 6 hours. It hurt. However, one look at all the people crammed in the bus without seats and it felt a lot more comfy! The bus would have made good time, if we hadn't stopped to pick up 10 newly made doors from the door-making-shop. We actually had to sit and wait for them finish making the last 2 doors before we could leave, which were hoisted onto the roof of the bus (along with just about everything else you can imagine). The whole process took more than an hour. At least the early start meant that we arrived in El Nido at a civilised time and we found ourselves a hut right on the beach. We spent the day lazing about on the beach, swimming in the sea and staring out at the beautiful scenery surrounding us. Given that El Nido town itself if really just the jumping off point for island hopping trips it surprised us by being pretty nice in itself.

The following day was a bit of a mad morning rush as we decided to move from our very nice, right on the beach 10 pound a night room to a slightly less nice, not on the beach, bathroom about 50m away room for 6 pounds a night. This had to be done before 8.30 as we had a tour booked to visit some of the surrounding islands and do some snorkeling. We had a fantastic day on some of the most beautiful beaches either of us have ever seen, as well as stunning lagoons, one of which we had to swim through a small crack in the rocks to emerge into. The snorkeling was pretty good - nothing spectacular but some colourful fish. Sadly most of the coral in the area has died through a combination of factors including dynamite fishing, which is a real shame. I think people have become far more aware of the damage they can cause recently but it may be too late. We enjoyed the tour so much that we signed on for another one a couple of days later. Other than that our time in El Nido involved a lot of beaches, swimming, snorkeling and generally relaxing in the sunshine. Which I imagine no one really wants a day by day account of... I'll let the photos speak for themselves once we've uploaded them. The other half of our time in Palawan has been spent in Coron, known for great wreck diving. However, we have a flight to catch in a couple of hours, so that will have to come later.