Our time in El Nido didn’t start of great, we turned up at our hostel, the one with the best ratings in the area, to find it dark cramped and dirty looking. So we immediately headed back out into the town on the search of a different one, the only one that still had space was double to price, but thankfully this trip were no longer penny pinching and unemployed so we decided to splash out on the much nicer hostel, still unsure how the other one had such high ratings.
After we had moved all of our stuff over and showed we went out for a lovely Italian dinner sharing a pizza and a salad. But yet again I had vomiting and diarrhea about an hour later, which is no ideal as we only had one more day in El Nido before we were supposed to be doing a three day boat trip.
So the next day, sadly our only full day in El Nido, I spent the morning in a local clinic trying to get to the bottom of what the issue is. After a fun stool sample in a dubious looking toilet and some waiting around for results I was told I have a parasite infection, probably from a salad or contaminated water. Luckily 10 says of antibiotics should resolve the issue and the doctors visit and medication only came to around £50, well worth it to be on the mend!
Thankfully the next morning I wasn’t feeling as weak and tired and had managed to keep some food down, so we decided to go ahead with out boat trip. We had booked a two night, three day excursion from El Nido to Coron, we were luckily on one of the smaller catermerang boats, there were 11 travelers; A Dutch couple, A Swedish couple, A German couple, tow other British Girls and an Italian man. Along with four staff on the boat.
It was a super fun three days, we visited sand bars, snorkeling spots and beautiful beaches. We lucked out on our first day when we found a brand new looking snorkel and goggels at a snorkeling spot somone had obviously dropped and left without as we were the only people there. The snorkeling spots were amazing we saw so much cool corral and so many cool fish, we also saw some turtles. The group soon cottened on that Grace was the girl to stick close to when snorkeling and I lost my private guide, but she was showing us all the cool stuff in the ocean and stopping us getting attacked by trigger fish and a large Barracuda at one point!
We also got very spoilt with three freshly cooked buffet meals each day. In the evenings we docked up on small islands and ate on the land, the first night on of the English girls was feeding some dogs all our leftover chicken adobo and we’re getting very grumpy looks from the boat staff, only afterwards did we realise the food was for them too and they just waited for us to finish before they ate. Woops!
We slept in basic wooden huts with mosquito nets, and showered in water collected from rain, somehow even in this most basic and isolated of places we still couldn’t escape the Filipino love for karaoke and there was a battery powered machine, which made for our evening entertainment, the first night we had a karaoke off with the other boat staying on the island, they claimed it was unfair because I was too good a singer which may have been the best compliment I’ve ever had and I would of been very happy with it except it made me a bit too confident and it all came crashing down with a rather lacking attempt at Adele! Ohh well I guess I’ll stick to my normal day job when I get home! The boat crews were also joining in, singing their hearts out even if they didn’t always know the words, we particularly enjoyed the captain’s rendition of ‘You take my breath bread away’
The group was super fun and we all really got on playing dice games and chatting in-between stops. The Italian guy traveling on his own turned out to be an Actor and director apparently he is a main character on the netflix series ‘White Lotus’ which was lost on all of us, we had all heard of it but none of us had seen it. But he was telling us the cast are waiting to hear if they have won an oscar they have been nominated for.
It was a fun three days, except for some light to moderate sun burn for everyone on the last day when we seemed to be driving in a way that gave zero areas of shade, even our factor 50 suncream couldn’t seem to save us, but luckily we were the ones who got off the lightest and it’s already turned brown!
It was a great way to travel to Coron, even if we are knackered now! Can’t wait to tell you all about Coron soon, lots of love, Alice x