Your trip to Philippines is incomplete if you don’t visit El Nido. El Nido is known for white sand beaches, coral reefs and secluded islands. Air Swift operates direct flight from manila to El Nido but the fare is always on the higher side. If you have time and want to save some money, then you can travel to El Nido through Puetro Princesa. Cebu pacific offers direct flights to Puetro Princesa from manila. From the Puetro Princesa airport it takes 6-hours van ride in order to reach El Nido. The total cost of entire trip is almost half compared to flying directly. El Nido is a small tourist town situated at the north of Palawan island.
I had a flight from manila to Puetro Princesa around noon time. I reached Puetro Princesa after a 1.5-hours flight. Transport is available to El Nido town from the Puetro Princesa airport. Shared cab ride to El Nido town costs 500 pesos per person. The condition of the roads was okay and there was just one stop for food during our whole journey. I stayed at a hotel which was around 15 minutes walk from town center. You can have great seafood at restaurants located at the seashore. The hotels near the town center are expensive compared to the hotels situated far from the town center. I would recommend people to book their hotels earlier because most of the hotels get sold out very fast. It is much more convenient to book all your day tours from your hotels because the travel agency usually asks higher price for the tour.
Island hopping combination tour A & C
El Nido is famous for its island hopping tours. There are total 4 famous island hopping tours from El Nido. They have named it tour A, B, C & D. You can take single tour for a day or a combination tour. The tour A, B and C are the most famous tours around El Nido. The tour agency offers combination tour for A & C and also for B & D. The combination tour takes longer time compared to single tour and the time spent at each destination is reduced because of the increase in number of stops. I booked combination tour A & C from my hotel and the total cost was around 1600 pesos including lunch. I had to decide between tour B or D for the next day because there was no combination tour available. The tour D was situated very close to the El Nido town and it covers islands similar to that of tour A & C. That’s why I decided to visit tour B because you will get chance to visit some water caves. The cost of visiting tour B was only 1000 pesos.
Our guide picked us from the hotel around 8 am. It was just a 10-minutes tricycle ride to the pier for the boat trip. The pier is situated just adjacent to the town center. I had the first glimpse of the limestone mountain of El Nido from the pier and it looked beautiful. Our boat was parked little bit further so we had to use a small kayak to get into the boat.
Helicopter island– We started our tour around 9 am and our first stop was helicopter island. The sea was little bit rough but the scenery was beautiful. The helicopter island was looking exactly like a helicopter. After a long 1 hour ride we finally reached the island. The boat was constantly moving because of the large waves so some people faced difficulty getting out of the boat. It was a beautiful beach with white sand. We arrived the place little early so there were very few tourists at the island. After spending 1 hour at the beach we started our journey to next spot.
Hidden beach – The hidden beach was covered by the limestone mountain. All the boats were parked in deep water. You have to swim to the other side of the limestone mountain in order to reach the hidden beach. The sea was very rough so I decided to skip the swim to the hidden beach and stayed on the boat. I was busy taking the pictures of the limestone mountain and the crystal clear blue colored water. After 30-minutes everyone returned to the boat. Almost all the people had bruises and they were bleeding because they stepped on the sharp coral while swimming to the hidden beach. Ohh, I realized that it was a great call to not proceed to the hidden beach.
Shimizu Island – Our next destination was Shimizu Island. It is located little bit far from the hidden beach. We had to pass open waters in order to get to the island. During the start of the trip it was all ok but once we crossed the islands we faced some huge waves. Our boat was a traditional taraw boat and I started having doubt about the boat after seeing the waves. The boat captain said to us that he had seen worse waves before and there is nothing to worry about. I mentioned about my travel plan from El Nido to Coron by boat to the captain and he wished me all the best. Philippines has some of the worse maritime safety record in the entire world. I felt scared about my boat trip to Coron. If I don’t take the boat I have to go back to Puetro Princesa then fly to manila then again have to take flight to Coron from Manila and it will take entire day to travel there. The boat ride was only for 3 hours. Once we got out from open waters the water became calm and we arrived at Shimizu Island safely. The beach at the island was considerably smaller than that of the helicopter island. We had our delicious lunch at the island. The food was prepared by the crew and it was mostly grilled fish, grilled chicken, pork, vegetables and salad. The lunch was fantastic we couldn’t have asked for anything better.
Big lagoon– Our next stop was Big lagoon. Finally the water was calm and I took a short nap after a delicious lunch. My boat captain woke me up when we reached Big lagoon. I was shocked to see the beauty of the place. A narrow channel of water connects the lagoon with the sea. Our boat was moving slowly along the narrow channel because the place was packed with kayaks The lagoon was deep and the color of the lagoon was green. I don’t know why our tour boat didn’t stop there for kayaking. Our boat captain said we will go to small lagoon for kayaking because it is less crowded.
Small lagoon– After a short ride from big lagoon we reached small lagoon. The lagoon was narrow so the boat couldn’t enter inside the lagoon. The boat was parked outside of the lagoon and we had to take kayak from the deep sea in order to reach small lagoon. I had to call off the kayaking plan because the sea was very rough. Only one person in our tour decided to rent kayak for the small lagoon tour.
7 commando island – 7 commando island was our last stop for the day tour. The island had witnessed some great battle during the world war II between Japanese and American soldiers. This beach was the biggest beach during our day tour. There were bars and restaurant at the beach and it was crowded compared to other places we visited during the day. We were there at the island till sunset and the view was beautiful from the island. After sunset we started our return journey to El Nido town. Around 6 pm we finished the island hopping tour.
This is a must do tour if you are visiting El Nido. If you have more time you can also do the A and C tour separately. You will be able to spend more time at each spot if you do the tours separately.
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