Filipino Paradise

Palawan, El Nido

Aiaiai: 3 Filipinos and 18 foreigners

7107 islands and only 8 days to visit the Philippines... what a difficult choice! After some research and the advice of some friends we decided to go the island of Palawan during the week of the Chinese New Year, in which we didn't have class. We couldn't have done a better choice.

We landed on the small city of Puerto Princesa after a stop in Manila, the capital city. The airport was the smallest I had ever seen, you just walked out of the plane and without any security control you could take a tricycle - the 'taxis' they use, for around 0,2€ per person- to your hostel. First impressions: nice weather and a very relaxed atmosphere!

One of the first things that stroke us was the way the locals travel...

That afternoon we went to a mangrove beach and we had a nice bath while seeing the sunset. The next day we had a day trip planned to the Puerto Princesa Underground River, recently nominated as one of the new 7 wonders of nature. It is a 8km river that starts in the underground of a mountain and ends in the sea. On our two hours way we saw the bull that Filipinos use to collect the rice in the muddy rice fields.

Since the Underground River was not accessible by car, we had to take one of these typical Filipino boats to visit it. The lateral parts of the boats that balance them are simply bamboo.

The bright green colour of the water really seemed artificial... They told us that this happens because of the mix of the salty water of the sea with the fresh water of the river, together with the white-sand seafloor. The cave of the picture is the entrance of the 8km river, although the trip by boat only visits the first 2km.

"Sir, Madame, watch out with the Holy Shit!" - was the sentence the guide repeated again and again. 'Holy Shit' was the name of the bat's shits and the reason of repeating it so often was that the caves were really infested with thousands and thousands of bats sleeping upside-down. So we didn't open our mouths although being astonished by the enormous stalactites and stalagmites that imitate funny forms such as a jesus christ, a castle or even the figure of a sexy lady!

Some wild nature and other smaller caves around the place:

 On our way back we stopped at a very nice fruit market where you could buy a bunch of bananas for 10 pesos (around 0,2€)

Next day early in the morning we took a van that drove us for 6 hours to El Nido, the true reason of our trip to the Philipines. 

It was far away, indeed. The van was unconfortable and the road was bumpy, but i'll simply leave you with the next pictures to decide by yourselves whether it was worth it or not: 

 

The colour of the see, the breeze of the wind, the cliffs of the islands... El Nido is literally the paradise. The small village is surrounded by lots of small islands that you can visit in one-day island-hopping trips for cheap prices, including lunch.  We enjoyed some snorkelling with tropical bright-coloured fishes and different sorts of coral, and a BBQ with fish, rice and sweet mango after that. 

Amazing right? But that's only the nice side of the coin of the Philippines. Around half of the population live in rural areas and they are really poor. 

Just the fact of seeing where they live and how they live makes you realize how lucky you. Specially when you see the small kids playing around you think about how unfair it is that these children will never have the same opportunities you had to have a better life. You always hear that there is poor people all around the world, but until you don't actually make local friends and you see that they sleep with other 9 people on the ground in a small dirty shack, you don't understand in how far this is true. However, we noticed that they always drew a smile in their faces, which you cannot see in Europe that often. All these are things you learn only when you travel; you can't really learn them in school or reading a book.  

A curious place our local friends brought us to was the 'cock fighting'. The event was a 'derby' with the best fighting roosters of the region. The bets raised up to hundreds of euros in total for some fights. The roosters wear knives tied to their claws and they are more aggressive than we expected.

An afternoon we took two tricycles and we went to the waterfalls of El Nido - after two flat tires due to the bumpy road... The trekking was nothing special, and our guides almost got lost but the waterfalls we finally got to were very nice.

The electric green colour of the rice fields on the way back...

The pork head and the fish were some of the weird stuff we saw at the local market of El Nido.

Incredible soft mangos for less than 1€/kg... we could stop eating those mangos!

                            

The Philippines is a synonim of unrivalled beauty. Even on our departure, this amazing country left us with some awesome views of the sunset from our plane... Take care Philippines, someday I'll come back for one of the other 7000 islands. I promise!