Back into our backpacking life, we traveled two hours north on the local bus to reach the infamous El Nido.  This area of Palawan is well known for its giant limestone formations and beautiful beaches.  To our disappointment, the town of El Nido itself was nothing special, so we decided to stay the night in Corong-Corong instead, a quite village also along the beach just next to El Nido.  Corong-Corong was very beautiful, sharing the view of the limestone you can see from El Nido, and far more quiet.. just how we prefer! That same day we had an incredible dinner in a small, cozy French place that had a few small tables in the sand, whose only illumination came from a few candles and the moonlight.

The day after we decided to continue our journey directly north to Coron, where we arrived after 8 hours sitting in a lousy boat which, by the way, had to stop twice in the middle of the sea to fix the engine. Coron is located within the Calamian Islands, being known for its wonderful lakes, beaches, and several sunken Japanese ships from WWII.  The town of Coron itself had no charm at all, however being the only place in the area to find decent priced accommodation, we ended up sleeping there.

During the following week we stayed in Coron, and our agendas were filled with many activities in the surrounding Calamian Islands. Diving inside the shipwrecks was, to our surprise, very fun!  We say “to our surprise”, as you may remember that we did not speak too fondly of a shipwreck dive we had done recently in Malaysia.  This time we truly enjoyed ourselves! In fact, we went a bit deeper than our certificate allows (28 meters instead of the 18 meters, shhh…! we shouldn’t be saying that), which permitted us to get inside the boat and through several interesting areas, including some quite tight spaces where we sometimes did not know if we would fit.  The two wrecks we dove in were Tangat Wreck and Olympia Maru, both Japanese auxiliary cargo ships sunken on September 24, 1944 by US air raid. It was quite an experience! Aside this, we also dove in the coral reefs which were just okay, what can we say…, the visibility was not the best and the marine life didn’t stand out from the beautiful marine life we had seen in the past months!

On another day we took an island hopping tour to some of the most beautiful beaches we have ever seen.  To be precise, these were Bulog Island, Banana Island, and Malcapuya Island.  Aside having spent a wonderful day on these white sand and transparent water islands, we met a lovely group of girls from Manila: Pheobe, Ish, Kristine, Shaw, and the Norwegian boyfriend of Shaw, Colbjorn.  In fact Shaw and Colbjorn had been coincidently diving with us the day before.  Together we enjoyed a wonderful day in these truly beautiful islands and a delicious lunch on the beach with seafood, our dear underwater friend Mr. Parrot fish, and several other tasty plates.  As they live in Singapore, and this is our last leg of the trip, we are looking forward to seeing them again in a few months!

Before leaving Coron, we also made sure to take a swim in the emerald waters of Kayangan Lake, located within extremely large limestones.  This lake is one of the major tourist attractions of the area, and most definitely is spectacular.

After a week of really hot temperatures, Coron started to feel like an oven that we wanted to escape from in our path to a cooler weather destination. Next stop: Off to the rice terraces of the mountain villages of Banaue and Batad, allegedly the “8th wonder of the world” (Yes, 8 exist now!) 😉