El Nido is at the northern tip of the very long island of Palawan which almost touches Borneo in the south. It is a little fisherman village sheltered in a crescent shaped beach, which leaves no doubt why Palawan was called "The Land of Safe Harbors" by early Chinese traders. What made El Nido one of the major tourist destinations in the Philippines is not the town or the beach but the nearby islands. The Bacuit Bay is dotted with many islands most of which are just inaccessible straight up walls of limestone (resembling the views of Krabi in Thailand and the famous bay in Vietnam the name of which I can’t remember). There are some postcard beaches and great coral reefs as well as some really posh resort hotels on some islands. The place is also one of the few places where the last dugongs live (reputed to be the origin of mermaids).
On our first night out eating and drinking with some friends on the beach I was startled when I heard a loud siren go off for a meaningfully long time but nobody around me seemed to take notice and went on with their lives as usual. I had just received a strange e-mail and was wondering if it could be the TR3 something something the triangular UFOs coming from DUMBs (Deep Underwater Military Bases) to declare worldwide martial law when somebody told me that it’s bedtime for kids. It was a strange relief. “What are you talking about? They have sirens around the town going off in the evening to tell kids to go to bed?” “This was the first one at 9.30 and there’ll be another one half an hour later. After that it’s curfew for all kids in town.” Wow. What an organized town, I thought, they must have heard of child abuse and prostitution in some other places in Philippines and wanted to keep things in shape, which is not that bad. As I was slipping into asking why they don’t think of this solution in other places I realized I wouldn’t want to live in a society where there are sirens, curfews and all-inclusive rules. But still on this little beach town it felt fine. Every evening after that I realized kids and youngsters playing on the beach right until the sirens and then leaving it for the adults. Surprisingly the only one time I went to the beach after midnight and in full moon light, it was completely deserted save a few dogs and all the bars were also closed.
El Nido is not a place for big night life. Especially in a country like Philippines where night life is night life in some places, El Nido appears to be serving other needs. What one does here is wake up around 7 in the morning, have breakfast on the beach and join one of the tours (conveniently separated as tours A, B, C and sometiimes a suspicious D), marvel at the natural wonders of limestone islands and green waters, snorkel over the remaining corals and not believe your eyes in some of the lagoons, if lucky see some turtles or dolphins, have fish barbecue on one Robinson beach, come back to town’s beach just before sunset and feel nicely tired already. Many people have just enough time to complete this 3 or 4 tours.
The ones who stay longer like we did take long sunset walks in either direction from town or rent kayaks to test their paddling skills and "discover" some deserted island.
Once again we rented a local paddle banca and went to the nearest Not-Not beach on the Cadlao Island right opposite the town. We had a whole day privacy save 3 little cats. It was great to have time to imagine being stranded on a remote island beach. We had many coconut trees and the corals right in front of us were abundant in fish, squid and crabs. We had a little creek and a lake (we had heard before) further inland. We had great shade of big trees where colorful birds would come to eat the fruits of. Yes, we could actually live there sometime.
But of course we human beings are not that well with rain. Here in the tropics it doesn’t necessarily get cold when it rains but it may get very wet. And this whole trip we had an amazingly wrong timing with our tours. Our first boat tour was very rainy in the beginning and although it stopped after, it didn’t clear up completely and plus all the discharge from the mangroves because of the rain, made the visibility too little to enjoy snorkeling. The second tour started very sunny and gave us enough sun to admire the two famous lagoons and the caves. But in the afternoon it rained so strong that we got more wet in the boat than in the sea and we cut it short. On our third and the last tour it was sunny and as I started to develop fever and fell completely sick midday, the clouds were so thick it made us think it could be hard to go back with this little boat when that storm hit us. Fortunately it didn’t come our way and we went back safely, my fever reaching a hallucinogenic 40 degrees. That happens when you end up sweating a lot and fall asleep in front of the fan! (Thank God we don't take A/C rooms)
Few things I found interesting about El Nido:
- I saw some amazing fish while snorkeling and reconsidered why I dive when snorkeling is so rewarding. Apart from the usual beauties the surgeons, butterflies, angels, parrots etc. we spotted a group of 10 squids and swam with them for a while. They are very trippy when they stare at you with their huge eyes and start changing colors quickly trying to hypnotize you. One of them even made an ink cloud when I attempted to chase it. And once again we saw many boxfishes and puffers none of which puffed…
- Although the town is small (perhaps a few thousand households) there are churches everywhere. There is the main Catholic church which is the biggest and the oldest of course (1901) but there are also lots of fundamentalist churches all around. This, according to a friend, is more a recent influence from missionaries of USA. There are Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, Jesus of Latter Day Saints, Iglesia Ni Cristo, Jesus I Am Church, Full Gospel Church, Baptist Church, etc. and when you ask everyone is Christian, as if they all believe in the same thing. I keep thinking whether it is so hard to see that this is a part of the divide and conquer program. The number of American fundies around is sometimes very disturbing. Once in Baguio, I even once saw a group of people wearing Scientology T-shirts.
- El Nido supposed to be a fishermen’s village but we couldn’t locate them until we decided to walk to the very end of the beach. There is the port on one side of the beach and to the left of it is the town and all the touristic places. But there is the “other side” of the pier, which is normally completely out of sight of the tourists, and which occupy maybe a tenth of the whole beach. That is the fishing village. There are many streets of mostly very simply constructed houses on top of each other. The streets are full of kids, just too many kids. The beach is of course full of fishing boats and fishing nets. And a good thing, there is a basketball field also. But the contrast of this side of town to the other side stroke me. One side is planned with wide streets, houses with gardens and mostly busy with tourism while the other side reflects far more poverty, illiteracy and all that comes with it. Of course these people are far more fortunate than people living in the suburbs of big cities like Manila and they are even more fortunate that they live where the sea gives them food. I even find their natural setting pretty amazing although I don’t know if they think about it.
- Corals are fragile. And wherever I’ve seen corals I’ve seen them destroyed out of greed and ignorance. In all countries I had a chance to swim over corals I saw fields and fields of corals bombed, crushed, poisoned. The view is mostly like a big big city after it has been carpet bombed. It’s such a sad thing to see a few fish over this landscape looking for a bit of life so they can feed themselves.
And this is because there were some greedy fisherman who were also ignorant. Nobody told them that corals won’t grow back quickly (one centimeter of hard coral grows in 3 to 10 years). But nevertheless they were sold the tools to destroy them. Perhaps they were not the traditional fishermen, but those who came to these places or chose this practice later. What they did was get some dynamite, go over the coral, drop it and collect the dead fish on the surface. Only for once. Next time next coral, until they ran out of corals and fish. Or they would do the same with cyanide. Drop it, collect the fish. This time the corals wouldn’t break but they’d die all the same, along with some of the people who ate that fish over the years. Or they get some heavy drag nets and vacuum clean whatever is on the bottom. The result is always the same: heavily damaged or completely dead coral fields extending to the underwater horizon with few islands of life remaining. That’s where they take tourists to but you inevitably see the destruction. Plus because neither the boatmen nor the tourists are told anything about the fragility of corals, each tour causes more destruction. It’s a sad sad situation.
And as a last note, I have to say before we went to Palawan we asked people "shall we go to El Nido or Coron?". We also serahed on the internet. We were mostly told that they are very much the same thing but Coron is less developed. That's why we went there first (we were not sure we would go to El Nido). Coron was nice for diving and snorkeling also but in general it is not nearly as breath taking as El Nido. We also thought El Nido would be too developed and more expensive. Wrong. It was even cheaper than Coron and the big resort development were out of sight. I believe if you are very rich and can stay in one of those private island resorts, than it wouldn't make a big difference to stay in Coron or El Nido, but if you are a budget traveler than definitely El Nido. Coron doesn't have a town beach and even the nearest swimable beacch is an expensive boat ride away. El Nido doesn't have the nice wreck dives or the island lakes of Coron, and that's why one can choose to go there. But if you are choosing one go to El Nido and not Coron.
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