Wednesday, February 18, 2009

back to the beach..

and, happily, it was back to the beach.

josh and i caught a plane to puerto princesa on the island of palawan and settled there for a night. the next day, we took a jeepney up to sabang, the home of the famous underground river (a navigable river that flows through a cave formation). aside from the long wait and the 2-hour hike to get there (we opted for the 20-min boat ride on the way back), the tour itself were really nice. the actual boat ride seemed a little short in comparison to the wait.. but it was okay. the town of sabang was a small beach town with waterfalls and charm. plus, our hostel had a water buffalo-drawn cart!



next, we headed up to the town of port barton and ended up at a wonderful friendly place called elsa's (josh met a guy that worked there on top of the jeepney that took us there). we were seaside with breathtaking sunsets and our own personal beach. we took a bangka boat out one day with a belgian couple and went snorkeling (the coral! wow!) and island hopping.





from there, we went to el nido, the top tip of palawan. another nice town perfect for hopping between the small white sand beach islands. we stayed there a few nights (among the barking puppies in the middle of the night and the chorus of roosters crowing to wake us up) and did more island hopping with an amiable guide named kalui and his friend (whose name we never got). we got to see a both big and small lagoons as well as "secret" lagoon, which was accessible only by crawling through a small crevice. we did a bunch more snorkeling (here the coral was less impressive, and a lot of it was dead) and swimming. they even made a nice fish lunch on the beach!






we spent the last of our time on palawan eating comfort food and vegging out (josh hurt his neck on the bus one day) in puerto before heading off to cebu.

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