November 14th - Day 6

Sabang - El Nido

The day starts early with the check-out and preparation for the trip to El Nido. A lot of the people in the hotel take the same course so we decide to join them on the vans they had scheduled and skip taking the public transportation for now... the trip is long and the road rough. After some farewells outside Daluyon, we leave from Sabang at about 1pm and begin the 5 hour journey to our next destination, El Nido. Arriving there, we use the info from our faithful friend the Lonely Planet book for Southeast Asia and head to the Alternative center. This is a small but stylish hostel-like place in the very heart of the town. The place is nearly fully booked but the owner tells us there is one room still available, just next to the restaurant.

It's hard to put to words how it actually looks like but there's simply a bit of wood (imagine the doors used at bars in the old west... there's very little privacy but we don't care). The room is clean and the whole place looks great, the restaurant being a bit pricey like everything else in El Nido (things are roughly 30-40% more expensive than anything else I have seen so far). The place is built out of solid wood, and the waves hit with some strength on the rooms facing the beach! Our room is upstairs and faces the street so we get nothing but a nice aroma from the kitchen and enjoy the sound of Tagalog all day long... There are no windows in the room, a simple screen separates the room from the street and a fan us there to give the guests some comfort.

The place is a small fishing town in the north tip of Palawan island but, despite being small (population of roughly 5000), this is definitely a touristic place unlike most of what I have seen in Palawan. El Nido is known (at least that is what the Filipinos are trying to 'sell' it as) the Filipino Phuket. Well... this might certainly be misleading. The beach is pretty much non-existent (I dare to say less than 1 meter of sand, when the tide is low) and only a few meters wide. There's not much to do around there and we quickly realize that the initial plan of 3-4 days might just be a little bit too much...