'15 Travels -- Last days in the Philippines

It's been a while, and we have been busy exploring the beautiful nature and wilderness that Palawan has to offer. The majority of towns are quite small here, there is one main road that runs down through the entire island (only sometimes paved). Electricity is only on from 6pm until midnight in many of these towns. We spent quite a bit of time in El Nido, I ended up going to a local doctors clinic to get some help for my heat irritation. Walking into a Filipino clinic in a small town was something to remember. It looked like a small wooden house with two adjacent rooms. There was a shelf with towns of drugs and medications just lying out in the open, Paul saw a cup with some old blood in it. Luckily, I didn't need any shots. The doctor was friendly and gave me some pills which started helping immediately, so I'm glad we went. Many if our days in El Nido were spent recovering, me from my rash and Paul from the boat ride, but our last day we rented a motorbike to explore the areas around town a bit. Little did we know, there are basically no paved roads. We spent the whole day pushing our little scooter through rocky dirt roads. Out first stop was the Ille Cave. Upon arriving we were set up with a guide and met one of the main archaeologists working on the site. We had no clue, but research has been going on there for twelve years now, and they have made quite a lot of discoveries about the indigenous peoples and animals of the area. We hiked through the cave, saw some bats and beautiful mineral deposits, then emerged and climbed to the top of it. Guides here are funny, they always prepare for a trek by smoking a cigarette and they take you on seemingly dangerous routes that would never fly in the US. After the cave we set off to find a waterfall, with no luck, and to go to the tourist destination, Nacpan Beach -- also no luck. We complain a little about always needing a guide, but trails and roads are less obvious and less maintained. We ended up at a farther beach, still beautiful and almost empty. Just took along, bumpy motorbike ride to get there. The last stop on our motorbike was Corong Corong Bay, just south of town. We had heard thus was the place to see the sunset, and we're not disappointed. It is a huge bay, surrounded by islands abs limestone cliffs and is absolutely beautiful at sunset. In El Nido, we were able to get some money through Western Union, so did not have to rush to get to Puerto Princesa like we had thought. Instead, we headed down to our next destination, Port Barton. We took a bus and a Jeepney -- and encountered even worse roads than on our motorbike. The last 30km or so into town on the Jeepney was rough. All extremely rocky and bumpy dirt roads, for about and hour and a half. You are constantly being bumped up off your seat and flooded by all the dust. I felt like I was in some craZy jeep in an African Safari-- only with nothing to see. Port Barton itself is a very small, laid back town. It was a nice change from the tourist center of El Nido. I met a nice guy working at our hostel who set us up with a cheap island hopping tour for the next day. When he learned I was from California, he said he had lived in Daly City for a year. I said there are a lot of Filipinos there, to which he replied, 'Yes, when all the fog comes to Daly City it is because all the Filipinos are cooking their rice!' The island tour was another good one. We went to two snorkeling spots and two islands. The first spot the boatman just stopped in the middle of the ocean and had us get out. Apparently, this spot is called 'The Aquarium' and the minute you go underwater you are surrounded by what seems like thousands of fish. They were all shimmering in tge sunlight and quite beautiful. This is in addition to a coral reef present, with lots of cool and bright colored bigger fish as well. I finally spotted my classic Nemo in the anemone scene! After this spot, we pulled up to another random area, this time closer to shore. It didn't look like much at first, but our boatman told us sea turtles were found there. At first they were hard to find, but once you knew what to look for they started to stand out. We must have seen about 5 or 6. For the most part, they are quite lazy and just lie on the bottom, which is why they are hard to spot at first. Many have big fish that attach to their shells to eat the algae, and this helps give them away. Finally I spotted one starting to move and was able to swim along him as he came to the surface for air. They take the tiniest little sip and then are back down again. From Port Barton, we made our wY to Sabang, again by a long and treacherous Jeepney ride -- they always seem to be worse than you expect. I liked Sabang from the start. We got a really awesome bamboo bungalow to stay in, with our own hammock. We spent three days there, and I spent a lot of time in that hammock. The main attraction of the area is the Subterranean River. You take a paddle boat with a guide through an opening in the side of a cliff and find yourself in this massive cave. The formations were very unique and beautiful. Once again, we had a quirky tour guide. I always end up comparing them to the States-- a Park Ranger at home who would probably serious for the most part, providing a lot of interesting, but textbook information, while our guide was cracking raunchy jokes, telling us to look up but keep our mouths closed when viewing the bats, and pointing out that this rock looks like fried chicken and that rock looks like Sharon Stone from Basic Instinct -- this is before pointing out the rock formation that looked like Titanic and then whistling a good majority of 'My Heart Will Go On' as we were quietly paddling through the dark cave. All in all it was a good tour, and in all serious an amazing natural area. It is known as one of the new seven wonders of the world. The next morning we had planned to leave, but I had read last minute about a river tour they offered along the mangrove trees, so we got up early to do that before heading out. I glad we did, it was very nice and peaceful and the people volunteering there were beautiful. They were very passionate about the environment there, and the steps they were taking to protect and preserve it. We spotted a lot of wildlife along the way and at the end they sang us a song about the mangroves! It all just felt so positive and I was very grateful to be in that spot with those people at that moment. Plus we saw some cute lizards and a bunch of snakes! Now we are in the town of Puerto Princesa, it feels nice to be back in a city after being in remote areas for so long. It is so beautiful, but it was starting to take a toll. Paul and I both had a few days of feeling very low energy, and probably just exhausted from the heat and not much else to do but explore everything the landscape has to offer. We are both kind of looking forward to hanging out in an air conditioned mall and maybe seeing a movie! The plan is to take it easy here for a few days until we fly to Bali on the 5th. There haven't been any whale shark sightings lately, but I'm sure we'll find something to do. We had booked a boat to go back to Manila to catch our flight, but just realized we will be on the boat for the Pacquiao fight! Paul says it is the 'fight of the century' and we are in 'the place to be' so I guess it's not to be missed! I think we will be able to figure it out before then. Here's hoping!