El Nido Island Hopping

Monday, January 12th, El Nido Island Hopping.

Motoring out to the Islands

The morning is bright and beautiful and breakfast is on the open air rooftop terrace of our hotel.  Disappointedly, the morning coffee is again Nescafe 3 in 1, mixed with hot water and we wait a long time for our toast and fried egg but the hotels wi-fi is working and I check and send e-mail.  Frank Murphy has contacted us with a potential buyer for our Lincoln Street house and Art responds telling him we will talk when we are home from the Philippines.  Today we are going island hopping  and at 9:00 A.M. our guide meets us at our hotel and we walk with him to the beach and his companies shop. We wait in the shade of the open air shop while the other passengers arrive for our catamaran island hopping tour. The dozen of us wade to the boat, slip on our life vests and we set sail past the spectacular craggy limestone cliffs of El Nido.

Boarding the Catamarans at El Nido Beach

Our Catamaran

Seven Commando Island is our first stop, a small crescent stretch of sandy beach, book-ended by two rocky points and fringed with palm trees. There is a traffic jam of the wooden outrigger boats servicing the tourists on tour A and each of the tour boats throw their anchors into the sand (or what was once presumably coral.) We need to wade to shore and regrettably, I don’t take off my jean shorts or shirt and the water is deeper than I expect and I am soaked when I reach the beach. John quickly dons his snorkel and mask and swims along the edge of one rocky point. He reports that he sees anemones with both cinnamon and traditional clown fish, a large field of stag-horn coral where the tips were beginning to bleach and fan corals; (one in particular is green and 6 feet across.) Our stop her is only 30 minutes but the wind comes up and are unable to leave and we stay nearly an hour. Art and I wander the short stretch of beach and I step on a sand fish that slips, flips and flops back into the surf. I imagine the small fish is more startled than me. 

Seven Commando Island

Shimizu Island is our lunch stop and our longest stop. It is a beautiful island with jagged, black limestone cliffs and a small jagged island centered in it’s crescent bay. Art draws a circle in the sand and he challenges John to a sumo wrestling match. It is a beautiful day and we are all in great spirits. 

Sumo Wrestling in the Sand - Shimizu Island

Beach Bums - Shimizu Island

Snorkeling Shimizu Island Reef

John snorkels out towards the island and around the edges visible from shore. I keep watch for the flash of his red trunks in the distance and try not to worry unnecessarily. The change of water color from intoxicating turquoise to deep blue makes it easy to see where the coral shelf drops away to the abyss. After John has explored the edge of the rocky island, he works his way into open water swimming above the edge of reef’s shelf and it is more difficult to keep him in sight against the glare of the sunlight on the water and the choppy surface of the ocean. To distract myself from worry, I watch our three crew members prepare our lunch in the shelter of a cliff’s face. Two build two charcoal fires and grill pork and calamari while another slices cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, pineapple and watermelon.  45 minutes later, when John swims ashore, a beautiful buffet lunch is ready. It amazes me that these men have prepared such an elaborate and delicious meal with minimal equipment.

Barbecuing Lunch, Shimuzu Island

Lunch Buffet, Shimuzu Island

Cucumber and Tomato Salad

Enjoying the Lunch Buffet on Shimuzu Island

After lunch we motor to the Secret Lagoon, another island paradise, aptly named because when the tide is low, one can crawl through an opening in the jagged limestone rocks and step into a shallow and sandy lagoon, surrounded on all sides by rocks. The water inside is murky and warmed by sunlight and possibly the pee of many island hopping tourists with no restroom facilities available. 

Secret Lagoon

We motor to the Big Lagoon which is actually smaller than the next one on our itinerary, the Small Lagoon. Go figure. We motor into the shallow lagoon clogged with other catamarans and with the tide low our boat bottoms out on the sandy bottom. Art, John and several other men are needed to push us back out into open water. I am throughly enjoying this day of island paradise and it is great fun to watch my boys playing at Swiss Family Robinson. 

Hitching a Ride

Catamaran Goes Aground

It is late afternoon when we reach the Small Lagoon and I can’t imagine the day getting any better or that this lagoon might surpass the previous lagoons, but it does. We drop anchor in intoxicating turquoise waters and have 30 minutes to swim or kayak.  John chooses to snorkel and swim but Art and I rent a kayak for a few pesos and we are pointed towards a small opening in the cliff face. Art paddles us through an opening in the rocks and we pop into an enchanted lagoon, framed by tall cliff faces. I have left my camera in our catamaran for fear of dropping it in the water and I am regretfully unable to take and photos, so the photo used here is from an image search on google. John soon swims up beside us, hops atop the kayak and takes the paddle from me. I relax blissfully into island time.

Small Lagoon - Photo by John Baldon

Our Island hopping day is at an end and we wish we had several more days to explore the El Nido islands. There are three standard Island Hopping excursions offered out of El Nido and today’s trip was remarkable but unfortunately we must leave tomorrow morning.  We enjoy another evening of drinks and dinner on the touristy beach strip, an easy stagger back to our hotel.

Returning to El Nido 

Toasting to the Islands

The Town of El Nido - Art and John

An Unhappy Pig