El Nido travelogue

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After several hours we finally reached our destination, completely exhausted. El Nido is Spanish for "nest". It's quite a sizeable town with an ok beach, surrounded by limestone cliffs. It's the main and only town in the collection of islands making up the Bacuit Archipelago, which is a very picturesque place indeed. Maybe El Nido's name comes from the nests of swiftlets that are collected in the area from which birds nest soup is made. If you have the skills you can climb the cliffs and sell birds nest at 3000$ a kilo! The soup which is essentially made from the birds saliva, is a delicacy throughout asia.

Back to the Bacuit Archipelago: there are alot of islands scattered throughout the archipelago, most of them with stunning beaches, turqouise water and best of all ... uninhabited. You can easily access the islands by banca, but the waters around El Nido are quite rough and you may have to pay the price if you want to visit the islands that are further away. You can go on an island trip through the Bacuit Archipelago and use El Nido as your base. It is an absolute must-do experience you can combine with diving and snorkelling. Helicopter Island, Miniloc and South Miniloc, Matinloc are just some of the islands you can visit and are nothing short of stunning. Miniloc island has two lagoons (a big one and a small one) you can swim in.

The water in the lagoons is chrystal clear (se photos above) and apart from the sound of the water and some birds singing, its comletely silent. Words cannot describe the beauty of this place, but Thu Tam Duan does a pretty good job in her article. Matinloc island has a secret lagoon you can only enter through a small crack in the cliffs. Ive yet to see pictures of this place because its quite hard to reach. If anyone has any please let me know. Does "a hidden beach" remind anyone of a movie? Well, Alex Garland spent quite a bit of time in the Philippines ...

If you go on a islad hopping trip the boat will drop you off on the beach from where you can just explore the surrounding waters. When you've had enough you head on to the next place. Our captain caught some fish and proceeded to take us through a shallow turquoise lagoon which led to a secluded beach at the end of the big lagoon of Matinloc island where we prepared the fish on a barbeque. The amazing scenery around El Nido will stick in my mind forever.

We went diving and snorkelling with Seadog Diving based in El Nido, run by a friendly expat from Newcastle. He also provided for lunch on a secluded beach on Helicopter island (its dumbell shaped) somewhere in the Bacuit Archipelago. In El Nido some guys from London had just arrived to set up a beach resort. They had sold the rights to the Dogstar pub in Brixton and had now ventured down to this remote area of the Philippines to start a bar and internet café in the town and the Dogstar Beach resort on 7 Commando Beach, Lagen Island.

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