Bus Trip to El Nido - Nov. 28, 2010

Sunday Nov 28, 2010

We were awakened this morning by the sound of thunder rolling. A little disconcerting when you're up in a treehouse, but it sounded far enough away that I wasn’t too worried (there wasn’t even any rain!). Eventually the rain came down in buckets, so we sat out on the verandah to watch. Rain is much more interesting when it comes down hard and fast for a short period of time!

After watching for a bit we headed in to pack. This is when I saw the lightning flash and heard the thunder crack at exactly the same moment. It was LOUD. I’m not afraid to tell you that it scared the pants off me! This is when we decided it was time to get the heck out of the tree (tallest thing in the area), so we headed down for breakfast.

Eventually the thunder and lightning moved further away and we finished our packing. We went to the lobby to wait for our van to El Nido. We were lucky. Usually the vans leave at 6, 7 or 8 AM, but because they were waiting for people coming in from the airport they had an extra one at 10 AM today! YES!

Somehow we managed to score the front seat by the driver. This was a blessing for people like me who get carsick! I popped some Dramamine (that stuff is awesome!) and we headed out.

The road to El Nido is windy and bumpy. It took all my concentration not to fall right into the driver’s lap when we went around the curves. The road was actually better than I expected because I had read some horror stories online. It was mostly paved all the way to TayTay and it was only the last 54 km that weren’t paved. We had one minor glitch when the transmission in the van broke. Seriously. Luckily the driver just crawled right underneath the van with his little toolbox and fixed it. Good thing since I wasn’t really sure what we were going to do if it was unfixable. Walking 50 km with the backpacks wasn’t sounding that enticing…

One thing Steve noticed is that we never saw speed limit signs. In a few different vehicles we’ve been in we tried to look at the speedometer to see how fast we were going (it seemed FAST), but I didn’t see one speedometer that actually worked!

Eventually we made it to El Nido terminal where we took a tricycle to our hotel.

This is a typical taxi in El Nido. They call it a tricyle or a trike.

The hotel is terrific… much better than I expected. I guess I was thinking that if the town doesn’t even have electricity for 24 hours a day(the electricity is off everyday from 6 AM to 2 PM), how good can the hotel be?

Boy were we surprised! We have a room with real walls (no holes for bugs to come in), a comfortable bed, air conditioning, hot water, TV with English channels and wifi! (Oddly, even when the electricity is off the wifi works… but not the hot water!) Needless to say we were pleasantly surprised.

Hammock at the hotel. The room in the back is the breakfast room/bar.

This is our patio outside our room, with a view towards the water.

Once we got settled we headed out to find some food. We ate at a restaurant a few doors down called Ric Sons. It is right on the beach and had a fabulous view… El Nido is absolutely gorgeous. Anyway, we had a delicious dinner and also booked a tour for tomorrow. We can’t wait to start exploring the islands around El Nido.