El Nido Island Hopping - Tour A - Nov. 29, 2010

November 29, 2010

Senne's Summary: Today we went on a tour of four different islands. We participated in the 3-S's... swimming, sunning and snorkeling.

We headed out this morning on our first island hopping tour of El Nido. All the tour operators package the tours the same and call them A, B, C, and D. Being the logical people we are, we decided to do "Tour A" first.

We waded out to our boat and met our tour guide, boat driver and the other six passengers on our tour. Then we started our ½ hour boat ride out to our first stop.

Our guide Mark, helping to manoeuvre the boat!

Our first stop was the small lagoon. We got out of the boat and snorkeled over to a little entryway that you could swim through into the small lagoon.

Side note: I'm not an accomplished snorkeler (really when you can’t swim is it possible to be good at this???), but was determined to try it anyway. I solved my nausea problem by taking Dramamine, which made the snorkeling a bit more enjoyable. I still haven’t totally figured out how to keep the water out of my snorkel, but I’m getting better. You should all be proud of me 😉

Okay back to the day. In the small lagoon we did a bit of swimming and some snorkeling. Steve, my wonderful husband, held my hand while we snorkeled so I didn’t get too scared (plus I think he’s afraid I might drown since I can’t really swim! Don't worry I can float… I'm just really slow at getting anywhere!). After the swim we headed back to the boat. This is when Steve got scraped on the coral trying to keep me from getting scraped on the coral. What a gentleman he is 😀

Snorkelling in the small lagoon

Next, we headed to a beach (which neither of us can remember the name of) for our lunch stop.

Our boat parked at our lunch spot.

It was a bit windy and wavy so I chose not to snorkel, and just hung out on the beach.

Steve did a bit of snorkeling and then came back for a swim with me. While we were generally lazing about our two hard-working boat crew were cooking us up a delicious lunch of salad, rice, bbq chicken and grilled fish. It’s pretty amazing what they can cook up on a deserted beach!

Lunch on the beach

After lunch we headed to our next stop, which was the big lagoon. We hopped off the boat and had to walk down a long corridor of water (about knee deep) to the big lagoon.

Our guide warned us to wear our “slippers” because of the sea urchins. Let me tell you that it is not easy to walk in the water in flip flops (especially loose ones), and we were wishing we had remembered to bring our water shoes… next time. Steve found a nice little clump of sea urchins and took some photos with our underwater camera… you can see why you wouldn’t want to step on them!

It was a beautiful walk down to an even more gorgeous spot to swim. The colour of the water was amazing!

When we reached the big lagoon we were able to swim again. It was really beautiful and the flip flops that I had worn in worked as extra floatation devices ;)

After this stop we headed to our final stop which is Seven Commando Beach. This was a beautiful beach with white sand and warm water for swimming.

Even on a beach far from a place that is already isolated, you can still find pringles and coke!

We did a little swimming, lazed about on the beach and Steve spent a bit more time snorkeling. Once was enough for me 😀 I’ve discovered that I like being in the water a lot more when I don’t know what’s swimming around me!

After spending quite a bit of time at this beach we headed back to our hotel. What a great way to start our El Nido experience, with a day as perfect as this one!