diving in el nido

el nido is the main town of access for the bacuit archipelago, a collection of 40-odd islands. the lonely planet describes the town as loud and rather unappealing, which i think is rather unfair – it’s a cute, clean little town, complete with a number of hotels and restaurants for the tourists, but still retains an identity. yes, a fair amount of tourists, but really not to a disgusting, annoying level.

to get there, we had to take an eight-hour boat ride from coron, which was painful. getting around this country is hard. it’s a bit of a ridiculous situation – because of the holiday, all the flights (about three a week between coron and el nido) were booked and the boat only goes twice a week and costs more than a flight would. it is clear that it takes advantage of tourists, who are the only ones to travel between the two destinations. and, sure enough, it was a boat full of white people, almost all of whom managed to get seasick on the way there (both brad and i were ok, hooray!).



[view from our hotel]


we had planned on doing an island hopping tour, but because the weather was a bit rainy, we decided to go diving our first day there instead – doesn’t matter if it’s raining since you’re underwater :)

i was quite excited to go diving on the reefs here. palawan has a reputation for protecting it’s marine resources and reefs to a higher standard than the rest of the philippines, so, frankly, i was excited to see some live coral and a lot of fish. the pictures you see of reefs in books/magazines/brochures are … so not the norm. and even though these reefs are not pristine, i was still impressed by the colors, the huge schools of fish, the diversity.







[cabbage coral]


[cuttlefish]


it was also nice because, for once, we had a filipino guide. something that has been a bit disconcerting during these travels has been the realization that nearly all tourist institutions, hotels, and restaurants are owned and operated by europeans (i’ll expand on this later).

we dove with a french couple, helen and julian, who are living in bangkok and spending their christmas holiday here. we ended up going out to dinner with them both nights and island hopping with them the next day (more on that later). it is one of the things i love about traveling – meeting people and enjoying wonderful, interesting conversations with total strangers. we talked a great deal with them about the tourism situation here as compared to other parts of asia (they were much more informed about the other areas of asia than brad and i). there is such huge potential here for, but there is no drive to expand on it. neither el nido or coron has a bank, which means you cannot get cash. you can’t use a credit card anywhere in this country (ok i take that back, i used mine to pay for our place in coron and they charged an extra 7.5%). el nido only has electricity for twelve hours a day. this is a poor country, yes, but it is not taking advantage of what it has in order to expand tourism and increase their income. sometimes, i wonder if “they” (this is very much of a generality) even want to. as i mentioned, nearly all of the tourist structures are owned by europeans – why are no filipinos doing this? i realize it does take money to finance at the onset, but it shocks me that the government is not pushing for expansion. it’s surprising though. i doubt that all developing countries rely almost exclusively on ex-pats to run their tourism. in fact, according to helen and julian, many countries do do it themselves. i don’t know. odd.

i must also say that it is a bit humbling to be meeting all these europeans who are only a few years older than brad and i and, yet, have been all over europe and then most of asia and tons and tons of other places. i think of myself as fairly well-traveled, but it is literally nothing compared to many europeans i have met. obviously some of this has to do with the fact that european countries are small and there are lots of travels and so it is very easy to travel around europe. most travelers here to the philippines are koreans, but there are a fair amount of europeans. it’s interesting because as you walk down the road you can hear locals exclaim “americano! americana!” over and over and yet, ironically, brad and i are the only americans we have met so far. weird.