the stories that I'm telling.

Tag: Island Hopping

  • Part 2.3 of our Philippines Trip: Island Hopping Tour B and Selfie Sticks

    Part 2.3 of our Philippines Trip: Island Hopping Tour B and Selfie Sticks

    A couple of days after Anne had left us for Manila, Kevin and I signed up for a big group tour through Art Cafe. This time, we embarked on Tour B. The food wasn’t as good with the Art Cafe tour as it had been with the Golden Monkeys Tour, but the content of the tour was similar, as it’s a standard experience.

    I think we preferred our smaller tour with Anne and Loc, but being in a big group had its own advantages. For one, we got to check out how some other experienced travellers did things. Apparently everyone except us got the memo that it’s essential to have a waterproof travel bag to hold all your stuff on the boat. Kinda like this version from MEC. It’s not really essential, but it definitely would’ve been nice, and would’ve kept our stuff a bit drier/sand-free.

    We had expected Tour B to have more beaches, but instead it was heavy on snorkelling. Kevin’s not really into snorkelling, so he worked on his tan from the boat, while I snorkeled around looking for cute fishes and what not. Our photos really don’t do justice to the reality of how beautiful El Nido is. The highlight for us was Snake Island, of which Google has lots of great shots.

    The video does a pretty good job of showing what it was like to snorkel there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jreYq3hXjvU

    Aside from the natural beauty, we were pretty infatuated with the #selfiestick. You can read more about this phenomenon here and here, but essentially it was something we’d only heard about until the tour. Then, as we arrived at our first stop for a bit of snorkelling, Kevin and I turned around and watched in awe as the 5 other couples on our tour pulled out their Selfie Stick/GoPro combo. What’s a Selfie Stick? It’s a stick, with a camera on the end of it, that you use to take photos of yourself or your travels. From what we can tell, it was invented by GoPro, which makes a lot of sense, because I’m sure it didn’t take long for them to saturate the Extreme Sports Athlete market, and there’s nothing people love more than taking photos of themselves. It’s a handy camera for making underwater videos, but we also saw it used to take all kinds of other photos, including selfies. After that day, we saw them everywhere – I’m sure it won’t be long before they’re everywhere in North America. I’m expecting there to be a serious uptick in selfie-related injuries in the coming years.

    Check out our photos below, taken with the traditional human arm/hand combo:

     

    This little plant is shaped like a pepper, and it eats bugs that fly inside of it.
    Standing on the sandbar leading to Snake Island
    Some photos of Cathedral Cave
    Kevin being a comedian. All such photos are staged with the purpose of making my brothers giggle.
    Big shell!
    Again, giggling.
    the thinking man
  • Part 2.2 of our Philippines Trip: Island Hopping Tour A

    Part 2.2 of our Philippines Trip: Island Hopping Tour A

    One of the primary tourist attractions or activities in El Nido is the Island Hopping. There are 4 different versions of the Island Hopping Tour (A, B, C, D) and each tour is the same, and each is operated by a local. Each tour’s format is also the same – stop at 2 attractions, stop somewhere for lunch, stop at 2 more attractions, go home. Each stop is around 40 minutes. Everyone who goes on a tour must pay an eco-fee, which goes into a budget aimed at preserving these natural attractions.

    Our first tour was arranged through Golden Monkey Cottages, and our drivers Richard and Ariel took me, Kevin, Anne, and Loc on Tour A.

    Here’s a map of that area that each tour covers:

    el-nido-tour-map

    Tour A took us to Big Lagoon, Small Lagoon, Simizu Island (for lunch), Secret Lagoon and 7 Commandos Beach.

    The pictures perhaps tell a better story, but I’ll share a few anecdotes as well.

    When we first arrived at the Small Lagoon, we were greeted by beautiful, crystal clear water. It seemed quite shallow, so I neglected the life jacket suggestion, just as Loc and Kevin had done. “This place can’t be that big”, I thought, “and the water seems shallow anyways” – wrong-o!

    Don’t worry people, I was totally fine, but the shallow lagoon turned into something much deeper that required much swimming from this semi-lazy gal. Once through the clear, shallow lagoon, we then entered a beautiful larger lagoon (technically the Small Lagoon, I think. It was hard to keep track of what was what), where we were surrounded by stunning limestone cliffs. On the other side of the lagoon, we went to smaller little lagoon spot, and then into a small cave. About half way across the Small Lagoon, Kevin (aka Captain Heather’s-Safety) realized with a bit of a shock that I wasn’t wearing a life jacket, and was actually just swimming. I was totally fine, but I definitely had bitten of a bigger challenge than intended. BTW, people, swimming is tiring!! Anyways, I totally survived without incident, though my arms were feeling it later. Lesson learned? Life Jackets make life easy, but for reals swimming is more fun without one.

    It was pretty windy on the day of our tour, so we weren’t able to go into the Secret Lagoon, but we were able to snorkel just outside of it. When we first got to the snorkelling spot, I pulled on my little snorkel/mask combo, along with my life jacket, and jumped into the water. It was a fairly open-water kind of spot, and the waves were fairly big (for poor little me, according to Kevin, the waves in Portugal are much bigger), so when I realized that I couldn’t see any corral or fish, I promptly climbed back on the boat with a resounding “Nope, not today. Not for me.”

    Of course then Loc, who was swimming much further away from the boat than I’d been willing to go, shouted over to me that he could see lots of fish and lots of corral. So, fine then. I tried again, and this time I ventured further and saw tons of beautiful water life. Kinda scary, but worth it.

    Check out our photos below. You may also want to check out these other blogs for some better quality photos that do a better job of showcasing the natural beauty than we could. Option 1 and option 2.

    Entering the Small Lagoon
    Anne, thinking about her thesis
    Looking fabulous!
    Me and Richard – me, struggling post-snorkelling
    Me, snorkelling!
    a private rich people dwelling
    relax
    chillax
    Winners!
    Kevin found a volleyball
    This is what champions look like.
    a storm is brewing