01/04/18

We ate breakfast which was fruit pancakes, and then rested on the beach until the boat was ready for our island camping trip. It cost us 3250 pesos each which is much cheaper than the other island camping tours we had found and they had said we would do some island hopping as well as camp. We had no real idea what was in store for us but I was excited to get on with the day.

The water was a little choppy and the small fishing boat was getting caught under waves and waves were coming up and soaking us. The journey was a lot further than I thought as I didn’t realise how many little islands there were. We stopped at one for a minute to ask if we could have lunch there but we were told we had to pay a fee so then we went to the next island where we were going to camp.

We were unsure of what was happening here on this island as we kept being told to wait, so we didn’t really do too much apart from hover around as it sounded like we would be moving onto another island shortly. We snorkelled a bit near the boat but didn’t see anything and then walked around. In this period of time we both got fantastically burnt. We ended up having lunch at this beach, and they prepared it so wonderfully it was definitely 5 star treatment! We had roast pork, fish, vegetables, chicken, rice and fruit. We did request a coconut but it never came…

After lunch we were told our boat was broken so we had to borrow someone elses, and we then headed off to another island which has a large village. There are around 1000 people on this island and 70% are children! We had a quick wonder around, and then we chatted to our boat driver who lives on this island with his wife and two children, funnily enough our camping guide was his younger brother, and their whole family reside on the island with our guide being the only one in Sibaltan. The driver told us that the family who live on the island we were going to camp, consist of 15 children.

We then headed back to said island, where our guide prepared our tent and dinner. We chilled on the beach with the other couple who were staying. It was really bizarre being one of four tourists on this island, very unreal and rare considering El Nido is very popular and overcrowded with tourists. The stars came out and with no lights around we had a great view and then the moon rose and it was just wonderful. The light was so red at first and then so bright we didn’t even need a torch to see. Dinner was very similar to lunch but we sat by a bonfire to eat it and soon after we settled down for the night. Although the day had been a bit disappointing as we didn’t really do any island hopping as told, the beach and island were beautiful with no litter and blue sea and sky.