Unbeknownst to any but a few people back home, El Nido would be our last real stop before our journey home for Christmas. As a result we had to keep our route and itinerary slightly under wraps so they didn’t have any idea what we were planning!
By the time we reached El Nido we had just over a week to go before we would catch our flight home via Singapore. As you can imagine we were both really excited and impatient to get back home and see our families and friends for the first time in almost 1 ½ years! It wasn’t until then that I realised just how much I missed everyone. It’s easy when you are doing such exciting things and having adventures to overlook the homesickness. I genuinely never felt really homesick until we had booked the flights home to see everyone.
We probably didn’t enjoy or explore Palawan as much as we should have done because of this itch to get home that we both had, but we used the time to just relax and chill. We decided to book into a hotel with a swimming pool in a quiet area away from the main town and just wait away the days until it was time to go home.
I’ll be honest, it wasn’t the hardest place to sit and relax reading a book. We could look out from our room or the beachfront pool out onto the islands around El Nido. We did however encounter yet another Typhoon which we had heard about North Luzon before coming to El Nido as it was classified as a super typhoon. Fortunately we only had the very edge of Typhoon Hagupit which brought heavy rain and winds but nothing more for us. Unfortunately however other parts of the Philippines had it much worse; the Visayas which had been ravaged by a Typhoon last year was evacuated as soon as possible to avoid the same amount of devastation as previously.
Strangely enough after a bit of research I found that during our second trip through Asia we have actually encountered the two most intense tropical cyclones recorded in 2014. The first was Typhoon VongFong in Japan which was the worst and this one was second! It goes to show just how real the dangers are at this side of the world when it’s not even something we would ever consider. Mother Nature is definitely not to be messed with.
Anyhow when we weren’t room-bound by the storm we spent our days meandering down to the local town and relaxing by the pool. We did however do a boat trip out to the neighbouring islands, it would have been completely rude not to explore at least a little of our surroundings!
I am really glad we did as well because it was absolutely stunning, another place that could quite easily adopt the title of “Paradise”. We did some epic snorkelling as well around some of the best coral reefs I have seen and we even got to see some “Nemo’s” floating around in their anemone!
We also did some swimming around the islands to some hidden coves which were pretty spectacular and for the first time Liam ate freshly caught fish straight off the bone another win over his fears! The boat trip was definitely the highlight of our uneventful trip to El Nido, however I have to say that watching the sun set over the ocean with a beer in hand never got tiring.
Before we could catch our connecting flight from Puerto Princesa to Singapore we had a slightly tumultuous journey on a public bus from El Nido and a full day of doing nothing but wasting time in Puerto Princesa. The wait was agonizingly painful and even though we had 24 hours until we boarded the first section of our journey home we knew it would be another 3-4 days before we actually set foot on English soil, as we had another 15 hour wait in Singapore airport to wait for our second flight! We knew it would all be worth it though, as much as I love the heat and would miss the humidity of Asia we were both really looking forward to a good old cold English Christmas!
WanderGina 