Today is a practical day. With the flight back to Manila tomorrow and a pretty packed schedule from then on I took this morning to do all my washing and plan the rest of the stay in the Philippines. Creating my couchsurfing profile and that sort of thing. Then spent the afternoon and early evening in prayer, reading the Bible and spending time in God’s presence, love it, such a great way to spend a day. I’m also doing something I’ve never done before (holidays, perfect time for trying new things) I fasted for the day, eating nothing and only drinking water, never done that before, but I’ve actually found it really helpful for focusing on God as even when I was doing planning and doing my washing whenever I feel hungry it draws me straight back into prayer.

After hanging my clothes up to dry I went out to a secluded spot on the beach further down the coast from El Nido town (about a 45 min walk) and found a spot to put up my hammock. I read a solid portion of Numbers and prayed, covering myself with my towel and the edges of my hammock when as it rained and before I could get out my ukulele to sing some worship the tide started to come back in enough to almost maroon me on my patch of rocks, so I had to down hammock and head back to town.

Then I did more organising and went to sleep.

I found fasting although quite draining, I found it helpful to keep bringing me back to prayer throughout the day, because every time I felt hungry (which was often, especially when walking through town where everywhere sells delicious smelling food) I would be drawn back to prayer.

I did my second day of island hopping today! 😀

When we got to the tout, it turned out that there were only the 2 of us that had booked with him, so Nathan and I had accidentally managed to book ourselves a private tour, which is usually a lot more pesos, so that was good for us. But it turned out that it was costing him money but it was too late to move us to another boat. So many ways that the island hopping businesses could be run better to stop this from happening, but hey, they were making money on the other tour that they were doing and their bike hiring, so all is gravy 🙂

There were 5 island stops to this tour: 

Helicopter Island: so called because it looks a bit like the body of a helicopter, which is odd as apparently the locals haven’t seen a helicopter, as I found out when on the other tour: one of the guides got very excited when he saw two low flying propeller planes, the ones that land in water, and was calling them helicopters. Anyway, it has a lovely beach with loads of great coral reefs where we saw some clown fish as I tried out a little bit of free diving, only like 5 meters. Clown fish are very well represented in Finding Nemo, it must be said, they stay in one sort of blobily corral and they are very timid, they’ll very quickly swim back to cover, but they are tiny and adorable, especially the tiny tiny ones.

Secret Beach: so called because one side you have to go through a cave to get to it and the other side you have to go through weaving cliffs to find it. It was a nice beach, lots of spaces of good shade for me, but quick busy at that time. But it was very quiet as soon as you got to the beach.

Starfish island: so called because it is home to loads of starfish… I managed to see no starfish at all on that island though. But there were loads of different beaches, so maybe they were more prevalent on other islands. It’s on that island that we had our lunch, that was quite a lot of food for just the two of us, but I managed to consume every last scrap 🙂 

Secret Cove: A cove that you have to swim through a tunnel to get to, it’s a sweat little cove someone had written I *heart* El Nido in rocks and shells which was nice. It was surrounded by steep sheer cliffs of black limestone (as is most of El Nido and Buiscuit Bay), which is eroded by the weather into sharp points. 

I forget the other stop.

Unfortunately I have little to know photographs and footage because my phone and video camera arean’t waterproof.

The trip to Starfish Island was particularly rough as we went out towards the sea and the waves were 3 times that size of our little boat!

Despite my best efforts I managed to burn the backs of my knees, it must have been when snorkelling.

After the long boat ride back we went and had some chicken curry at a street stall. If you want any cheap food, look to see where the locals go, and street food will likely be cheaper than inside. On almost any street you can get chicken skewers for P10 (15p), always a good call. You can always spot the locals munching on these things.

One thing I have noticed is that the locals litter a lot, even on the remote islands. Whereas the tourists seem to be very good at not doing so.