El Nido

Day 19: El Nido, Philippines
Imagine stumbling upon a place that no one else has discovered, well it's not completely uninhabited but imagine a place that has not been compromised by tourists, pollution, traffic, noise, imagine a private Eden shared amongst friends who share in cooking, cleaning, working, not out of any capitalistic or egotistic means but a general sense of happiness amongst a common collective.
The Beach (Alex Garland)
Nicely said Mr Garland, and for the most part this passage describes El Nido to a tea, minus the socialist slant. Of course I would imagine it's not quite the sleepy little town it was when he lived in the Philippines in the 90's, inspiring his epic backpacker novel (and horrible Hollywood movie), it's fair to say that most of the people who are passing into the town consider it a little piece of heaven on the Palawan peninsula. It's real back to nature stuff, I ran into one of the boys from last nights drinking session who was walking down the beach earlier when he saw a Pinoy lad who had just caught two huge fish. The boy sold one of the fish to him and they proceeded to cook it up, there on the beach, and have a lovely fish supper right there in front of what is arguably the worlds greatest sunsets.
One little eccentricities of El Nido is that there is no electricity between 6am and 2pm, leaving you the options of either sleeping in or finding something to do which doesn't require electricity. Not a big deal because if you are too hot, well, theres the worlds biggest swimming pool right in front of you, or if you are hungry there's plenty of nice things to eat that can be cooked with a gas stove. Unfortunately espresso machines don't run on gas but it's a small price to pay and it encourages you to get out and enjoy the atmosphere.
Made it down to Baliy Tubay again last night, the band were nice enough to let me sit in with them and play a few tunes which was nice. As I mentioned before I am using my 3mp mobile phone camera is my primary snapper at the moment, got some pics but not half as nice as the Olympus would have taken, am still struggling to download them so will go back and update the appropriate posts when I get them online.
I'm suffering a bit today, we got stuck into the local rum and when I got home I had the urge to take a late night swim in the sea, unfortunately Rosanna locks the gate to the beach at 12pm so I had to scale the 3m fence, injuring my leg in the process. Will be saying goodbye to El Nido tomorrow and off to Coron to dive on WW2 wrecks, will be sad to say goodbye but as MacArthur famously said after his first visit to the Philippines, 'I will return'.