Tuesday March 25

It is 7:30 in the morning and I’m sitting at the famous Art Café and Boutique in El Nido enjoying a cup of coffee. It is supposed to be the best place in El Nido to get organized for onward travel and for tours around El Nido. I don’t know about that, but it definitely has the best coffee and bread on Palawan. The only other place I found brewed coffee was at Casa Rosa, and it was rather awful. The coffee I had at the American’s place in Puerto wasn’t bad, but it was bodum coffee. I appreciate Bodum coffee, but it always feels odd to me to sort of brew your own coffee at the table in a restaurant. By the time it is ready to be “Bodumed”, the water has generally become too cool for my taste.

I wasn’t impressed with the Art Café either when I first arrived in El Nido. I imagined it to be large and airy and situated on the beach with a beautiful view of the cliffs. I was surprised therefore, to find it quite by accident at the end of a long, narrow alley as I was exploring the town just getting the lay of the land. The alley is so narrow that there was almost nowhere to put my bicycle without causing trouble to someone. Then I wasn’t quite sure where to go. I understood the Art Café was a café, but when I went inside, I found only a cramped store selling crafts and sunblock and all the other things a tourist might want. There were some narrow stairs going to the second floor, but the doorway there was plastered with signs for a travel agency. I then saw some plastic tables and chairs out back. I went there and it was just a cluttered backyard and the chairs were simply abandoned there. I had about decided to give up when I thought I would climb the stairs anyway. Then I realized that the heart and soul of the Art Café was up there hiding behind all these travel agent signs. Once there, I suppose I found all the things that were supposed to be here. They had tables and chairs as well as a counter with chairs along the outside overlooking the street. There were lots of posters and information sheets about tours one can take around El Nido. There was a desk where you can make travel arrangements. And there were some shelves of some of the worst books in the English language.

The disappointing aspect is the setting. I sat at the counter overlooking the street and was rewarded with a view of drying laundry, corrugated tin, cracked cement, dust, and noisy motorbikes. Being closed in like this, the temperature starts to rise and there is no breeze to cool the sweat off your brow. I shouldn’t complain, though. Finding the Art Café began the process of softening my attitude toward El Nido. They served me a very cold beer and a hot pizza. I also found one book worth reading – ‘Portrait of a Lady” by Henry James. Unfortunately, I couldn’t buy it, but had to rent it at 10 pesos a day while leaving a 200 peso deposit. It seemed a needlessly complex way of handling what is, as I’ve said, a small collection of the worst books I’ve ever seen. I’ve since seen a few other shelves of books at other places, and the conclusion has to be that the worst books in the world all come to El Nido to die. And there aren’t very many. Most of the books are still in German and French.

I thought that a good cure for my El Nido blues would be to do an island-hopping tour right away. Hanging out in the town itself promised nothing but boredom and heat and noise. At first, I didn’t make much progress. The Art Café had a big whiteboard on the wall, and I understood that one put down one’s name for a tour, and then when enough people signed up, it would be a “go.” However, I couldn’t get the staff to put my name down. They kept saying that there was a minimum of 4 people. I thought the idea was to simply put your name on a list and then other people would add their names. They said that was how it worked, but said I should come back and check and when there were three people signed up, I could then join them. I suggested that I could put my name down and then the three people could join ME. I didn’t see the difference. This went on for a while until finally the owner of the Art Café came in. I believe she is Italian, and she must have overheard part of the conversation because she set the staff straight and got them to write my name down.

It was a relief to talk with the Italian woman. Somehow everything seemed easier and more relaxed and organized. Before she showed up, going on these boat tours or doing anything seemed quite complex. In two minutes of chatting with her, it was all very easy and I signed up for Tour A for the next day and for the Sunset Tour for five o’clock that evening. I figured it couldn’t be too early to start with some activities in El Nido. I felt like I wanted to get out on the water as soon as possible and get some perspective on El Nido that didn’t involve narrow dirty lanes and crude signs and advertisements everywhere.

I had a couple of hours to kill before the sunset tour and I went back to my cottage to hang out and relax. On the way, I dropped in on a number of other places with cottages. All of them were full and had reservations for days in the future. They were also almost uniquely unpleasant and cramped and crowded and expensive. The contrast between places like Port Barton and El Nido can’t be stronger. I ended up feeling a little bit better about the place I’d found at the end of my little tour. I at least had my own little cottage and it sort of kind of looked out over the beach and water. It also had deck chairs on the sand. They were just plain wood and rather hard on the body, but they were better than nothing.

I sat on one of the deck chairs for a while, and then I heard a deep voice behind me. It was a Swedish man staying in the cottage beside mine. He was a cyclist in his own right and we chatted about bicycles and island-hopping tours in El Nido.

As the time got closer to five o’clock, I got ready and took a shower and then went down to the Art Café. I was a bit nervous about the Sunset Tour. As far as I could tell, there were only two other people signed up for it. Somehow, when I signed up for it, I didn’t quite realize that most people would consider the Sunset Tour something of a romantic event. A guy on his own like me could perhaps cramp the romantic evening of someone else. My worst fears were realized when I saw a pair of very hip and very cool European types waiting for the Sunset Tour. I felt I should say hello and I did, and the woman shot her man a look of withering disgust. “This guy,” her eyes were saying, “is coming on the Sunset Tour? Look at him. He’s a big simpleton. A lumberjack. He must be a primitive Canadian. We could have had the whole boat to ourselves and had a romantic evening, but then this guy comes along and ruins it all!”

Anyway, I wasn’t very comfortable as we waited for our boat man. He showed up with a cooler of cold drinks and we went to the beach. I still don’t seem to have the hang of beach life. I was thinking about mosquitoes and other things, and I had put on my one pair of long pants instead of shorts. Of course, I’d forgotten that we would probably have to wade out to the boat – which of course we had to do. The boat man indicated my pants and asked if I wanted to take them off to get out to the boat. I only had underwear on underneath my pants, and the last thing I wanted to do was subject this poor woman denied her romantic sunset to a sight of my underwear. That would be too much. I just waded out to the boat and got wet. It wasn’t a big deal anyway since these pants were designed to for this kind of activity and would dry almost instantly. Still, I felt a bit foolish.

I felt even more foolish as the boat man had a lot of trouble getting the boat unmoored and underway. Everything was seeming like a great deal of work and effort just for three people. We were finally underway, and I started to relax. I was intent on taking pictures and giving the romantic couple as much space as possible.

Our boat man took us out past the huge cliff that blocks El Nido and then cut the engine. It appears we were simply to drift there and enjoy the sunset. That was the last thing I wanted. At least when the engine was running, conversation wasn’t that easy, and the romantic couple and I could stay in our separate worlds. Things did work out in the end. I threw out a couple of conversational hooks and the couple didn’t seem to mind and we chatted a bit. Then our boatman broke out the beer and soft drinks. He too chatted a bit, and the atmosphere got a bit less socially chilly. The sunset itself was a marvel, just as the ones at Port Barton were. The colors changed and shifted for a very long time. When it was almost dark, we turned around and took the boat back.

I was extremely tired from my day and after a pizza at Art Café, I went back to my cottage and fell asleep almost instantly. I’ve been going to bed quite early and enjoying myself immensely. I wake up powerfully rested and feeling like my old self. I also wake up early, before sunrise, and feel like the day and I are in sync.

I thought I would rectify my mistake of my boat trips in Port Barton and bring along a waterproof bag this time. Packing wasn’t easy, though. I wanted to bring along my camera and two lenses, my binoculars, my NEO, a novel, extra film, sunblock, mosquito repellant, a flashlight, snorkel and mask, sunglasses, and a half dozen other things. It’s impossible to just dump all of that into the Ortlieb bag. I ended up packing my daypack and then stuffing that inside the Ortlieb. It isn’t a very efficient way of doing things, partially because having two bags makes it twice as difficult to get anything out and makes it twice as heavy overall. But I didn’t have a choice, and I set off with the Ortlieb over my shoulder, and the remains of my six-liter jug of water in my hand.

Art Café opens early and is a good place to have breakfast apparently. It would be much better if it were on the water, but they have good coffee and good bread and good service. It’s also where the boat tour was organized from, so it was a good place to go.

I saw that a few other people had joined Tour A and we had seven or eight people in the group. I liked that. It meant we would get a bigger boat, and there would be a range of people to get to know and chat with.

I was rather eager as the island hopping tour started to take shape. People were starting to gather outside and I went from group to group and said hello. Everyone was friendly and wanted to introduce themselves.

The first people I met were a couple. His name was Cam, and though I never found out much about him, I did hear that he was Canadian. He was a young guy, quite tall and slim. He was traveling with a very pretty girl from Thailand. They’d been to Vietnam together and now the Philippines.

I also met two blond women in their thirties. I had seen them in the Art Café the day before and had wondered about them. They were a very striking pair and I tried to guess at their nationalities. I guessed Swedish, of course, but to my embarrassment they turned out to be from Quebec. I always think that women like that have a difficult experience overall. I mean very good-looking women traveling either alone or in pairs. I don’t mean that they get hassled all the time. Perhaps they do, but I honestly don’t know if it’s true. I think the perception of being hassled must be as bad as really being hassled. And they must also develop an odd defensive mechanism. They can’t just relate to people in a normal way, and I find that it’s hard to relate to them in a normal way. I think twice before approaching women like that and saying hello. Everything has that extra quality where they have to be fending off unwanted attention or think they are fending off unwanted attention. I wasn’t interested in them at all as a man, but they couldn’t know that. So they have to be just that little bit frosty. These two women, though, were quite friendly and throughout the day I found out a fair amount about them. They were sisters and the younger sister worked in an advertising agency. They were from Quebec City, but there weren’t many jobs there and they moved to Montreal to find work. They went on a trip like this every year and had been to lots of adventurous places, such as India. This trip seemed to be all about suntanning. They wasted no time in lying out on the front of the boat in the sun. And when we got to a beach for any length of time, they’d stretch out a towel and lie down. I thought it was overkill. The older sister in particular was tanned to a piece of charcoal. A nice tan can look healthy, but to take it to this extreme can have the opposite effect. You end up looking like a cookie or a sausage that has been left in the oven for hours too long. Her skin had an unhealthy dried out and wrinkled look to it. Both sisters had large patches of skin on their legs where the top layers had burned off and revealed pink fresh skin underneath. I did a doubletake when I saw that, because I thought at first they were actual skin grafts.

Another fellow on Tour A was a young American from California named Juan. I had also seen him in the Art Café the day before. I had thrown him a conversational hook about Tour A, but he was very distracted and didn’t take me up on it. He was on holiday from teaching English in Japan. He’d been there for four years on the Jet program. Juan was definitely a nice guy, but he had some odd mannerisms. There was an air about him like he was following some inner program that no one else can see. He would talk to you, but seemingly with only half his awareness. The rest of him was consumed with thinking about other things, and he could instantly dash off to do something else. He had a habit of collecting things on the beach and putting them in one place and taking pictures of them. That isn’t odd in itself, but he went about it with almost a Rainman intensity. At one of our first stops, I saw him swimming through the water with one of the big red jelly fish in one hand. He’d found that you could pick one of them up by placing the palm of your hand over the “head” and avoiding the stinging underbelly. He seemed to be carrying this thing around in the water for a long time. Then he carefully climbed into the boat and put the jellyfish down on the deck, took some pictures of it, and put it back in the water. Again, that isn’t so strange. These jellyfish were extremely interesting and getting a good picture of one is something I can understand. But he was so intent on this project it felt a bit creepy. He continued to pick up these jellyfish until finally he miscalculated one time and the thing flipped around on him and gave him a good sting on his forearm.

The final member of our group was a very nice man from Norway. I’d guess that he was in his mid to late forties and he looked it. He had very white freckly skin and laid on the sunblock like it was plaster. He also was one of the hairier men I’d seen in a long time and I was a bit shocked when he pulled off his t-shirt. I’ve often wondered how women feel about this range of hairiness in men. There are definite types out there. I instinctively feel that women have to prefer the Cams of this world – guys with absolutely no hair at all with that smooth surfer body. Then there are guys like Juan, just a bit of chest hair in patches. Perhaps the next stage up are guys like me with a sort of general hairiness. Finally, there are the human bears like Simon. I assume women have a natural preference for one type of body over another. What do you do then when you meet some guy and get to know him and yet have no idea what kind of body is lurking under that shirt? What if you like the guy and then find out that he has this type of body that you detest? I can see how some women would dislike the hairless type. They might seem like boys and not men. Yet, I can easily see disliking the furry bears of the world. I have to think that the furry bears like Simon would be better off having their bodies shaved to an extent – at least their backs!

Simon was by far the easiest of the group to talk to. Cam was not the smartest of guys, and his relationship with that Thai girl sent up warning flags. The two Quebecois girls had their own sunworshipping blonde goddesses thing going on. Juan was intent on corralling sea creatures. Simon seemed like just a normal guy. He was also the most interesting of the group having just come from a 5-day scuba-diving tour on one of the ocean reefs in the Sulu Sea. This was serious diving where he lived on the boat for all of that time and he saw whale sharks, huge tuna, regular sharks, and everything else you can name. The five-day dive cost him $1,400, but it sounds like it was worth it. He wasn’t here just to hang out. He was very interested in what was in the ocean and he took the time to point out things that I would have missed on my own, such as colorful giant clams and clown fish. He had a little Canon digital camera in a waterproof case and he dove down to the bottom to take pictures of the things he saw. Later in the day, he experienced something of a tragedy. He opened up his waterproof case and found that it was full of water. His camera was floating in seawater. All of his pictures were on that memory card – the whale sharks, tuna, everything. When we got back, he went around trying to find a place that might be able to give him advice about salvaging the pictures, but I don’t know if he was successful. I had the idea that it was the salt that was going to do the damage and that he should rinse the card (and perhaps camera) in fresh water. I think the camera was a write-off and that perhaps didn’t trouble Simon very much. The pictures were another story, and I hope he manages to access the card somehow.

The island-hopping tour itself was quite a success. I believe Tour A was the most popular and the best of the three tours. It took us to a range of incredible lagoons where we could swim amongst towering limestone cliffs. My wide-angle lens came into its own here. I hadn’t used it much on this trip (except for in Taytay), and I had wondered if carrying the thing around was a waste of time. However, I was very glad I had it in Taytay, and I was extremely glad I had it on Tour A. The snorkeling was only average, but the limestone cliffs were extraordinary and you had to have a wide-angle lens to even begin to capture them in pictures.

Jellyfish were not a big problem, either. At first, I was worried. Our very first stop had a lot of jellyfish, particularly the small ones and snorkeling was not much fun. I felt little burning stings all over my body and I couldn’t relax and just look down at the coral and the fish. I was constantly looking around to avoid the jellyfish. I didn’t see any of the huge ones that were in such abundance at Port Barton. However, there were lots of the smaller really solid ones. The real problem, though, were the tiny ones that you could barely even see. There were so many of those at times, that you couldn’t avoid them, and I felt stings on my neck and inner arms and thighs. The stings weren’t terribly painful, but they did hurt and they were quite annoying. They felt roughly like walking through a patch of stinging nettle or getting bit by ten horseflies at once. It was painful enough that I’d have to slap my hand over the area and press down. Luckily, this was the only place that had a lot of jellyfish. After that, they became somewhat infrequent.

Most of the tour was quite informal. The boatman would drive us to a place and then cut the engine while the second guy would throw out the anchors. Then the second guy would say something that I could never understand and wave his arm in the direction of the coral and the better snorkeling. A few times it was a bit more complicated and I really didn’t understand where we were going or what we were doing. In my case, being a strong swimmer, it wasn’t a problem. I could see, however, that some people could benefit from some more detailed and understandable instructions. At one place, we had to swim for quite a considerable distance into a lagoon, through a narrow opening and then onward into a hidden lagoon deep inside the island. I understood that we had to swim out the other side and that the boat would meet us there. This wasn’t the case at all and after swimming all the way in, we then had to turn around and swim all the way back out again. I noticed that Cam’s Thai girlfriend was having some trouble and Cam had to encourage her and assure her that he was there to help if she got into trouble. There were places where one could rest, but when you’re in the water and getting tired or panicking, logic isn’t always there to help you figure that out. I guess it’s something of a mixed bag. I kept thinking it would make the tour better value if one of our Filipino guides spoke understandable English. Yet, the fact that he didn’t made the tour very relaxed and easy. I’m glad that we didn’t have to pretend to listen to long boring histories of things that we didn’t care about. We could just swim and explore and learn things on our own.

The tour was just the right length, too. I was just starting to feel like I’d had enough and couldn’t appreciate much more when it was time to turn the boat in the direction of El Nido and head back. I was astonished in the end at how many spectacular places we saw. I assumed we’d seen the best of what this island had to offer, and we’d stop at yet another beach or lagoon of incredible beauty and power. The snorkeling, as I said, was average, but the scenery was difficult to even take in at times. I hope my pictures turn out half decent so that I can appreciate the places we saw in the future.

I was feeling rather fond of all my shipmates towards the end. I sat at the front of the boat with the two women from Quebec, and we appeared to have a good conversation on the way back to El Nido. I was disappointed then, when the group pretty much broke up and vanished when we got back. I actually tried to coral a few people and get them to join me upstairs at the Art Café for at least a beer if not a meal. I really felt we had bonded somewhat on our tour and it felt natural that people wouldn’t want to say goodbye so quickly. Apparently, though, that was just me. Cam and his girlfriend vanished the second we hit the beach. They were just gone. The two women from Quebec paid for their tour and were just gone without saying goodbye. Simon was intent on getting his memory card looked at it and he left. Juan did come up to the Art Café, but only because he had to make travel arrangements of some kind and book a flight. He did sit with me at my table for a bit, but he was his natural distracted self and seemed to be listening to some kind of inner-conversation that only he could hear. Perhaps I read the mood of the group wrong. Perhaps it’s just the mood of El Nido. I do find that El Nido feels different from the other places I’ve been on Palawan. It’s much more commercial and busy. There is a menu of activities you can choose from, such as Tour A, Tour B, or Tour C. You sign up for your activity and do it and then choose the next activity. Everyone is a little isolated by their activities and by the complexity of their travel arrangements. Perhaps this is normal, and being on the bicycle for all of my trips lately means I just haven’t noticed it. Yet, when you go to places like El Nido, you have to think about transportation and you have to plan ahead. People are very intense here and they are in the middle of complex itineraries involving planes and all kinds of things. I think that kind of travel produces a different mindset from cycling. I arrived in El Nido quite slowly and in a relaxed frame of mind. I just sort of merged into this Tour A. The two women from Quebec, by way of contrast, flew into the El Nido airport and then signed up for Tour A and then will fly out again to the next stop. It makes me appreciate the bicycle again even though I really won’t be using it very much on this trip. It could also be a difference of pace. I move very slowly and “do” very little. So for me, a day like Tour A is quite an event. Many days of cycling and just hanging out in Taytay led up to it. Most other people are much more active, and Tour A would be just one activity in a chain of many of them. I like to really anticipate something like Tour A and then have time afterwards to really sit and appreciate it and think about it – let it digest.

It’s odd, therefore, that after finishing Tour A, I signed up for Tour C the very next day. I think I did that for a number of reasons. For one thing, I still hadn’t come to like El Nido the town very much. It’s too loud and crowded and noisy for me. So the thought of simply hanging out wasn’t that appealing. The beach is also not that nice and they are building a new pier so there is a pile driver going all day long slamming girders into the ground. It’s a bit like a cross between Disneyland and a factory town. I also had the sense that I might not have much time. My cottage was reserved for someone else, and I knew I was going to get kicked out at some point. I was supposed to be kicked out today, but then the people decided to come a day later and so I can stay here one more night. However, I was under the impression I would have to move out today, and so I thought I would do another tour and then feel like I’d seen enough in case I decide to just move on. The final reason was the enthusiasm of the owner of the Art Café. I don’t know anything about her except that she is Swiss. She is quite friendly and energetic and she asked me about how Tour A went. I was glad of the chance to talk a little bit about it because the breaking up of the Tour A group left me feeling a bit flat. She then said that they had a good group forming for Tour C the very next day. I was carried along on her excitement and after I’d finished my second pizza, I signed up.

Tour C did not have nearly the range of attractions that Tour A had. The descriptions of it indicated that it was a good snorkeling tour, and I thought that would be nice. In the end, the snorkeling was also very ordinary. I remember on Koh Tao in Thailand, being blown away almost every day that I went in the water. Here, I can take it or leave it. There is some coral and there are some fish, but there is nothing like the variety and color that I remember from Koh Tao. The appeal of Tour C lay in its relative remoteness I think. Tour A is the most popular (rightfully so) and there were many boats and lots of other people at every stop. Some boats were like ours and had an assortment of tourists. Others were group tours of Japanese or Koreans and they were in full lifejackets and paddling around in kayaks or even being piggy-backed to shore by their guides. Tour C was quite different in that we didn’t see another boat or another person all day. We also didn’t see nearly as dramatic scenery, but we did stop at some heart-stoppingly beautiful beaches. They put postcard beaches to shame.

There were 9 people on Tour C and it was on the same boat, the Ploning, as Tour A was. Juan was on this tour as were Cam and his Thai girlfriend. The other people were new and though I chatted with all of them at some point or other, I was more content to find my own space on the tour and simply enjoy the day on my own. There was one couple on the tour. I think they were Americans, and they looked to be serious divers. They had special fins and masks as well as foam slippers for their feet and body suits. There were also two friends together. He was a good-looking Filipino from Manila named Benjy. I believe he had Spanish and American parents and he reminded me very much of Julio Iglesias. He spoke fluent and correct English. He was there with an American woman named Melissa. She was an intriguing person. She knew Benjy through a common church, and she was in the Philippines as a volunteer. She was quite a heavyset woman, but very athletic. She moved through the water with ease and grace and according to Benjy, she ran marathons and did all sorts of other athletic things. She was also very charming and nice. She had a light smile that never seemed to leave her face. It gave her the calm air of a Madonna, sitting serenely and quietly and listening to some kind of inner music.

The final member of Tour C was a guy from Switzerland named Michael. I chatted with him off and on, but he remained something of a closed book. I’m not sure where he was traveling from or where he was going to. He was a nice guy, however, and we passed the time pleasantly enough.

On both Tour A and Tour C, I was quite concerned about my skin. My face and arms and neck had gotten quite a lot of exposure to the sun while cycling, but my chest and back were still quite white and untanned. I was careful to apply sunblock often and I asked Simon on Tour A to put some sunblock on my back where I couldn’t reach. Even then, I could feel the sun doing some damage later in the day, and I started to snorkel with a t-shirt on. I had the feeling though, that being so careful was avoiding the inevitable in a way. The sunblock is SPF-50 and I think almost no sun gets through. So you end up spending hours in the sun with almost no exposure to sunlight. So it’s not like you can gradually get accustomed to the sun over time. The day you forget to put on sunblock, you’re going to burn anyway! So on Tour C, I wasn’t quite as diligent with the sunblock. I put it on, but I didn’t do it as often, and I stayed out in the sun even when I could feel a little bit of burning going on – especially on my chest. I think it worked out in the end, but one patch in the middle of my back got more sun that I’d hoped, and it is quite burned and sensitive.

I think in the future I’ll remember my time in Taiwan at LiveABC as the time when I became old. I think I started that job when I was still young in many ways. Somehow though, those four years of sitting at a desk and stressing out over vocabulary has made me old. Now that I think about it, it might not really be true. I’m not talking here about how I feel. I’m talking about how people view me or how I look. People generally are surprised to learn that I am 44 years old about to turn 45. (I am, too.) The Pretty One in Taytay seemed very surprised. She thought I was much closer to her age I think. Other people have also been surprised and, it seems, disappointed, to learn that I am 44. In El Nido, though, people seem to treat me as 44. I might be imagining things, but it seemed that the boat guys would rush to my aid as they had to help the old guy get into the boat. Melissa also called me “sir” when she asked me for my name. I guess this doesn’t really mean much. The boat guys helped everyone, and in fact, I saw that Juan and the other young guys had more trouble getting into the boat than I did. One time, Juan lost it completely and fell off the ladder and cut his toe. And everyone calls everyone “sir” on Palawan. The local people call all foreigners either “sir” or “mum” or “Joe.” Yet, in my mind, I was talking to Melissa as someone her own age. After she called me “sir” I realized I was probably twenty years older. Then I stopped for a second and tried to imagine what I looked like from her point of view. My own self-image has never gotten a chance to catch up to my actual age in years. I still think instinctively of myself as part of the late-twenties group. I guess I have to buy a mini-van to drive home my actual age someday.

Tour C’s last stop was at Paradise Beach on Helicopter Island. It was a gorgeous beach, far nicer than the beach at El Nido. It seemed to me that someone could set up a shuttle boat going back and forth from that beach all day. We all went back to Art Café to pay for our tour, and this time I didn’t bother trying to get anyone to stay together to have dinner or a drink. Cam and his girlfriend vanished instantly. Benjy and Melissa did go up to the Art Café, but they had all kinds of travel arrangements to make and had to get on the Internet. Michael disappeared somewhere. The American couple also vanished with their big bag of diving gear. I’m not sure what happened to Juan, and I think he was flying out the next day. I had another pizza and a beer and dove into my book, “The Portrait of a Lady.”

I also thought about what I should do next. I essentially have a choice between riding my bike back to Puerto Princessa or going on to Coron and Busuanga Island. I believe I’ve already made up my mind to go to Coron. I’ve enjoyed my days on the bike, but spending four or five days riding back on the roads I’ve already ridden on doesn’t seem like the best use of my time. I would enjoy the ride and want to do it, but I also want to see Coron and it would be silly to be this close and then not go there. Who knows when I’ll be back on Palawan, if ever? One can go to Coron by boat or by plane. I’m going to go to the Art Café in a few minutes and see about my options. I assumed I would go by boat, but the boat does take 10 hours which means I would likely get there in the dark. It also costs 2,000 pesos one way. I’m not sure, but I think flying costs 3,000 pesos. I’ll find out soon.

11:30 a.m.

I went walking down the beach to go to the Art Café, and suddenly I heard some whistling. I looked up and I saw Ed from Taytay leaning over a balcony. He was staying at the Bayview Inn. I found the entrance, walked up and joined him. The Bayview Inn is a large building, fairly clean and pleasant on the inside, with lots of individual rooms. Ed had a nice room at the front with a view of the ocean and easy access to the large balcony. They’d arrived yesterday afternoon, and today was their first day in El Nido. He was very happy with the place he’d found particularly because it cost only 350 pesos a night.

We sat on his balcony for a while and we talked about this and that. Towards the end of our chat, I started thinking out loud about my plans, and at the end of the thinking out loud, I was starting to think that going to Coron might be too much trouble. Sure, it would be nice to go snorkeling over a wreck and it would be nice to see a new place, but considering all the trouble I’d have to go through to get there and back, it might be something to save for another visit. I think when the dust settled, I’d regret not cycling back to Puerto. Also through talking to Ed, I got some ideas about a different way of going back. Not different roads. There really is only the one road back, but there are other places to stay. Ed pointed out a number of nice resorts that were right on the beach near places like Roxas. He also mentioned places near a town called San Rafael, which is conveniently halfway between Roxas and Puerto. It started to make cycling back seem more interesting. I could spend some more relaxing days here in El Nido without rushing, and then work my way back to Puerto slowly and looking for different things. That seems like a good plan.

 

Tags: Art Caf, El Nido, Palawan Bike Trip, Port Barton, Sunset Tour