Saturday 5th September
Early morning start on the way to the Underground River here in Palawan, considered to be one of the natural wonders of the world, so super excited!!
The journey took a while though, and apparently there's always a buildup of boats lining up to get there, so our driver (ER) and our tour guide (Harry) took us to another little tourist attraction, Ubong a Rock where we did a little caving and I did a superman zip-line haha! Definitely one of the best things I've done in a while.
Kudos to our driver and tour guide, but I have to say, our underground river tour guide was phenomenal! He was fantastic, spoke amazing English and was full of quirky jokes and puns. Simon and I were definitely loving it! My all time fav has to be in reference to water dripping down from stalactites, sparrows flying about and all the cute little bats hanging from the cave ceiling; "Don't worry if you feel something cold fall on you, that, we call it 'Holy Water'. If it is warm, then that is bad. That, we call it, 'Holy Shit'"!!
The whole trip through the caves was incredible; the stalagmite and stalactite formations were extraordinary. We were almost plunged into darkness a quarter of the way through our tour, our torch deciding to flicker weakly, which led to a complicated change over of torches between 3 boats and traffic in the caves haha.
I really hope that this place remains preserved! It is such a gem and and a rarity.
As soon as we got back, we had to pack our stuff really quickly, our van to El Nido arriving sooner than we expected. Halfway through the journey, the lightening started in the distance. By the time we were nearly at El Nido it was pouring with rain, our van leaking and we still had no clue how to get to our accommodation! We did end up meeting a really friendly Filipino, Garie, who was travelling and celebrating his birthday in a few days.
Lucky for us, a guy working in the hotel next to the place we were meant to be staying in was in our van, and helped us down in the rain and dark to our place, as there happened to be a complete blackout... Only for us to be told they didn't have a room for us, despite the fact that we had already paid. Crap. It all worked out ok though, as helpful guy had a cottage free and quickly ushered us in, handing us a lamp and bidding us goodnight.
It was a tiny room, and absolutely baking hot, with thin walls where we could hear the people next door whispering!! But at least we weren't out in the rain! Silver linings ☺️