Early morning sunshine
Early start today as we had a snorkelling tour around El Nido today. We started the day off with some bread, eggs, and pancakes, courtesy of the hostel. The tour company picked us up from our hostel and drove us to the beach in El Nido, where a hundred others would be snorkelling today. Everyone had to sign a register on the beach, and then we got on our boat where we had to wait for a bit. There were tens of other boats all waiting, with an absolute cluster of other tourists, it was mayhem.
Whilst we waited, we got talking to a Spanish girl called Sam. These tours are good for meeting people as you spend the whole day together and have fun. I’m still in contact with many people I go on tours with, even if I don’t the day is still one to remember. Throughout the day, we got dropped off at various locations throughout the sea. Some had beaches nearby, others were in deep water with corals down below. The water visibility was pretty good, as were the fish and corals, but they were mostly the same wherever we went. I noticed quite a lot of jellyfish whilst snorkelling around El Nido, but they don’t seem to do any harm thankfully.
Check out this snorkelling experience in Thailand, it was fantastic.
Lunch and then swimming
All at once, every boat seemed to dock near a small cove with a beach and lay out our lunches, buffet style. There was a good variety of noodles, rice, fish, chicken, fruit, and more, it was all tasty. We all went swimming afterwards without consequence, contrary to popular belief, and continued having fun. Later on in the tour, we made friends with a Filipino family, they seemed to leave their toddler with us in shallow water and we kept her entertained. It was quite entertaining for us too, plus she was really cute.
When we returned back to town before sunset, we bought tickets to Coron. This is an island to the north of El Nido, good for snorkelling tours and scuba diving too, and is next on most people’s itineraries. The ferry ticket was for tomorrow and cost around £20, it hurts a bit as it seems a lot, but it has to be done. We had food whilst near the beach front, fought off the mosquitoes, then got a tricycle, basically a tuk tuk, back to the hostel. As a nice bonus to the day, I became Uncle Joe as my brother and his wife gave birth to a little girl, I was over the moon, and it’ll take some time to sink in.
