Coron... last stop in the Philippines

So last stop Coron, and there is really only one reason for coming here.  And the diving was INCREDIBLE.  We did 4 wreck dives, and one dive in a crazy lake with thermo-clines (like a hot spring, but multiple temperatures at different depths), increasing up to 39 degrees. Like diving in a hot tub!  An interesting dive to say the least…

The wrecks were out of this world as well.  1 cargo ship, 1 air craft carrier, 1 oil tanker, and 1 battle ship.  All in around the 100m (plus or minus 20-30m) (300ft long) and you were able to swim the length of them inside the ship in nearly all of them.  So cool to see… They are all Japanese ships from WWII sunk in one day by an Allied submarine.  There were 12 ships sunk in total, however only 8 have been found which you can dive, and some of those are quite deep dives at it is.  We went down over 40m (130ft) yesterday on our first dive to swim through the war ship.  Guns, cranes, on board jail houses, engine rooms (with dials and wheels), and ladders going from multiple levels through port holes that we just swam through all still intact.  A world class wreck dive site… So much fun.  Unfortunatelty the pictures do it no justice, as the coolest stuff we saw were all inside the wrecks and it was to dark to snap photos...

 

 

  

  

  

  

A boiler on one of the ships...

  

One of the many port holes in which we'd enter the ship to explore inside.

  

 

Guns on the war ship...

  

A german guy (Vincent) posing behind the guns...

  

A crane on the air craft carrier we're told was used to move planes...

  

Part of the crane...

  

  

And the lake dive... I have know way of showing how warm it was escept for the fact that Jillene didn't wear a wet suit!

  

A picture that actually was able to catch a thremo-cline... the different layers of water of different temperature.  Sometimes when there was a very severe difference you could see it, and apparently so coudl the camera.  Unbelievable really, like I said above, it was like diving in a hot tub at times with the temeratures ranging from 25-39 degrees.

 

 Not much sea life to see in the lake, but an interesting dive none-the-less.  The steep cliffs above the water continued below...

The great little guest house where we stayed in Coron, litterally on the water.

  

View of sunset from Coron...

  

And a self catered meal... I was always happy with just the chicken and the beer, but Jillene isisted vegetables were required.  A quick trip to the market to by $0.75 worth of tomatoes, onion, and cucumber fixed that, and made a great salad.  The chicken you can buy cooked on the street fresh off the rotisserie for $4.  Not sure why, but the chicken here incredible compared to what you get back home, so juicy...  And the beer of course, a liter for a whopping $1.50.   

  

But that is it for the Philippines.  We're out of here tomorrow morning, and I'm spending our last night updating the blog from the comfort of our hotel room in Clark 2hrs north of Manila with a bottle of Red Horse by my side.  The Philippines have been great to us, and we didn't get to see as much as we wanted, but we did well regardless.  A beautiful country with incredibly friendly people.  It's sad to leave, but a dare say there are a few things that could easily bring us back...

El Nido

El Nido was a pretty cool place, although certainly a lot more touristy than Port Barton.  It is set amongst steep limestone cliffs; quite beautiful really, so as usual there is increased tourism for good reason.  Below are the bungalows we stayed in at the base of one of the steep cliffs, just at the edge of town.  A place that proved to be one of our favorite places we stayed in the Philippines.

 The beach in El Nido town proper...

The beach just south of town proper where we'd leave to do all our island hopping.  Lots of nice sites to see...

 

  

Our boat we used to get around...

 

 

This is the end of day 1 island hopping.  To get a bit of scale with regards to  the islands cliffs, if you look at the bottom right you can see a small bungalow on beach.

 

We decided to rent a motorbike here for a day... we could have rented a scooter as we usually do, but the roads were rough, and dirt bikes were available so we used one.  We stopped at a beach along the way and were greated by a ton of little kids whom were more than happy to see us.  They had the day off school thanks to a national holiday, and I don't think there was much else going on in this little town.

Next we came to another beautiful white sand beach that must have been 3+ km long.  It was pretty flat to and I could help myself, and had to do speed laps on the motor bike!

The beach...

Nice view along the way on our bike ride...

Taking a break...

Pigs on another beach we stopped at!

In the middle of no where there was a cliff in this little bit of limestone jutting out of the earth.  There is a lot of histor here, and archeologists have apparently done lots of 'digs' here.  Rumour has it that many hundreds of years ago some Filipino family hid in here escaping persecution for 2-3 years before they were finally discovered and killed...

One of the many caves... apparently there are passages from the bottom that will take you all the way to the top of this little limestone mountain.

We ended our bike journey on a great beach for sunset...

 

What our balcony looked like most days... we ate A LOT of fruit here!  Mango's especially as we knew our time in the Philippines were coming to an end.

 

More island hopping... this is Snake Island.

 

  

 A cave while island hopping...

 

 

 

And that was it in El Nido.  We made many more friends here, and we spent nearly another week.  But our time was coming to an end in the Philippines and we still had some more diving to do.  We were off for an 8hr boat journey to Coron where we wanted to do some world class wreck diving.

Port Barton

So we all limped more or less out of CWC and made our way to Palawan for some much deserved recovery time to be spent on the beach (myself more than anyone).  We had to fly into Puerto Princessa though, and make our way 6hrs north to Port Barton.  And below is the vehicle from hell that was to deliver us.  Not the best mode of transport when you're back is killing you, but it got us there in 8 1/2 hrs thanks to a flat tire.  And normally it wouldn't take the extra 2 1/2 hrs to fix a flat tire I know, but it does when you spare has no tread and is equally as flat as the one you're trying to replace!

But we finally made it and were rewarded with the beach below.  Now Port Barton is a sleepy little town with little going on, but that didn't stop us from spending a week here!  The place had character and super friendly people.  Not an easy place to leave...

But for Mouck and Lynn this is where we had to finally part ways after 6 weeks.  Their time was up and they needed to head home.

Worthy of a picture we thought,  not sure who was doing more work here...

But before everyone needed to take off we did have a few more things to do and see.  One of which included a short hike to a waterfall...

And we did a little snorkelling as well on a day spent island hoppping.  There was a lot of these critters around though, and one of the bastards got me good one afternoon when Mouck and I decided to go for a swim!

Life is tough when you're island hopping in the Philippines!

Another nice beach...

And we finished off our island hopping with a short hike to yet another waterfall.  The perfect way to end a day in the sun and salt water. It always feels so good to climb into the waterfall with cool fresh water pounding down on you.  My favorite type of shower...

Sadly though our week in Port Barton felt like no more than a couple days.  Mouck and Lynn were gone after an epic celebration that included an afternoon of drinks on our bungalow balcony, that spilled into the evening and us crashing a Filipino's home to sink karaokee with the Chilean and American cohorts we added to our group through the day...

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