The picture you are seeing here is taken during our last day on the island but
then again, I will sharing you all our experience on that island.
DAY 1
It was 3am when we woke up to prepare for our morning flight to Puerto Princesa. And honestly we are excited and have not sleep well on that night because after how many days of planning, it is finally the day that we are waiting for. In just a few hours, we will be seeing the great island of El Nido.
We did not have any breakfast that morning and just prepare some hot coffee and we book immediately our Grab to the airport. With a travel bag, a luggage and my new toy to be used for underwater video, both me and my wife travels down to the airport and prays that the weather on El Nido is okay.
To those who don't know, the weather on our destination is unpredictable, we saw a lot of bloggers who go to the island only to find themselves stranded on their hotel room and unable to go island hopping because of the moody weather. So if you are planning to go to this paradise, do research first on what is the best time to visit the place and plan ahead of time, also, make sure that you stay on the island for how many days so that you will have some buffer time to explore the place incase the weather is not on your side.
Settling at the airport (The flight would last 1 hour and 15 mins)
You can actually travel directly to El Nido airport, but we prefer going first to Puerto Princesa because its a lot cheaper. Though the downside of this plan is that after the flight you will then travel for 6 hours by land. Its tiring yes, but then again most of traveler on a budget do this to save some bucks. :)
Elnido here we Go!
We actually arrive a little to early on Puerto Princesa, so we take first some pictures and explore the airport while waiting for our Van that will deliver us to El Nido
As a tourist, its mandatory to post on some welcome signage similar to this lol
After 15 mins of photoshoot and communicating with our driver, we then proceed to travel to Elnido by using a Van. This is a 6 hour ride but luckily times flies when you are only sleeping :)
This is not a private trip, so we have some other passenger on the Van. The cost for van transfer is ranging from 600-700 PHP or around 12$. There are actually some stops on the 6 hour drive but we did not go out from our van and prefer to sleep instead.
Sleepwell my love - 2 hours left before we arrive at the town of Elnido
We arrive at our hotel exactly 1PM, check in time is around 2pm so we are an hour early. We booked at CUNA hotel, it is located at the center of the town and is just few mins walk to the beach. Honestly the location is very good since it is peaceful (not so many vehicles that passes by) and at the same time it is very near to some of the restaurants that we plan to eat to. For the price of the room at the hotel, it actually depends on your room but we spend a total of 17,000 PHP or around 300$ for 3 night and 4 days stay.
The lobby at Cuna Hotel, this is a 4 star Hotel
We cant check in yet since the room is not ready so we decided to have our lunch first. We eat at their bar at the roof deck and honestly, its not on most of the blogs that we seen, but the food is very amazing
I will have a separate post about our food but this is the view at the top of the hotel.
You can already see the island and the sea from our spot. What a perfect way to spend our lunch here. The food here is 5/5.
END OF DAY 1 PART 1