day 1 – Coron

Coron Island is a stunningly wild island found in the Calamian island group. The island is owned by the indigenous Tagbanwa tribe – to protect the tribe and the island ecosystem it is off-limits to set foot on the island, other than the main sites which tour operators will take you. There a small visitors fee needs to be paid to the Tagbanwa tribes people to help maintain the sites and their way of life.

To visit Coron you will need to fly into the airport on Busuanga Island which is the largest island in the Calamian island group. Confusingly Coron town is actually situated on Busuanga island, and most people use this as the jumping off point to visit Coron island and the other Calamian islands.

Instead we would thoroughly recommend staying at Paolyn House Boats which float in a serene lagoon right underneath the towering limestone casts of Coron Island. It’s a more expensive way of doing it, but it grants you access to the main sites of the island before any of the tours from Coron Town Proper arrive in the morning and after they have headed back in the afternoon. It also allows you to stay right on the water, unlike the accommodation in Coron town.

Spend the first day getting to the house boats and paddling around the lagoon and exploring on the kayaks or paddleboards which are moored up by each house boat for the guests to use free of charge.

Day 2 – Coron

Head out early on a morning tour with Paolyn Houseboat’s Tagbanwa guide who will take you to the main sites of Coron island before the tour groups from Coron Town arrive. These sites include Kayangan lake and Barracuda lake, two spectacular fresh water lakes surrounded by imposing limestone karsts and thick jungle, cut off from the rest of the world. The entrance to Kayangan lake is a boardwalk along an extraordinarily pretty lagoon, probably one of the most photographed sites in the Philippines, before some very steep stairs up the separating wall between the sea and the lake and back down again to the lake.

You will then visit a couple of snorkelling sites such as Twin Peaks and the Siete Pecados coral gardens, where the coral and the fish are amazing. The morning tour finishes off at a lovely sandy beach cowering under the jagged limestone cliffs.

Spend the rest of the day chilling on your house boat or exploring the surrounding lagoons and cliffs.

Day 3 – Coron

Start early and take out the canoe included in your house boat. Paddle the very short distance to the twin lagoon: a fascinating pair of lagoons connected by a very low arch which you can only paddle through at low tide. There’s a rickety step ladder between the two if the tide is high.

Head out on an afternoon tour which takes you to the Malwawey and Smith coral gardens, which were some of the best snorkelling areas of the whole trip. We snorkelled along the edge of the reef with an amazing variety of coral and fish and we saw two turtles!

We then stopped at Smith beach and Banul Beach for some drinks and some time to chill.

Day 4 – Coron

We spent another day in Coron exploring Coron town and other parts of Busuanga island. We climbed Mount Tapyas, a grass-tufted hill which sits just behind Coron town. It’s a pretty intense slog up 700+ steps in the heat of the day, but well worth it. At the top, there is an excellent view over the Coron bay area, Coron Island itself and the surrounding hills and countryside.

If you are in to diving, Coron is well known for many of its excellent WWII Japanese ship wreck dives, so this is an alternative way to spend your final day in Coron.

Day 5 – El Nido

El Nido is one of the most popular destinations in all of the Philippines. Tourists flock here for the stunning scenery of Bacuit Bay, full of towering limestone karst islands, dusted with tropical jungle, and trimmed with palm shaded white sand beaches.

We actually booked a 4 day, 3 night island hopping trip with Big Dream Boat Man which takes you from Coron to El Nido and stops off at some of the less visited islands on the way in a traditional Filipino Paraw boat. Due to gale warnings in the Palawan area this was unfortunately cancelled so we took a ferry from Coron to El Nido. We would recommend booking an expedition like this however, as it gets you to some paradisiacal islands without the crowds, which El Nido suffers from. Just beware that inclement weather can cause these trips to be delayed and or cancelled, so we recommend planning some flexibility and contingency into the trip.

So due to the cancellation, we caught a ferry from Coron to El Nido (SEE GETTING AROUND THE PHILIPPINES) in the morning. We spent the rest of the day exploring the El Nido town and surrounding area. Catch a tricycle to Las Cabanas beach and wander along the beach until it dog-legs to the left and set up with a coconut for sunset. It’s a cracking place to be at this time of day, with all the beach bars in full swing and the sky doing the heavy lifting over Bacuit Bay.

Day 6 – El Nido

El Nido has four very popular island hopping day tours out in to the famous Bacuit Bay, inventively names tours A, B, C and D, each costing 1500 php (£22.5 at the time of writing). Tour A is the big hitter which takes you to the Big Lagoon, Shimizu island, the Secret Lagoon and Seven Commandos beach. Enticed by the stunning line up, we booked Tour A at the Art Cafe in town, although you can book the tour with any hotel in the area. The tours meet on the main town beach at 9am and all head out at a similar time for the day. They all also include lunch.

Overall the sites included in Tour A were absolutely stunning, but we enjoyed them with about 60 other tour boats and a conservative 1000 other safety-orange lifejacketed tourists, which slightly took the edge off the experience. If we did the trip again, we would recommend paying double and getting a private tour which leaves early and gets to the popular sites before the rest of the world. Seeing and experiencing the geography of Bacuit Bay without it being overrun, is certainly worth the extra splurge.

Big lagoon is one of the most famous sites in all of the Philippines. It is accessed from the sea via a narrow and very shallow channel with stunning, turquoise water. The channel then opens up into a deep water lagoon rimmed by steep limestone karsts. The channel is too shallow for the tour boats, so they congregate outside, while the boat men organise you some kayaks from a separate business for you to paddle into the lagoon (for an extra cost of 300php).

Shimizu island, so-called after a Japanese diver who lost his life diving in tunnels underneath the island, is a snorkelling stop on the tour. We would recommend wearing a rash vest here as there are tiny jelly fish in the water which can be a little unpleasant.

The Secret Lagoon is a small pool of water, completely cut off from the outside world by imposing limestone karst cliffs. It is accessed through a hole in the cliff not much bigger than a person. Next to the lagoon is a beautiful sandy beach, studded with some impressive rock formations. If you were to explore the secret lagoon early in the morning it would be extraordinary. Unfortunately it must be one of the worst kept secrets on all of Palawan and so a queue forms outside of it, waiting for tourists to clamber in have a poke around inside and them clamber back out. We queued for about 45 minutes to get in.

Seven Commandos beach is a nice stretch of sand backed by palm trees on the mainland, only accessible by boat. It is so-called after the seven commandos who crashed their boat onto the beach in the 1980s, marooning themselves here.

Day 7 – El NIDO

Head to Nacpan beach, a huge swathe of sand north of El Nido town. The southern end of the beach curves round on to a narrow peninsular forming a twin beach. While we were there the rain set in, but we had a good time swimming in the sea and body boarding. The Nacpan Beach Resort also support the turtle hatchlings in their early lives, and we were lucky enough to experience almost 100 hatchlings being released onto the beach and making their way into the sea.

Rainy days can lead to some fantastic sunsets though. And we were rewarded with a lovely evening at our hotel, Buko Beach Resort on Corong Corong beach.

Day 8 – El Nido

The best wasy to experience El Nido in our opinion was by kayak, as it allowed us to paddle where we wanted, when we wanted and visit some of the beaches that the popular A, B, C, D Tours don’t. Hire a kayak from one of the hotels along Corong Corong beach, south of El Nido town, and paddle out into Bacuit Bay in which ever direction you want.

We paddled north around the mainland and stopped off at the gorgeous Lapus Lapus beach first. We had the place to ourselves and it was perfect!

When we finally managed to leave this paradisiacal beach, we paddled further towards Seven Commandos beach and found Papaya Beach, another beautiful stretch of white sand and palms. Papaya beach had a small hut which sold fresh drinks, and especially fresh coconuts – we watched as the man behind the counter quickly scaled a palm tree and lowered a bunch of coconuts down to us. Delicious.

We then paddled round to Seven Commandos for lunch at Vellago Resort right on the beach.

After we paddled back to Corong Corong, we jumped in a van to Port Barton.

Day 9 – Port Barton

Port Barton is a welcome drop in pace compared to the crowds and tourism of El Nido. Thispretty town has been labelled as “up and coming” although the pandemic might have slowed its inclusion of the average Palawan tourist’s itinerary. It’s a 4 hour drive south from El Nido by van, and the last half of the journey is along pretty rough roads. It’s seclusion is its saving grace though, as the tourist industry hasn’t caused large developments in the town and it has maintained it’s lovely relaxed, local atmosphere. The beachfront is beautiful, with fine sand and palm trees at jaunty angles, interspersed with wooden cafes and bars where you can enjoy your lunch or a drink with your toes in the sand. The town has two streets running parallel to the beach with a smattering of accommodation options, and that’s about it, just how it should be.

We spent our first day exploring the local area, checking out the beach and the town, enjoying the slower pace of Port Barton. We walked to Coconut beach, a lovely quiet beach with rows and rows of coconut trees behind it. It was a relatively straight forward walk, you just follow the road south out of town and it turns into a dirt track which you follow all the way. You can continue on to White Beach, but unfortunately this was closed due to renovation of the resort there.

Day 10 – Port Barton

Learning our lesson from El Nido, we booked a private island hopping tour around the bay. A shared tour probably wouldn’t be too bad as there are far, far fewer boats here, but going private meant we could get started earlier and avoid anyone else the whole day. Similarly here there ate Tours A, B, C and D and tour A is the most popular. The tour included Star Fish Island, Twin Reef, Turtle Spot, Maxima Island and Long Island (as well as lunch).

Star fish island is really just a small sand bar which your tour will take you at low tide. The water is so clear you don’t even need to snorkel to see the star fish in the shallow water surrounding the sand bar.

The coral and fish at Twin Reef were excellent. Not quite as good as in Coron, where there was a steep coral shelf at the edge of the reef but considerably better than El Nido.

The guide told us that we would get the tour for free if we did not see turtles at Turtle Spot, a sandy area of sea grass between two islands. We saw two turtles and swam with them for quite a long while which was amazing!

We had lunch on the beach at Maxima island; traditional Filipino bbq full of meat, fish and rice.

The island had a great view point which we climbed after lunch and it had a beautiful hidden beach on sea-ward side of the island.

Our final stop was long island, a long, quiet beach perfect for strolling along and inspecting the shells washed up along it.

Day 11 – Port Barton

On our last day in Port Barton we set out in a kayak, which we rented from a chap on the beach, to see what we could see by ourselves. We paddled to Pamuayan Beach to the north of Port Barton. You can stop off at starfish island on the way if the tide is low enough. Another option would be to kayak to coconut and white beach which we had already visited on foot.

Day 12 – Sabang

Getting from Port Barton to Sabang is slightly more tricky, as there is no direct shuttle all the way. We booked a shared shuttle Port Barton bus station through to Salvacion, where you need to change, otherwise you will find yourself in Puerto Princessa. There is a second van you can catch from Salvacion to Sabang. The journey took about 5 hours.

Sabang is the jumping off point for the Puerto Princessa Subterranean River, a UNESCO world heritage site and voted one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. There isn’t much to Sabang town, which is probably why most tourists who visit the underground river do it as a day trip from Puerto Princessa, and don’t stay here. But we would recommend spending a night in Sabang to have a less hectic experience and to enjoy the lovely palm lined beach surrounded by impressive scenery.

Spend the rest of the afternoon chilling at the Daluyon Beach & Mountain Resort right on the beach front.

If you’ve still got energy to burn, go on a ziplining and mangrove tour. It’s just a short walk past the Daluyon to get to the ticket office. It’s an 800m long zipline across the next bay north of Sabang which is good fun especially due to how low over the sea it takes you. After that you will spend an hour being paddled around the sleepy mangrove backwaters by a guide who explains the importance of mangroves to the whole Palawan ecosystem. It’s very interesting and serene, until you spot a mangrove snake curled up on an overhanging branch!

Day 13 – Sabang

Make sure you book an early trip to the underground river the day before; the first trip to the river is at 8am. It is also worth noting that the local coast guard is extremely cautious about gales and weather warnings anywhere on Palawan and if the weather is not satisfactory, all trips for the day are cancelled at short notice. Another reason to plan a little flexibility into your holiday.

You will board a bangka which takes you north across the bay for 20 minutes, before dropping you at a beach 5 mins walk from the entrance to the underground river. Here you will be given a lifejacket, hard hat and an audio guide to reduce the noise inside the caves. Unless you have paid for a private tour, you will wait for the boat to fill up and then a guide will press play on your audio guide and start paddling you towards the cave entrance. As you paddle deeper into the cave, the more impressive it becomes, with huge chambers such as the aptly named “Cathedral” at over 60m high. The guide will shine his torch to help you see in what would otherwise be pitch black and will point out fun stalactite and stalagmite formations. You will only get to see the first 2km of the cave system in an hour of paddling, but it is over 8km long and there are many other tunnels branching off the main one, some of which are still being discovered. After 2km, the guide will turn the boat round and paddle you back and then you will jump back on your bangka and head back to Sabang. Overall the tour takes about 2 hours.

In the afternoon we caught a shared shuttle to Puerto Princessa Airport and flew to Cebu.

Day 14 – Bohol

We spent the night in Cebu after our flight and caught the first ferry to Bohol from Cebu port.

In Bohol we stayed at the Fox & Firefly, a delightful handful of traditional nipa huts next to the Loboc river and surrounded by paddy fields. Over the next three days we mostly used the hotel to book activities and tours around Bohol. The island is great for outdoorsy people with a strong selection of activities including trips to the Chocolate hills, waterfall trips, stand up paddle boarding, a village tour, snorkeling tours etc.

In the afternoon we went for a short paddle board trip on the Loboc river and then did a firefly cruise down the river after dinner. The guides took us to a spot where there were thousands of fireflies flashing round a tree on the bank of the river (unfortunately its a sight quite difficult to capture in a photo).

Day 15 – Bohol

On the second day we went mountain biking around the local area with a guide and then did a local village tour in the afternoon. The villagers showed us how to make nipa roofing, how to make coconut wine and how to plant and harvest rice.

Day 16 – Bohol

We did the Bohol Countryside Tour, where a local took us around some of the key sights including the Chocolate hills, the Tarsier sanctuary and some quad biking on his Tuk Tuk. The guide was a lovely chap and was much cheaper than the usual tourist guides (contact him on Whatsapp 09389396356). On the way to the hills we stopped in at the Tarsier sanctuary where you can get up close to these cute, wide-eyed creatures and support their conservation.

The Chocolate hills are one of the most famous sites on Bohol, if not the the whole of the Philippines. These curious tufty mounds cover a large area across Bohol and there are a few viewing platforms you can visit to get a great view across them. Later on in dry season, the sun dries out the teletubbie green hills and turns them brown, making them look like Hershey’s kisses, hence the name.

Next stop, quad biking around the base of the chocolate hills. Two recommendations for this, bring a change of clothes and keep your phone safe. Stu did neither of these and ended up caked in mud and dropped his phone in a puddle while driving around the quad bike track. The quad bike track takes you round the base of a few of the chocolate hills and through some paddy fields; it’s a really cool setting to drive through.

The final stop on the tour is to have lunch on the Loboc River Floating Restaurants. There are two places to do this, Loay or Loboc (both on the Loboc River). The food at Loay is thought to be better, while the Loboc cruise has more of a party atmosphere. The restaurant does a short pootle up the river, then turns round and pootles back.

Day 17 – Bohol

On our last full day in Bohol we did a calming morning paddle board trip up the Loboc river to Busay falls where you could get a rather aggressive shower under the waterfall.

That wasn’t quite enough waterfall for us,especially as Bohol has a great selection of waterfalls to see. We visited Ingkumhan Falls and Dimiao twin waterfalls which were both beautiful. We found a very enthusiastic pair of guides at Ingkumhan falls and they showed us how to climb up the falls and where to jump off from. It felt a bit random and sketchy at times, but it was definitely one of the best things we did in Bohol.

To get to the Dimiao twin waterfalls there is a 20 minute walk from the road, but our guides sorted us a lift on the back of two scooters with some locals which got us there much quicker and it was an experience in itself riding across some pretty muddy paths.

Day 17 – Bohol

On the final morning before heading to Cebu, we got up early to see the whale sharks in Lila. We had read that the whale shark experience in Oslob wasn’t particularly sustainable and thought this one was going to be more ethical. In all honesty it probably wasn’t as they did feed the sharks to encourage them to come to the site. It was amazing though, we saw two huge whale sharks.

We then caught the ferry back across to Cebu City and got a taxi to Moalboal in the south west of the island.

Day 18 – Cebu

In Moalboal the rain really started to pick up, so we spent most of our time back under water. We had planned to do Kawasan Falls but it was closed due to the rain and chance of landslides. Instead we used the opportunity to try a Discovery Dive where we learnt the basics in the pool and then headed out into the sea.

Day 19 – Cebu

On our final day we went snorkeling to see the sardine run, a phenomenon where a huge shoal of sardines swim relatively close to the shore of Moalboal . We didn’t manage to see any sardines as the water was pretty murky from all the rain, but we did bump into a couple more turtles eating the sea grass in the shallows.

Day 20 – Cebu

Taxi back to Cebu City and fly back home.

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