loveliness.

Continued from Part 1.

After our morning of frolicking and getting pretty sunburnt on Hidden Beach, we loaded back up on the boat and headed to Matinloc, which was about a 20 minute boat ride away.

Matinloc is an absolutely stunning island. It has an abandoned mansion and religious shrine built on it, although the mansion is in decay and has been looted. It’s pretty mysterious, and if you feel like doing more research, there are some theories about buried treasure on Matinloc that are kind of cool.

We had about an hour there to explore and take pictures. There is a set of stairs carved into the side of one of the hills, and you can climb up to the top to get a vista view of the turquoise bay and the emerald green cliffs.

It is one of the most stunning views I’ve ever seen, but you take your life into your hands a little bit. The cliffs are made from very sharp rock, and you have to climb up a little bit to really get the best view, and if you slipped, even just a little bit, it would have been agony.

After Matinloc, we headed to Talisay to relax and have lunch. The beach was gorgeous and the water was super clear, I went snorkeling and chased fish around for ages.  Our lunch was really good, our tour guides caught and grilled fish on a BBQ right alongside the boat, and one of the Swedish girls that was in our group had a portal speaker, so once we finished eating we just lazed in the sun and listened to reggae. It was perfect.

The last stop on our tour was Secret Beach. When we were about 1/2 an hour from Talisay the driver stopped our boat right in front of a solid cliff, and told us to jump out. We all kind of looked at each other, and then did what we were told, and our guide led us to a hole in the cliffs under the water.

We had to swim up through it, and on the other side was a circular lagoon type beach with towering cliffs all around it. One of our guides showed us that right when you come in, you can actually swim underneath the rocks that make up part of the lagoon floor in tunnels, and go almost to the other side.

It was the stuff of my worst, most claustrophobic nightmares, but he took our go pro with him, and it’s a pretty cool video.

El Nido, and especially this tour, was my favourite part of the Philippines. I know there are so many pictures in this post, but I honestly couldn’t choose, the whole day felt like magic.

Next time we’re in Palawan, I’d like to go diving at the Tubbataha reefs, and check out the Underground River, but I will definitely make time to come back to El Nido.