Really excited about going to El Nido, I’ve watched so many YoutTube videos and read so much about it I really feel like I know the place already. Crystal clear waters, great food, great bars and a real backpackers buzz about the place.
First things first, how did we get to El Nido from Port Barton. El Nido is on the same isalnd as Port Barton, it’s up north so the journey was overland. We booked a couple of seats in a shared van for US$10 each through the staff at our accommodation in Port Barton
The trip took about 4 hours and there was a short 15 minute stop to go to the loo or pick up some food or drink. Unlike the journey from Puerto Princesa to Port Barton the van was packed with local Philippinos who seemed to be taking most of their blongings on the journey. It was an extremely noisy journey which was a bit of a challenge and the air conditioning did not seem to be working. All in all, not the most comfortable of journeys… but we got through it.
We arrived at the bus station in El Nido and we weher staying in a place called Buenas Haven Travelodge in an area called Barangay – for my thoughts on the Buenas Haven as a place to stay please see the ‘Accommodation Review Posts‘ section for the Philippines.
Basically, we came out of the bus station turned left and was along that road (if you turn right after coming out of the bus station and follow the main road it takes you right down into the centre of El Nido, about a 15 minute walk). We were pretty tired so we decided ot take a tricyle which cost us UDS1.
El Nido town centre is not a big place but it has pretty much everything you need, I have included a map in the images below for your reference. There are plenty of places to eat, cafes, bars, souvenir shops, some nice small fashion boutiques, a ew convenience stores, plenty o
It’s at night when the place really comes to life. In the early evening all of the bars, cafes and restaurants were buzzing with backpackers and tourists chatting and sharing stories and as the evening wore on I started to notice that some small clubs started appearing… actually it was my ears that noticed.
ll in all the town is a fantastic place for kicking back, having a few beers or cocktails (by the way, there are lots of 2 for 1 happy hour deals on offer in the bars) and meeting like minded travellers. We met quite a few people.. in fact we met one of the owners of the Happiness Beach Bar who was a real cool dude and was kind enough to share an excellent bottle of red wine with us and chat about his experiences in El Nido. He introduced us to his partner who was on his way to play a music mashup set in another bar.
I won’t go into recommending any bars, my advice if you visit El Nido is to enjoy wandering the streets and let the right bar, or bars :-), pull you in. I will however mention one place. Tracy decided to have a massage so I had an hour and a half to kill so I went for a wander. I heard some cracking tunes… and I mean cracking. My ears took me to a place called the Pan Qolin Cocktail Bar, which was just above an ice cream parlour called Gusto (yum yum).
Needles to say I went inside for a sneaky couple of beers and found that the chap I met in the Happiness Beach Bar was playing the set… nice one!. I got chatting to a great guy from Spain who turned out to be the owner. To cut a long story short, I popped out of the bar, picked Tracy up from her massage, we went back into the bar and got absolutely trolleyed. It turned out to be a wild, wild night and we ended up dancing until the early hours before grabbing a tricycle back to our digs.
One of my favourite things about travelling is having crazy impromptu piss ups with people you’ve never met and will probably never see again… in my opinion, creating memories like this is part of the beauty of travelling.
We spent quite a lot of time at Vanilla Beach, There’s not really much of a beach in El Nido town so we looked a little further and found exactly what we wanted about 15 minutes along the coast from the town.
It’s pretty easy to get to. If you are on a motorbike or scooter just make you wat towards the bus station and keep going along the main coastal road for about 15 minutes until you get to McDonald’s on your right… that’s Vanilla Beach. Or, hop on a tricyle and it should cost you about US$1,00 to get there.
Walk through the little shopping resort and you’ll ger to the beach. There’s various boutique shops, cafes, restaurants, a mini maket, dive shop and a gym, but I assume as it’s part of a resort the prices are hiked up quite a bit. There were only a couple of places open when we were there, I reckon about 95% of the places were closed… post Covid and all that.
Once you get through the small shopping precinct you arrive at Vanilla Beach. There are quite a few bars and restaurants where, during the day, travellers relax and enjoy the warmth of the sun and sound of the sea. There are also a lot of activities available, such as kayaking, bodysurfing and jet skiing. In the evening and into the early hours the bars and restaurants become more lively with plenty of loud music and driking happening.
If you want to find a quieter spot walk down to the end of the beach to the last bar and the beach bends to the righty and continues for quite a long way. When we were at Vanilla Beach we spent most of our time down this quiet end in and around a restuarant bar called Las Cabanas. This was a great place and I’d definately recommend having a cockatail and a bite to eat there… the food was simply fab… so were the rum and cokes :-).
here are four main boat trips that you can go on in El Nido – Trip A, Trip B, Trip C and Trip D and alothough there are some variations between them they are very similar. We had decided that we were going to go on one boat trip in El Nido and that we wanted to go on the one that offered the best snorkelling. I did a lot of research and we ended up booking Boat Trip A online with a company call Viator… there are links to the four boat trips on the Viator website below for your reference.
I actually booked my boat tour online through Viator before I arrived in El Nido, however, you can easily book a tour when you get there. Ask at your accommodation or simply take a wander through the streets in El Nido town and check out a few of the places offering boat tours… they are pretty much all the same price.
A tricycle picked us up at 8am on the dot and took us into El Nido town centre to get the boat. We arrived at about 8.10 and had about a 45 minute wait for the others on the tour to arrive so we decided to hunt out some decent coffee and something to eat. We found a place called the El Nido Boutique and ArtCafe who served us up some great coffee and some fantastic banana cake… perfect start to the day! The Cafe also has some nice stuff in it’s boutique… a little bit pricey though.
The boat took a maximum of 24 people but there were only 8 of us, the other 6 were Philippine vacationers. The captain was pretty cool and was very knowledgeable about the area and his attempts to be funny in broken English… were very funny.
Before lunch we visited a couple of islands and did a bit of snorkelling. The water was so, so clear…. we did see some coral which was mostly dead and quite a lot of fish. All in all we probably did about 45 minutes snorkelling.
