The second van ride was much like the first. There were 13 passengers sitting in 11 spaces. In all her wisdom, Nadine decided to snag the bench next to the driver so although we were still cramped, we were without neighbors. Ben stuck an anti-sea sickness patch behind his ear for safe measures, and alas, neither us became ill, in spite of the loose and reckless driving.
It goes without saying, but as soon as we arrived at the El Nido, bus terminal, there was a gaggle of Filipino tricycle drivings waiting to attack us with their grossly overvalued rides. We walked 10 minutes instead of paying $2. Why not? It’s $1 for five minutes and we are a single income household.
It took us four days, but we finally made it to El Nido. We have been scouring the globe looking for the perfect beach to rest and relax for a week. It has been our dream. For nearly four months we have searched for our own slice of paradise, to escape from the stresses of travels. Multiple sources had given us raving reviews of El Nido, Nadine's brother and sister had also been to El Nido 3 years ago and they too said it was the best place they went.
When we arrived, none of the fantastic things we had heard were true. Maybe in another life time, or a few years ago, but now the place was oversaturated with unnecessarily overpriced restaurants and hotels. The town looked like an old western. The cottage that we booked was genuinely nice, if not homey. The Wilnag's Guest House, has a nearly identical design to the bamboo house of Port Barton. We went to the front desk to reserve the room for a few more nights and ask if we could get a better price than the one advertised on Booking.com. No problem. We will block the room for you and see what we can do about the price. Let’s chat later.
Our first impressions of El Nido were subpar, but the plan all along was to go on island hopping tours anyway. The town itself wasn’t as important to us. We walked around for a couple hours, scoped our the gym, strolled on the beach, and found the Beit Chabad (they’re all over the world!).
When we returned to the hotel inquire about our future booking, we were told the new price they could offer us was somehow 200 higher than the online price. We said thank you, we will still take the room but book on the website instead.
At this point the manager told us that there were no rooms available online because she reserved it for us and blocked others from reserving it. We responded by saying we know this already, now please allow us to book it from Booking.com. Her new response was that her sister, who apparently manages online booking, was currently overseas without internet access. This makes no sense, because if she didn’t have the capability to open the booking, she wouldn’t have had the option to close it either. Magically the manager told us that there are no more rooms available period....unless we pay 200 more pesos. Meanwhile the original girl who had originally promised to reserve the room had morphed into a mute, focusing solely on her Facebook instead of the customers It was quite the elaborate, sleazy scam to scrape $4 from us, but we pushed and pushed until she got really annoyed with us, and finally let us keep the room another night at the original online price, but basically kicked us out after that. Whatever. We also convinced her to give us an additional 400 pesos off the island tours the following day.
Despite the shenanigans with the manager and employee, the room worked out well for us. No roosters or horny cats to keep us up at night. The only quirk about the room was to enter the bathroom, we had to step over one foot downward into the little toilet room. In the AM, we were summoned by our Facebook-loving staff member to leave for the tour. We wolfed down our Filipino Breakfast and coffee and went on our merry way to the beach. We had had luck with our previous tours and couldn’t be more excited. At the beach we found multiple hundreds of tourists on the sand waiting for hundreds of boats to leave. It was a madhouse. For 30+ we stood there dazed and confused, watching the busy bee seafaring workers run in all directions doing God knows what. It was the textbook definition of ‘organized chaos.’ At some point a tiny man called us over to him and guided us to the shore, but there was no boat waiting for us.
We were told to SWIM to our boat. Not walk, or wade, but swim. We knew not to bring electronics though, so we went all with it without any issue. Some of the others on our tour had phones and cameras with them so they struggled.
The island hopping tour options are divided up into A, B, C, and D, with each tour having scheduled stops in different places. Every island is basically the same though, with only minor differences. Apparently only Tour A was available that day, so we had five stops on the itinerary. In the end, none of the tours mean anything. Only two of our stops were from the supposed A tour, two stops from C, and one from D. The only real tour is the “I will take you wherever I want to go tour.” Everything about the system is stupid. BUT, most importantly, the tour was awesome. The stops were beautiful, snorkeling was great (more clownfish), and the food was really good!
We believe a lot in signs and have subscribed to the theory that there are specific moments when life guides you in one direction or another. We were considering spending another day or two in El Nido, if nothing else than for the culinary scene and the atmosphere of the town. Outdated sure, but there were tons of people, street side gambling, and excitement in the air. We asked the manager one last time if we could book for longer with the original price, but she declined. It turned out to be the best thing that had happened to us in a while, we just didn’t know it yet. Our beachfront paradise was just around the corner.
コメント