Yesterday we drove from Baguio back to Manila. The drive was gorgeous. But, pretty much, there is no part of the Philippines that isn’t gorgeous. There were lovely rivers and mountains everywhere.
And, it’s official, I have now driven in Manila. Which according to some sources, has the worst traffic in the world. #bucketlist 
Our hotel was near the airport, and it wasn’t in the best part of town: lots of strip clubs, etc. Charming. But room itself was nice, and the view was good too, though it looks pretty smoggy in the picture below… For dinner, we ate McDo. Again. Surprise!! I’m getting pretty sick of McDonald’s. 
Breakfast at the hotel was actually quite delightful. I tried Tocino, it’s a yummy sweetish, sticky pork served with rice and eggs. It was seriously good. I should learn how to make it. Anyway. After breakfast, we headed over to the airport. We were definitely early. Once we were through security and everything, we still had about an hour and a half to kill before our flight took off. 
Fortunately, they had a sweet lounge for AirSwift passengers. There were lots of snacks and a kid movie was even playing on the TV. This is my ‘We are a circus but I’m going to pretend I don’t notice everyone noticing’ face.
The plane itself was awesome. It was teeny. And it had propellors!! I’ve never been on a propellor-driven airplane before. 
And we even had to walk out to it and walk up some stairs to board. I felt like one of the cool kids. And so I made Jonathan take a picture of me. #goobs
Logan promptly fell asleep once we were all settled on board. The flight itself was quick and uneventful. The kids loved it. In no time, we arrived in El Nido, on the island of Palawan.
The El Nido airport is the most amazing airport I have ever seen. It was an open air pavilion in the middle of the jungle. This is the baggage claim area:
Once we’d assembled all our stuff, we were able to hire a trike to take us to our hotel, it was a 20-minute ride. And, of course, the kids loved that. (Sidenote: I like those little critters.)
We stayed at a little place called Sofia’s. The owners live on the bottom floor and they run the upstairs area as a hotel. It was lovely. And the location is unbeatable. The kids wanted to go check out the beach immediately. Jonathan hauled our stuff up to our room, and snapped this picture of us from our balcony:
The little beach right in front of Sofia’s tends to have lots of wood and rocks wash up on it, and so the owners recommended taking a trike up the road to Las Cabanas beach, which stays a little more pristine. It was pretty deserted, because we came during their off season (monsoon season is starting up). And it was perfection, we stayed for several hours.
Clara spent a large amount of time collecting seashells. I happened to capture the moment that she was running to tell me that there were seashells on this beach. She was so excited.
It was funny how the people were distributed on the beach: the tourists were all hanging out around the two beach bars, in full sun. And the few locals were all sitting under the one tree that provided any shade. We joined the locals. Cause we’re kinda locals too. 🙂 Ok, fine, and because we didn’t want to turn into lobsters. We actually had a great time hanging out with them. We chatted and built sand castles together. And we all avoided skin cancer together. It was grand. 
The worst sunburn I have ever seen, I saw right here on this beach. The poor girl had evidently forgotten to put sunscreen on her calves. They were tomato red. It makes me cringe just thinking about it. We were vigilant about applying and reapplying sunscreen. Our lily-white skin would’ve crisped up in no time otherwise
The water was the most perfect temperature imaginable. I hate swimming in cold water, cause I’m a wimp. But I had zero qualms about swimming here. It was heavenly.
And it was lovely that Jonathan didn’t have to worry about keeping clients or bosses happy or anything like that. Hooray for unemployment!! Now he just needs to find a new job….. 🙂 It won’t take long. He’s got skills. In-demand skills.
After a while, we figured that it might be good to find some sustenance. So we headed back to the hotel, cleaned up a bit and headed back out to find something to eat
We walked up the road and looked around until we found a place called “Bella Vita”. The ambiance was awesome. The seating area was outside, and the ground was covered in sand. And there were tiki torches. It was just festive. 
So, the kids played in the sand while we waited for our food. The food. Oh, the food. It was incredible, the pizza, especially, was to die for. It was undoubtedly given a boost by virtue of the fact that we were starving and also that we are coming off a steady diet of McDonald’s. After dinner, we walked along the beach, back to the hotel. We booked a tour for tomorrow and called it a day. A glorious day.
