Cadlao Island and El Nido Town Beach, Palawan

13 Jul 2012 1 Comment

in Palawan Tags: , , , , , ,

El Nido, Palawan

A visit to the town would be incomplete if not without a photo of the town’s beach and Cadlao Island in front of it.

We’d take that alley in between Lally & Abet Cottages and the El Nido Hotel, take a turn to the right and just follow that path.

El Nido, Palawan
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Chronicles: Island Hopping in El Nido, Palawan (Part II)

04 Apr 2012 No Comments

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On March 4-5, 2005 , H came back to visit El Nido for the last time. We went aboard Kool Fox with Eric and Derick on the wheel to go around Bacuit Bay, visit some places we have not been to last time and revisit our favorite ones. We visited the lagoons and then landed on Entalula Island.

     

Entalula Island

Entalula Island seems to have the finest white sand in the Philippines, even finer than the sand on the beach of Boracay. This is a private island and only guests of El Nido Resorts are allowed. This is perfect for those private lunches that the resorts offer to their guests free of charge. The resort staff bring the tables, chairs, umbrellas and everything else. It is JUST beautiful!

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Chronicles: The House on the Hill, El Nido, Palawan

31 Mar 2012 5 Comments

in Palawan, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , ,

My very first camera was a gift from my mother on my 14th birthday. It was a cheap almost disposable camera that I loved to death and brought with me everywhere. It took really ugly photos, in hindsight, but photos that bring back a lot of good memories nevertheless. I’m still proud of the camera and the photos even if half the faces in the photos are now indiscernible.

I remember having a camera in grade school though and that the very first photo that I ever took that I was considerably proud of was a photo of Mt. Mayon and the Cagsawa Ruins. I was on a school field trip and I was twelve.

I tend to forget though that I had my first camera at 14 so when I am asked what my first camera was, I always say it was a Pentax camera that I got when I was 23. It was the very first waterproof camera – a 5.0 megapixel Pentax Optio WP that H (who then went by the alias B) bought for me in 2005. It was perfect for the life I lived back then – a life in El Nido. Though this camera was quickly eclipsed by so many other cameras that came right after, it will always go down in history as the sturdiest camera I ever owned. I handled it as one would handle a gadget in the islands, exposed to sun, sand, salt water, dust and all kinds of things, and never really took care of it; and yet it lasted five years. It recorded its last underwater video while we were snorkeling in Balicasag Island in Bohol in 2010.

The first photos I took in El Nido with my brand spanking new Pentax Optio WP were of the house on the hill.

Armie, who had been living in El Nido for two years, brought us, her new housemates, to the house for the first time. There, we met Rose, a beautiful dark-skinned, slender woman with deep set eyes who lived alone in the house most of the year. Everything about the house bespoke that an artist lived there. I fell in love with the place the moment my hand opened that wooden screened door.
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In Bed

16 Aug 2010 No Comments

in Old Writings, Palawan Tags: , , , ,

marimegmeg beach

Marimegmeg Beach. (This photo was taken on October 29, 2005 in El Nido, Western Visayas, using a Pentax Optio WP)

I can hear the sound of waves coming one after the other; rushing to the shore, even as I lay in bed with my ear against the pillow. It is in my head. This sound of waves. This sound of the sea that I’ve always loved, even as a child. It is only, perhaps the whirr of the blades of the fan. I am cold. It is exactly as I’ve felt this morning lying in a thin sheet of cloth spread on bare sand, with the wind blowing threads against my feet. And it is the same sound of cicadas in chorus.

Written January 7, 2006

Originally posted here.