(em Portugês no fim)
El Nido is a small village, altough quite bigger and with a lot more people than Coron, with a big bay in front. This bay, despite beautiful, works much like a port with small boats coming and going all day and the beach isn’t ideal: dark sand and questionable water. The village was very lively and full of people and places to eat and even some ‘designer’ clothes shops. 

El Nido is a really cool place, nice people and everyone talks with everyone. We met some really nice people there that we hope to see again later in our trip. Many different stories, lives so different than ours. It's actually more fun to stay in backpackers places, it's more "familiar". We loved the place we stayed once we left the house of horrors (here). Rosanna's pension is modest but very clean, and the people soooo nice. You know our kids eat a lot and they always prepared double breakfast for them. Truth is they had full access to the kitchen and could eat whatever they want at no extra cost (and the place was really cheap). 

The daily activities are, mainly, organised as tours, island hopping by boat or you could go to nearby beaches by tricycle. We did a mix of both going to Las Cabanas beach a few days and island hopping a couple of times.

Las Cabanas Beach, a 5 minute tricycle ride from the village and very easy to get to with the kids, has some big trees providing some shade and a couple of simple bars with water and basic food, the ideal setup for some swimming practice for Francisco who is now nearly swimming thanks in part to his will to snorkel (big smile on my face of diver Dad). It would have been even more relaxing if it weren’t for the 1 meter local jellyfishes that kept us alert all the time. 

(Português no fim)

We are writing this post from a resort, by the pool in front of the beach and we so deserve it. We are finally going to have some nights of good sleep! Going back a few days… We arrived at El Nido after 8 hours of sailing on a wooden boat with plastic chairs (not enough for everyone) using our life jackets and sweating a lot. It was quite an experience, but that's not the story we want to tell today. 

We want to talk about our place in El Nido. We rented through Airbnb a place that looked nice, had nice reviews but specially had a charitable part to it. The cottages were part of a ONG that was helping a very poor community by  running this bed and breakfast, building a school, etc, but that is not entirely true, or at least it didn't looked like it. The place looked abandoned and the school they were claiming to build too. As soon as we arrived we started to be attacked by mosquitoes and ran to our little cottage in front of the sea with amazing views and locked ourselves in. Bye bye views! The mosquito nets on the window were useless since the floor was not sealed and every bug had access to the room. OK, so the plan from now on was to never be there at the mosquito hour and never turn on the lights (the electricity was more times down than up anyway), we showered and did everything with a flashlight. Maybe that was for the best, not looking what we had around us. Did I say shower? Well it was like 3 drops per minute so we had to use buckets to wash ourselves. I believe most prisons have bathrooms better that this one. The sink had no tap, so no water there. The drain of the shower didn't work and to flush, lets say we had to use a lot of full buckets of water. There was a fan, but since there were a lot of power cuts we couldn’t use it so basically it was a sauna all the time. But the worse was none of that, I could live with all te above… But 2 big cockroaches, a huge spider and little bugs next to Teresinha’s pillow was the end of it (I only saw one cockroach, Pedro saw all the rest days before and hid it from me, otherwise we would have left earlier). Teresinha was bitten badly on the head and I was keeping the big cockroach away from me all night (thank God I only realised in the morning what was annoying me all night). Are you disgusted already? Do you want to know who our neighbours were, a cemetery… yep! Thats right! It was specially good when we were coming from the village at night and we had to pass the cemetery in the dark with people lighting candles and singing. There were dead rats among the leafs on the floor near the entrance to the cottages and on the way to the village. I want to be more adventurer and not be a 'city girl', be less picky and experience new ways of living but this was waaaaay to much for me, I don’t even know how I handled it for 4 nights!

We will spare you from the big disgusting bugs... 

The kids enjoyed thou... there were trees to climb, kids to play with, breakfast was very good and our hosts very nice!

 *******

Estamos a escrever este post num resort, ao pé da piscina em frente à praia, e merecemos! Finalmente vamos poder dormir decentemente! Voltando atrás alguns dias... Chegamos a El Nido depois de 8 horas a navegar num barco de madeira, com cadeiras de plástico, não havia suficientes para toda a gente e com os coletes salva vidas enfiados, nuca suamos tanto. Foi uma experiência e tanto, mas não é sobre isso que queremos falar hoje.

A historia hoje é sobre o sitio onde ficamos, el El Nido. Alugamos através do Airbnb um sitio que parecia simpatico, tinha boas opiniões, mas principalmente porque estava ligado a uma associação de caridade. As cabanas faziam parte de uma ONG que ajuda uma comunidade pobre local gerindo esta "pensão", a construir uma escola, etc, mas não parece ser inteiramente verdade, ou pelo menos não pareceu. O sitio parecia entregue ao abandono e a escola que diziam estar a construir também estava abandonada. Assim que chegamos fomos atacados pelos mosquitos e corremos para a nossa pequena cabana em frente ao mar com umas vistas incríveis e fechamo-nos la dentro. Adeus vistas! As redes mosquiteiras na janela eram inúteis pois havia frechas enormes entre as tábuas do chão e qualquer insecto tinha acesso ao quarto. Ok, o plano a partir de agora era nunca lá estar nas horas dos mosquitos e não abrir as luzes (também na havia electricidade a maior parte do tempo por isso era indiferente). Tomávamos banho e fazíamos tudo com uma lanterna. Talvez fosse o melhor, não olhar o que tinhamos à volta. Disse duche? caiam 3 gotas por minuto por isso tinhamos que usar baldes para nos lavarmos. Acredito que qualquer casa de banho de qualquer prisão seja melhor que esta. Torneira do lavatório era inexistente, logo não havia água ai. O duche não escoava e o autoclismo não funcionava, tinhamos que usar baldes de água. Havia uma ventoinha, mas como a electricidade estava em baixo não servia para nada, basicamente a palhota era uma sauna. Mas nada do que disse ate agora foi o pior, podemos viver com tudo isto... 2 baratas enormes, uma aranha mesmo grande e peluda e bicharada variada mesmo ao lado da almofada da Teresinha foi o fim (Eu só vi uma barata, o Pedro  viu o resto uns dias antes e não me disse nada, senão tinhamos saído dali a correr mais cedo). A Teresinha foi bastante mordida na cabeça e eu estive a afastar a barata de cima de mim a noite toda (graças a Deus que só de manha percebi o que era que me estava a chatear durante a noite). Já estão enojados o suficiente? Querem saber quem eram os nossos vizinhos do lado? Um cemitério... isso mesmo! Era especialmente agradável quando la passávamos à noite, tudo às escuras excepto umas velas e umas pessoas a cantar ao pé de uma campa qualquer. Havia ratos mortos no meio das folhas no chão ao péº da entrada para a palhota e no caminho para a vila. Quero ser mais aventureira e não ser uma menina da cidade, ser menos "comichosa" e experimentar novas maneiras de viver, mas isto foi demais. Nem sei como aguentei 4 noites!! Vamos poupar-vos aos bichos grandes nojentos...

Os miúdos no entanto adoraram... havia árvores para trepar e crianças para brincar, o pequeno almoço era óptimo e os anfitriões muito simpáticos!

A typical day in Coron 

Wake up, put swimming suits on and have breakfast. Get in a tricycle and go to the market to get the food to be cooked for lunch: some fish, rice, mangos and vegetables. Head to the boat. After a short ride (around 30 minutes) we reach our destination (each day a different beach). Quite close to some days in paradise! The kids were really happy, Francisco spent an average of 6 hours a day in the water, only coming out for lunch. Lunch was cooked in a small barbecue on the boat. At the end of the day we would return home tired but happy. Play a little, quick shower, dinner and bed.  We stayed at Casa Coron where everybody was very nice and helpfull. A good option to stay with kids. The place was excellent for budget accommodation. We liked it but we were happy to leave, having to take a boat everyday to go to the beach is not practical and it can get expensive to spend there more than a few days.

It was very hard to choose only a few pictures (we have quite a few.) and the place was really amazing, not one single picture is edited…

So this ends week 1 of our trip. Still getting used to hot and humid weather and loving Filipino friendliness.

Um dia tipico em Coron

Acordar, por os fatos de banho e tomar o pequeno almoço. Saltar para um triciclo e ir ao mercado comprar a comida para o almoço: peixe, arroz, mangas e verduras. Ir para o barco. 30 minutos depois chegamos ao destino (cada dia uma praia diferente). Bem parecido com uns dias no paraíso! Os miúdos estavam mesmo contentes, o Francisco passa em media 6 horas por dia dentro de agua, apenas saia para almoçar. O almoço era cozinhado numa grelha pequena no barco. Ao fim do dia voltavamos para casa cansados mas felizes. Brincávamos um bocadinho, duche rápido, jantar e cama. Ficámos em Casa Coron, toda a gente era uma simpatia. Uma excelente opção para miúdos. O sitio era bem bom para um "low cost". Adoramos mas ficamos contentes de vir embora, ter que apanhar um barco todos os dias para a praia não é muito pratico e ao fim de uns dias começa a sair caro.

Foi mesmo difícil escolher apenas algumas fotografia (temos imensas) e os sítios eram realmente incríveis, nenhuma fotografia foi editada...

E assim chegamos ao fim da primeira semana da nossa viagem. Ainda a habituarmos à humidade e ao calor e a adorar os Filipinos.

Michelle see you back in Madrid, we will surely miss you!
Once we were back to Manila we took the kids to a great park...
A vida às vezes é engraçada... Desde que o Francisco nasceu que a Michelle trabalha lá em casa. Ela vem de uma província ao pé de Manila, e a primeira coisa que planeamos foi vir às Filipinas com ela. Ontem muito cedo pusemo-nos a caminho de casa dela, à espera de 4 horas de caminho e surpreendentemente apenas demorámos 1h30, chegámos demasiado cedo. A Michelle é como família para nós e para os miúdos e uma segunda mãe, foi por isso uma alegria conhecer toda a família dela. Sentimos-nos imediatamente em casa e prepararam nos um banquete (até trouxemos o que sobrou para o jantar).
Michelle vemos-nos em Madrid, vamos de certeza ter muitas saudades!