Palawan & El Nido

El Nido is a small town under a wall of limestone at the top of Palawan, and in front of it, in Bacuit Bay, forty-five islands of the same limestone stand up out of turquoise water like the teeth of something asleep — knife-edge karst two hundred and fifty million years old, hollow with lagoons you enter by kayak through gaps in the rock, ringed with beaches you reach by wading, and, in one case, with a chapel. The town's boats, the bangkas with their bamboo outriggers, run the islands on four routes lettered A to D; north of town, Nacpan is four kilometres of sand with nobody on it; and Palawan itself, long and thin and green, runs south for four hundred kilometres to Puerto Princesa and its underground river.

The traveller books Tour A on the first clear morning — the Big Lagoon by kayak, the Small Lagoon through the hole in the rock, the Secret Lagoon, Shimizu for the fish and the lunch on the sand — and Tour C on the second, for the Secret Beach of Matinloc and the Hidden Beach; hires a bangka privately if the budget allows, and leaves at seven, before the fleet; swims at Nacpan; watches the sunset from Las Cabañas with the islands going violet; and, with more days, takes the ferry to Coron for the wrecks, or the bus south to Puerto Princesa for the river under the mountain.

The Guide's honesty: El Nido has grown faster than its pipes and roads, and the town is crowded and the bay is busy — the lagoons take numbers now and the environmental fee is real and worth paying —; the tours are a convoy from ten to two: go early, go private, or go in February; the sea can be closed by the coast guard for a day at a time in the wet season, and the flights and ferries obey the same weather; the karst is sharp and the coral is fragile — reef shoes for the first, no touching for the second; and Palawan is the country's last frontier and knows it — the sensible traveller leaves it as they found it, which is the best thing about it.