We arrived into paradise! Stunning limestone islands & cliffs surrounding turquoise coves & bays.

This was our little holiday within our travels & we have definitely been looking forward to it. The different tours around the islands look good so we pick a couple to do. The first one is on Xmas Day.

This was tour to the outer islands. There were about 10 of us in total. We headed out and the water was pretty choppy. I was glad when we got to the 1st stop. We saw a lovely lagoon & I tried snorkelling for the 1st time in the shallow lagoon. We continued round to the beach where our lunch stop was. It was beautiful & a massive grilled snapper, chicken, tuna was served. Wasn't the typical Xmas lunch we're used to but it was awesome. The current got a little full on later as we headed back. The waves & swell were bigger than our boat!! I've been on many boats but none on seas with waves like this! Especially not a bamboo boat! We'd heard a typhoon was coming but would probably reach us Boxing Day. On the South China Sea the sea was definitely brewing for a storm. We were glad when we got back to the inner sea around the islands as it was much calmer. It was a great day. We came back to a lovely surprise that Gwen & Mike had organised for us in our room. Snacks, chilled wine & a lovely message. It was such a lovely thought & it made us both smile lots. The wifi reception in El nido was not strong enough for Skype so we had to rely on what's app to send our love to our families on Xmas day! Electricity in the town was only a few hours a day & sporadic at that. There were lots of power cuts. Some places had generators but not all. It was definitely a shift for us as we've been lucky at not going more than 1 night at a time without electricity.

The wind and rain arrived that evening & lasted through Boxing Day. We later heard 5 people died on another island from the typhoon. Lucky we just got the tail end of it I think.

The rest of the time here is a mish mash of relaxing, sunbathing, drinking & eating.

We hired a kayak to paddle to another island. We ended up on this awesome white sand beach, just the two of us! It was fantastic, we then kayaked to the next beach along and there was someone selling drinks so we enjoyed some ice cold drinks & kayaked back. Some parts felt easy and others really hard! Especially when the wind and tide were against us. Thank god for Sy as my paddle power alone would have taken us a week to get back!

We went on Tour A and we chose a private boat. Was great as we could take things at our own pace but harder as the larger boats have ladders but I struggled getting back into this boat when we were in deep water. Unfortunately I had a leaky mask so that didn't help the panic levels for me whilst trying to see stuff! However I managed to see some great fish & corals. No turtles which I am completely Gutted about. Everyone else we met said they'd seen them but I guess it just wasnt to be for me. I'm not a confident swimmer in ocean slamming against rocks so I guess I just didn't push myself enough to be in the places they were. Maybe I'll get lucky in the Gili Islands. I really panicked when I nearly put my foot down on a sea urchin then realised they were everywhere!! They reminded me of black soot sprites from Totoro but with really big spikes! Sometimes they were by themselves but in one lagoon there were clumps of 20-30 of them! We went through some amazing lagoons with crystal clear water that you didn't need to swim to appreciate the marine life. I was too scared to get out as there were urchins & jellyfish everywhere. I wish I was a better swimmer as my confidence would have helped here. With the water being so deep Sy's eyesight without glasses just didn't stretch that far. So we just enjoyed being on the boat & soaking up the moment.

After 10 days staying in El Nido we moved to the much quieter Corong Corong. This hut was right on the beach and we could hear & see the waves. It was a stunning view over turquoise waters and limestone karsts. We had a group of unfortunate neighbours which created a few sleepless nights but it was lovely to have that view! We enjoyed that beach and another at Las Cabañas. The water at the front of our place was bath temperature until knee height but it was still lovely and warm as we swam!

The food in el nido was a bit limited but we enjoyed the fresh fish at El Nido Corner. Sy ordered a whole fish for the 1st time. He tried some on Xmas day and liked it so he ordered and ate a whole red snapper. It was so tasty! Nothing better than fresh fish caught that day! We also tried to get into this Italian for the whole time we were there but it was always fully booked. We finally managed it on the last night & it was well worth it. The food was delicious!!

The transport got more quirky as the tricycles had more body work done, brighter colours, lights & blasting the most god awful music at ear bleeding levels!! It went from Celine Dion to awful dance to Chris De Burgh. The only ones I heard that I liked was Bob Marley, a good dance one & a metal one! They went through the night until the early hours & loved to keep the volume way up there! The kids were loving playing with fire crackers over Xmas & New Years!

We booked our bus journey back & my god I never thought a coach was gonna topple as much as this one. We had broken down a little earlier & the driver clearly wanted to make up time. When we looked at our GPS to see how long we had left to go we could see he was turning into the cliff top corners at 40-50mph. In a 50 seater coach that's not a good thing. Added to that my window had been smashed out & a bit of plastic taped to the outside! We were both glad when we finally got off the cliff road and the city centre was in sight. It's a beautiful drive along the coast that I had enjoyed on the drive up there but I think the way back was spent mainly looking at the chair in front whilst gripping on tight!!