We woke up around 7 am today to get ready for Island Hopping Tour C.  There are 4 main Island Hopping tours here in El Nido and they are just named A,B,C and D.

The boat picked us up right at our hotel beach, so we had breakfast here. I had an omelet it was very weird. It had what seemed to be canned carrots and potatoes in it with cubes of cheese and a bacon. Weirdest omelet I have ever had haha. It was okay though. Don had Filipino breakfast, it was bacon with rice and eggs.

Our tour left at 9 am and our first stop was Hidden Beach. We snorkeled a bit here but didn’t see much. We swam around the rocks to find the Hidden Beach then we swam through a little cave to go back to the boat. Here’s some pictures of Hidden Beach.

So at first we swam around some rocks to find the beach and on the other side of the beach there was a cave that brought us back to the boat. It was really cool.

I believe our lunch was at Star Beach which is part of the Tapiutan Island. We snorkeled here while the tour guides prepared our lunch. This location was in my opinion the best snorkeling site of the day. You had to swim out pretty far though. It was worth it because there was a shelf where the ocean floor dropped and the side of it was all coral. There were so many fish there. Our lunch consisted of grilled fish, grilled pork chop, rice, yellow melon and bananas. The pork chop was really good. I really enjoyed the yellow melon also. I am not sure if that was its official name. It tasted and looked pretty much like watermelon except it was yellow.

The next place was Secret Beach. There was a cave we swam through and when we got to the other side there was a small beach. People were snorkeling but there wasn’t much to see, just a bunch of rocks. I mostly just waded and relaxed on the beach. It was beautiful though because when you were in the beach you were surrounded by the rocks.

The next stop was Mantiloc Shrine. It was basically an abandoned church. We didn’t learn much about it, but we could walk around inside the church and it was very weird. There were rooms with old beds in them, kind of like a dorm. Some rooms had decorations all over. The place looked fairly new and it looked like whoever left here left in a hurry. We thought this was our last stop on the tour.

Then we made the final stop, Helicopter Island. I cut my toe on a rock here when I jumped out of the boat. It seemed pretty bad but I snorkeled anyway. When we were snorkeling one of the guys on our tour was just stepping on the coral and you could hear it all breaking. This was very sad. It was very disappointing that the tour guides didn’t convey to people how important it is to not touch and especially not to step on the coral. All around us on Tour C there was dead coral.

Here’s what my toe looked like at the end of the day…

Once we got back to Stunning Vistas we got cleaned up and headed into town by tricycle. I don’t think I have talked about the tricycles yet, they are basically motorcycles with a little cab hooked to the side. Usually 2-3 passengers can fit in a tricycle. It is kind of like a cab that travels short distances. We ate at a grille and I decided to take a try at a cheeseburger. Bad idea, it was really really horrible. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t meat. Don had fried pork chop with rice and then we shared a dish called pork menudo. It was really good, it had potatoes and carrots with it. Then we walked around the town a bit and took a tricycle back.