We decided to stick to our original plan and head north to the Busuanga region of the island. The hotel helped us rent a 125cc scooter for three days and we left our main bags at the hotel, taking just a toothbrush, bathers and a clean T-shirt in our day bags for the two nights.
We weaved our way through the chaotic traffic of Coron Town (known as Coron Town Proper as opposed to another Coron Town just a few kms away - this sounds like a Northern way of describing it) but after just a few kilometres, we found ourselves on fairly quiet roads that were in good condition. Although feeling much better than I had been, I'd describe myself as feeling jet lagged with a light and fuzzy head so while I clung onto the back of the scooter I didn't move my head around too much.
Whenever we hire scooters on our travels we like to think of ourselves as CHiPS - only people our age will remember the American series about two Californian Highway Patrol cops in the late 70's. So here we were keeping the roads of Coron safe - apart from when the road users of Coron were driving straight at us. Thankfully Poncerella Dyson kept his cool and kept us safe.
We had a short stop at some waterfalls but half way along the track I waited in the shade while Colin went to have a look - apparently I'd not missed anything.
We had a further stop at a lovely Restobar on the waterfront where we had their dish of the day, Singigang shrimp - a tomatoey broth with vegetables and fresh prawns.
We reached a junction where we could head straight to the guesthouse or do a longer loop round the top end of the island. As we weren't sure that loop would be paved we opted to go the direct route which turned out to be unpaved too. We had about half an hour on an undulating, rutted, stoney and sandy road that made for some challenging riding by Colin. By the time we reached Miley Lodgings we were caked in red dust - maybe we should have brought more change of clothes after all .
We had a warm welcome from Miley. We thought we'd died and gone to heaven - it was a little slice of paradise with million dollar views and an infinity swimming pool. We'd originally booked the most basic room, but Miley let us upgrade to an air conditioned sea view room. We had a much needed dip in the pool and sat with a cold beer watching a stunning sunset.
We planned to take it easy for the day, but discovered this is the place to see dugongs - a short boat trip across the bay takes you to where they hang out. Unfortunately we'd not brought our prescription masks with us, so snorkelling with them may have been a waste of time if we couldn't see them properly.
So all we could do was dip in the pool, read our books and stare at the hypnotic view. Colin even managed a yoga session on the balcony outside our room. As always, Colin was planning what he'd do with this place if it was his. Miley is originally from the Philippines but had lived in Switzerland for 40 years. She'd discovered this spot about five years ago, and like us, was seduced by the location and found herself buying the land. She'd had a challenge managing getting the accommodation built while still working in Switzerland, and discovered most of the funds being sent to her builders were used to build a big new home for the builder. Colin wasn't impressed with the building work currently going on and he walked round with Miley relaying his suggestions including a covered yoga studio and a sunset bar. She was very appreciative - I think she was ready to offer him a consultancy role. Colin was already planning a home for us on the adjoining plot.
There was also a German family staying. The parents (both architects) were between jobs and had taken their 3 children away for 3 months travelling around Asia over winter in Europe. What an amazing experience for them all.
Miley had shown us some freshly caught fish (Lapu lapu) at breakfast and said she'd cook them for us for dinner sweet and sour style. It was absolutely delicious.
It as a big wrench to leave the following morning - Miley said we must come back which we hope we will do one day.
We continued along the gravel road which was even more undulating for about 15km. We'd hoped to find some nice beaches to deviate off to on the trip back down the other side of the island to Coron but even with Google maps we found it hard to get through and often ended up in dead ends. We did find an idyllic beach just 6km in called Alito beach but they wanted to charge us a fee - in the end we persuaded the lady to let us have 5 minutes free to take a photo.
There is very little tourist infrastructure outside of Coron, but just as we were giving up finding a nice place to stop for lunch we saw a sign for a Riverside Restaurant. It was tucked up a track but was a nice tranquil place in lush vegetation overlooking a river. Fed and watered we ended up heading straight back into Coron and checked back into our hotel. We discovered there was a great sunset view from the roof of our hotel and we watched in amusement a guy on traffic duty with traffic aiming at him from all directions paying no attention to his whistle.
One other lasting memory of Coron is the bin trucks. The first morning we were woken at 6pm by strange piped music - we later discovered it is a song the bin men play calling people to being out their rubbish.
Our final day in Coron was spent doing an island boat tour (called the Super Ultimate Tour (which sounds more like a condom to me). We were taken to the waterfront where there were hundreds of tourists milling around and general chaos and disorganisation. We were asked to fill in our details twice - name, age and nationality. The ages on our boat went 19, 20, 22, 62, 57 ....hmmm. We were saved by a 70 year old American guy showing up. After a lot of hanging around and being fleeced to hire a kayak for the trip we were led to the boat. We weren't too crammed in, but then we were told they were waiting for another group. Finally they arrived and at last we were off. Before we'd got out of the harbour they discovered they'd left someone behind who had gone to the bathroom. She was finally brought out to the join the boat.
The tour consisted of 7 stops - as hundreds of boats were all charging in the same direction it wasn't hard to guess where we were heading.
The island scenery certainly is very beautiful though with dramatic karst limestone rock features with vivid blue sea lapping up.
The first stops were to Kayangan lake and Barracuda lake - both tucked away behind the bays and consisting of water that was a mix of fresh and saline. We bobbed in the water of each with mobs of other tourists.
We were then given a decent lunch of fresh grilled fish, meats, noodles and of course rice, before going to Twin Lagoons where we used the kayaks to paddle around the bays. The water was crystal clear.
As we set off from here the boat was struggling and the crew were working hard to pump water out with increasing amounts of smoke coming out of the engine. We still had 3 more sites to visit and were already running quite late - getting 26 people off and on at each stop takes time, especially when the instructions were hard to understand. As we limped along and kept stopping while they tried to start the engine we wondered if they should just head us back to town, but they just turned the music up and laughed it off . We were not impressed with the music blasted out of a tinny old speaker - after the third play of Macarena and Celine Dion's Titanic song our patience was running a bit thin. We were envying the American guy who'd left his hearing aids back at his hotel.
We chugged to the next site - another Japanese ship wreck with the highest point just 5 metres - we couldn't see much snorkelling however. Then a final snorkel at a site called Coral Gardens ( the coral was sadly in poor condition) then the final stop at a beach. The sun was going down and by this time I was too cold to face going back in the water.
It was dark when we got back to Coron. The hotel had put a notice up saying there would be no electricity or water this evening due to works in the area, so we were delighted to find it had been postponed until the following day. We collected our ferry tickets finding the one we'd booked wasn't running but we were on a slightly earlier one, so it was an early night after dinner.
Our planned 3 nights in Coron had stretched to 10 nights so we're a bit behind schedule now and looking forward to moving onto the main island in Palawan.
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