The shuttle arrived, and we took the 30-40 minute ride to the wharf for our 11:00 departure. It would take one hour by Bangka boat to get to the island resort. We had to wear our life jackets the whole way, but the ride was pretty smooth despite the rainy weather. When we arrived on the island, we were treated to staff playing drums and a welcome drink! Awesome!
Our Bangka to the island: Calypso 10
Our accommodations. Each building is a quad, and they all face the sea. Our room is the bottom left.
.jpeg)
View from our patio!! :)
Our patio.
We followed the path to the bar area where we listened to Marvin go through all of the information as part of our orientation. There are bicycles provided by the resort, and all you have to do is grab one and go! You can bike all over the island! Pretty cool feature. There are no motorized vehicles anywhere on the island. The restaurant is open all day, coffee and tea are free all day, breakfast buffet is included in our stay, snorkeling, island hop tour, swimming, beautiful pool...all included with our stay, so we decided to get right to our room, drop off our stuff, grab some lunch, and go snorkeling!! I snorkeled once several years ago on the bay side of South Padre Island where everything is brown, and Eric had never snorkeled before, so to believe we were going to be snorkeling in the South China Sea (kind of) was beyond amazing. We had to pinch ourselves!
Lunch. I think we have both become addicted to mangoes!
Waiting for the snorkel boat
Snorkel Gear
Heehee! :)
Hannah, Andrew, Emily, and Tricia: I hope you guys are up for snorkeling because your dad is hooked, and he is looking for places to go when you are here!!!
Dive and snorkel platform.
Our snorkel platform!
On the snorkel boat! (Have you ever noticed that when you say 'snorkel' a bunch of times, it doesn't sound like a real word anymore? I only noticed that because of how many times I have typed the word 'snorkel' in this blog post!!)
On our way to the platform.
After snorkeling.
We had so much fun snorkeling!! We went during low tide, and we both think high tide would be better because we wouldn't be quite so close to some of the coral...and it's sharp!! But it was an amazing experience! We would both love to learn more about great spots to go. Eric thinks he would like diving, but I'm no so sure I would. We may give it a try sometime to evaluate. :) The brilliant colors of the fish were unbelievable! Yellows, bright electric blues, greens, brown fish with orange and pink stripes, some kind of eel hiding in the coral that was a color of blue I have never seen before...almost like the color of blue sky on a perfectly sunny day but lit from within...almost iridescent. Thoroughly amazing! We can't wait to go again! We spent a little over an hour in the water at the dive spot and then took the five-minute boat ride back to the island. After turning in our gear, we decided to give the pool a whirl. We were the only ones there. We floated for quite a while, checked out the scenery - the pool has an infinity edge that makes it look like it flows right into the sea, and we ordered a couple of drinks. Poolside.
Great pool!
Kind of a lazy river design; nice to just float around.
With an infinity edge. Love that!
After the pool and a little relaxing on the patio, we strolled around the island for a quite a while. There is a spa that is ocean front as well, but we opted not to have any services. It was nice to just sit on that side of the island and relax while watching the tide roll in. We headed to dinner after that. A very nice buffet with lots of seafood! Baked clams, prawns, and fish, as well as squash soup, lots of fruits, chicken teriyaki, fried rice, and lots of other things. While we ate dinner, we watched a show of drums and dancing which was pretty cool (reminded us of Dirty Dancing a little....the 'native' dancer was also the dive instructor...very Patrick Swayze).
The next morning we had a wonderful breakfast buffet with everything we could possibly want, and then we decided to go on the island 'hop' to another small island for swimming. Because our flight was not until 8:00 that night, and we were taking the last ferry off the island at 4:15, the staff told us we could just keep our room and check out at 3:30 instead of the usual 11:00AM check out time. What a relief! This was so nice! They didn't have to do that for us, but it allowed us to keep everything secure in our room and come back from the island 'hop' and shower and change before leaving the island. The service on this island was wonderful! Every single person was so friendly and helpful, always smiling, always positive - from the front desk people to the servers in the restaurant who never missed an opportunity to pull out or push in our chairs to the server poolside who made us a grasshopper, a bird, and a fish out of coconut leaves! We were in the pool when he gave them to us, so he was not expecting a tip; in fact, no one expected tips. Very odd departure from the mentality of hotel staff back home. And I would be remiss if I did not point out that this is not a 5-star resort that would break the bank. It is just a wonderful, service-oriented vacation spot where they do the little things right.
The island 'hop' was a lot of fun. It really looked like something out of the movie Castaway. The water could not have been any more blue...or green depending on the depth! We waded through the water, took lots of pictures, lay in a hammock, looked for shells, made some friends, and just relaxed for the two hours we were there. It truly felt like a paradise. Then we headed back to the Bangka and to the big island to get packed up.
Island "hop"
Back on the big island, it looked like it might storm. Clouds started to roll in, but it made the water even more beautiful. We took a few more pictures before heading to our boat for the ride back to Puerto Princesa and the airport.
Not sure what kind of bird this is, but it was fighting with another one for awhile. We didn't get the camera out in time to catch both of them.
Our view on the way back to PPC.
Leaving our 'Castaway' island....<sniff>
Our Bangka back to reality.
Looks like it may storm! It never did, but the skies looked ominous for a while. This is a picture from our patio.
So. Much. Fun.
A bridge leads out to a small hut in the water where we can sit and watch the water.
One of our new friends. :)
This was a great weekend! It felt like a week, but we were really only gone for two and a half days. We hope to get back to Dos Palmas sometime. It's a winner! In fact we enjoyed every bit of Palawan! The only thing that could make it better is if we could bring our friends and family with us next time!!!
Until Next Time,
Eric and Kim <3
