El Nido, Palawan

Amazing is about all there is a need to say.  It was not only the incredible scenery of the limestone karst formations but it was all enhanced by having Sierd and Elsbie come all the way from Canada to visit us – what a great time we had!

Sierd and Elsbie at the end – they’re still smiling!

Despite the fact that we exposed our landlubber friends to many of the vagaries of cruising including water restrictions, hot quarters, out of ice in 3 days, salt water baths, jellyfish, coral cuts etc etc they still managed to smile at the end of it all (see picture taken in the hotel on their last morning before saying good-bye, boo hoo).  We managed to get out onboard Sage and visit some of the sites of the China Sea.  We walked amongst strange temples in anchorages where the anchoring depth was 123 feet (!), clambered into caves through the surf and from under the water, wandered up through the jungle with a guide to waterfalls, rode bangkhas into the sunset and almost enrolled Sierd and Elsbie for Survivor Sweden.And you know what? For two people who aren’t water rats; or, like the most famous of rats said in Wind in the Willows “There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” , Sierd and Elsbie passed the test with flying colours.  Our only hope is that when they get home and think back on the vacation they say to themselves ‘Wow, we can hardly wait till they get to ___________ and we’ll visit them again”!

Since they left last week we sailed away from El Nido, stopped in one of our favourite anchorages, Dilapia, passed over the top of

Dilapia

Palawan and have made our way down the east coast to the largest city on Palawan which is Puerto Princesa. Here we were welcomed at a small yacht club in an anchorage surrounded on one side by mangroves and the other by the downtown area. There are about 15 boats in the anchorage, some of which are almost permanent residents and others that are either moving north or south and come from the U.S., Australia and Germany.  We’re still the lonely Canadian out here not having seen another Canadian boat since Hawaii.We’ll stay for a week before continuing south and eventually on to Kudat, Malaysia on the island of Borneo.

Thanks for making the effort to visit us