We’ll Take Tour C, With A Side Of “Oh Shit” – Big Lagoon – Palawan, Philippines

There are four boat tours to choose from in El Nido, with no real direction other than a few pictures and circles around the islands that each tour goes to. Our day out on the kayaks took us to a few of the closer islands, so we opted for a boat tour that went out the furthest – Tour C.

We hired a boat for the day with Abs and Talia, and another couple that they met on their travels that happened to be in El Nido. The previous day, we had thrown around the idea of doing cliff diving, having done some reading about it online. Kevin and Abs were all about it, but it required an expensive tour to do so. On the ride out to the first island, Christine was talking with the boat crew and asked them if we could add this to our tour. Lucky for us…we were just a few minutes from one of the popular jump spots!

We maneuvered the boat into Big Lagoon, a cove where a big rock that was about 25 feet high was waiting to be jumped off of. The guys promptly jumped in the water, swam over to the rock, and climbed to the top. Not typically one to hesitate when jumping off of things, Kevin froze for a good five minutes. Looking down from the jump, there was shallow coral on one side, and rocks jutting out below on the other side. The footing at the top was dodgy. He eventually jumped, screaming the whole way down.

All of the other tour boats started to show up, so we continued on with our day. We went to several hidden lagoons and beaches where we snorkeled and swam. Since Palawan just isn’t that crowded with tourists, every spot was fairly low key, except for the big group of Chinese tourists that seemed to follow us around all day. Not that there’s anything wrong with them…but it’s kind of entertaining to see a bunch of people who can’t swim flailing around in the water with their selfie sticks.