Island Hopping – Albaguen Island – Palawan, Philippines

Today we went on an island hopping boat tour to explore the area off of the coast of Port Barton. Our first stop was at a spot known to be home to many sea turtles. Just on the ride out Kevin (Christine was sitting on the wrong side of the boat!) saw two swimming just under the surface of the water. When we arrived, we geared up with snorkel masks and jumped in to go find a turtle. It took a while, but we eventually spotted a smaller turtle who was only about a year old. He wasn’t interested in being observed though; he quickly swam out into deeper waters!

Unable to locate a big one, we moved on to a few other islands that had beaches for swimming, relaxing, and more snorkeling. There’s coral and fish everywhere off of the coasts of these islands. The picture was taken at a lookout point above Paradise Beach (it seems like every place has a “Paradise Beach”). It’s a fitting name, given the view. After a BBQ lunch on Paradise Beach, we stopped back at the spot where we first stopped to look for turtles. This time around, we got lucky – there was a huge turtle, at least three feet long, casually swimming along, munching on whatever it could find on the ocean floor. This one didn’t mind the company.

We ended up cutting the day a bit short due to sunburn. There must have been some false advertising going on with our sunscreen – which was supposedly 80 SPF and highly water resistant. Although we reapplied twice, the sun still got the better of us. Not wanting to make it worse, we headed back to shore.

Being out on the water was a nice, relaxing way to end our time in Palawan. After 8 days of limited electricity and unlimited bugs, we decided we had reached our limit. We packed up and left Port Barton a day early to head back to Palawan’s largest city, Puerta Princesa. We needed a cool, comfortable night’s sleep in air conditioning, and fast enough internet to get caught up on trip planning. Little did we know, Palawan would have a parting gift for us…a three hour ride in a van packed with 18 people. How is that even possible? Well, it is. Christine counted just to be sure.