Chapter 02 · November 19 — 23
Forty-five limestone islands in one bay, and a town wedged under a cliff
The place
El Nido sits on the northern tip of Palawan, facing Bacuit Bay: roughly 45 islands and islets of Jurassic-age limestone shoved straight out of turquoise water, some of them 250 metres tall and undercut at the waterline like they're floating. You get around by bangka, the outrigger boats that idle in rows off the town beach at dawn. The town itself is six or seven walkable streets pressed between the beach and Taraw Cliff, all tricycles and grilled fish and no traffic lights. Then you ride ten minutes south to Corong-Corong and Las Cabanas, where the coast turns due west and the whole bay lights up orange around 5:40pm.
The Spanish named it El Nido ('the nest') for the edible swiftlet nests harvested off those cliff faces. The whole bay sits inside the El Nido–Taytay Managed Resource Protected Area, which is why the water is still clear enough to see coral heads from the boat and why every visitor pays an eco-tourism fee. The four standard island-hopping tours (A, B, C, D) cover the greatest hits: Big and Small Lagoon on Miniloc, Secret Beach behind a crack in a cliff wall, Snake Island's shifting sandbar, Pinagbuyutan's monolith and the Matinloc Shrine. El Nido is not only a boat destination, though. Two spectacular land beaches (Nacpan, Duli), a sanctioned cliff walk above town, and a waterfall on the road north round out the options. A lazy day and a dramatic day here end up costing about the same. Go in late November. November is the handover month, with the wet southwest monsoon retreating and the amihan (northeast monsoon) settling in. Expect 24–31°C, sea temperature around 28–29°C, and roughly 8–11 days with rain across the month, usually short heavy afternoon bursts, not all-day grey. Rain volume drops week by week, so mid-to-late November is materially drier than the first week. Crowds and rates are still shoulder season: hotels typically run 20–30% under the mid-December-to-February peak, and the lagoons carry a fraction of the boats. The real risk is a cyclone or a rough-sea day, not drizzle. The Philippine typhoon season officially runs through December, and Palawan is the least storm-exposed of the big islands, but storms still reach it: Typhoon Kalmaegi (local name Tino) made landfall in El Nido on 5 November 2025, with Super Typhoon Fung-wong (Uwan) right behind it. Far more common than an actual typhoon is a windy stretch where the Coast Guard suspends small-boat sailings for a day and every island tour is cancelled. Build one flexible day into a 3–4 night stay, never book island-hopping on your departure morning, and choose refundable hotel rates. Versus Siargao. Siargao is a horizontal island, all coconut forest, reef passes, Pacific swell, motorbikes and surf culture; you feel its landscape more than you photograph it. El Nido is vertical by comparison, with sheer grey karst walls, hidden lagoons you paddle into through a gap barely wider than the kayak, coral gardens in three metres of glass-clear water, and no surf at all. Siargao's peak season runs August–November, when the swell is biggest, while El Nido's dry season runs December–May. In late November the two nearly complement each other, with Siargao still firing while El Nido dries out, and doing both is not the same trip twice.
Worth knowing
Booked · Where we sleep
Two sister hotels a short walk apart, both in the middle of town, so the boat pier, dinner and each other are all on foot.
Booked · Nov 19 — 23 · El Nido town
In the middle of town, with the boat pier, dinner and the shops all on foot.
A Deluxe Family Room in the heart of El Nido town. Our three boat mornings start with a short walk to the pier, and the evenings end with a stroll to dinner. The hotel runs its own vegan restaurant, Ver De, and can arrange the airport transfer.
Hotel site↗19 photos
Booked · Nov 19 — 23 · El Nido town
H Hotel’s sister property, a short walk away on the same grid of streets.
The same hotel group runs S Resort and refreshed it in 2025. It sits in the town grid about seventy metres from the sand and five minutes on foot from the pier where the tour boats leave. The rooftop restaurant looks out over Bacuit Bay and is the best seat in either hotel. Claim it for a sunset before dinner.
Despite the name, this is a town hotel. It has no pool of its own, so ask the front desk about the shared one. Breakfast is included and modest, and street noise carries until late.
14 photos
Three days on the water
El Nido sells four standard island-hopping routes — A, B, C and D. We have A and C locked in, and the third day is our own boat. B and D are here so everyone can see what we are trading away.
The most famous day on the water in the Philippines: four lagoons, two beaches, and a bay full of 250-metre limestone towers.
A wooden bangka (outrigger poles slung either side, engine chugging like a lawnmower) carries you out of Corong-Corong or the town beach into Bacuit Bay, where dozens of limestone islands rise straight out of jade water like drowned cathedrals, and that view is why people fly to El Nido. The Tour A route is fixed and famous: Big Lagoon, Small Lagoon, Secret Lagoon, a grilled lunch on the sand at Shimizu Island, and a last swim at Seven Commandos Beach before the run home into the afternoon light. It is also the single busiest tour in El Nido, and on a November morning roughly sixty boats may be queuing for the Big Lagoon channel. The scenery is world-class and it is still worth doing, but the difference between a magical day and a shuffling queue comes down almost entirely to how early you get on the water.
The day runs to a well-worn rhythm. Pickup is around 08:30, either a tricycle to the pier or a walk down to the beach if you are staying central; boats push off between 09:00 and 09:30 once the barangay office has checked permits and the coolers are loaded. Big Lagoon is nearly always first (it is the one that gets ugly with crowds by 11:00), then Small Lagoon and Secret Lagoon, lunch on Shimizu Island between roughly 12:00 and 13:30, and Seven Commandos as the closer. You are back on the beach between 16:00 and 16:30, salt-crusted and sunburnt in the places you missed. Costs are where people get caught out. A joiner seat on Tour A runs roughly PHP 1,400–1,800 per person in 2025–26; most town agencies quote PHP 1,500, and anything under PHP 1,200 usually means an overloaded boat and a thinner lunch. That price includes the boat, crew, guide, lunch, snorkel mask and life vest, but not the El Nido Eco-Tourism Development Fee, which was doubled from PHP 200 to PHP 400 per person on 1 June 2024. Pay it in cash at the tourism office or through your operator, keep the paper receipt, and note that it is valid for ten days and covers all four tours, so if you do Tour A and Tour C on the same trip you pay once, not twice. Kayaks add another cost, since motorised boats are no longer permitted inside Big Lagoon and a kayak (or paddleboard) is effectively compulsory to get in; rental runs about PHP 500 per two-seater kayak, paid on the spot to a floating attendant. Bring that cash separately, because nobody out there takes cards or GCash reliably. The boats leave in a loose pack, and how early you join that pack decides the day. The first ten into Big Lagoon get twenty minutes of near-silence on turquoise glass, while the last thirty get a car park of hulls and a paddle-traffic-jam through the channel. If your budget stretches, a private charter (roughly PHP 7,000–10,000 for a small boat, competitive for a family of four or five) buys you a 07:30 departure, the route run backwards, and lunch when you want it, and it is the single best money you can spend in El Nido. What to bring: cash in small notes (fee, kayak, buko, tips), reef-safe sunscreen and a long-sleeved rash guard (the reflected glare off the water is brutal and shade on the boat is minimal), water shoes or old trainers for sharp coral and limestone, a dry bag for phones, a proper towel, motion-sickness tablets if you are prone, and at least two litres of water each. Leave anything you cannot bear to drop in the sea at the hotel.
5 stops · tap to open
The quiet one: a sandbar you can walk, two caves, and the least-crowded water in Bacuit Bay
Tour B is the tour nobody puts on the poster, and that works in its favour. While Tour A queues for the Big Lagoon and Tour C thrashes around Helicopter Island, Tour B runs south and east into the emptier half of Bacuit Bay: a white sandbar you walk out into open water, a burial cave you crawl into on your hands and knees, a sea cave you gawp at from the bow, and two beaches under limestone walls that you may briefly have to yourself. It is the only one of the four standard tours with a genuine archaeological stop and the only one where the headline act is a piece of sand rather than a lagoon. It is also the one most travellers rank last. The reasons are worth understanding before you book, because they are fixable.
The five standard stops are Snake Island (Vigan Island), Cudugnon Cave, Cathedral Cave, Pinagbuyutan Island and Entalula Beach. Order varies by operator and follows the tide rather than preference. A good boatman schedules the day so Snake Island lands near low water. Lagen Island and Pinasil Island are not separate stops: they are the addresses of the two caves. Cudugnon Cave sits on the west side of Lagen at the foot of Mount Maa Teg; Cathedral Cave is a sea cave in the flank of Pinasil. Some operators slot in a bonus snorkel stop or swap Entalula for Papaya Beach. Tour A is the lagoon tour (Big Lagoon, Small Lagoon, Secret Lagoon, Shimizu, Seven Commandos) and it is the busiest, with extra entry and kayak fees. Tour C is the beach-and-snorkel tour (Hidden Beach, Secret Beach, Matinloc Shrine, Helicopter Island) and it is second-busiest. Tour B has none of those flagship names. Instead it has geology and history. You get the S-curve sandbar, the crawl-in burial chamber and the cathedral-ceilinged sea cave. It usually carries no extra entrance fees beyond the eco fee, and it is reliably the emptiest boat on the water. The trade-off is snorkelling: Tour B's reef time is incidental, a bonus stop rather than the programme. If you came to El Nido to put your face in the water, Tour C is the tour. Most people who do all four rank Tour B below A and C. The common complaints are specific and fair. First, Cathedral Cave: on a standard joiner boat you do not go inside. The outrigger is too wide for the entrance, so you idle in a queue of boats, everyone photographs the hole in the cliff, and you leave inside ten minutes. It is the one stop that reliably deflates people. Second, there is no showstopper to absorb a weak stop (no Big Lagoon, no Secret Beach), so a mediocre Cathedral Cave drags the whole day down in a way it never could on Tour A. Third, and this is the harshest of them, you win or lose the day on the tide. At low water Snake Island is an extraordinary ribbon of sand curving into turquoise; at high water it is submerged and you have paid ₱1,300 to stand knee-deep looking at nothing much. Fourth, the route is more exposed to open water than A or C, so it is the first tour guides cancel or discourage when the sea is up, and the crossings can be rough. Tour B is a poor first-and-only tour and an excellent second one. If you have one day, do A or C. If you have two, do A (or C) and then B. You will get the change of scenery, the quieter boat and the caves, and B works better once you have another tour to compare it to. It also suits repeat visitors, people travelling with kids who want a slower day with more beach time and less kayak-queueing, and anyone who would rather crawl into a Neolithic burial chamber than photograph another lagoon. Book it with a tide table in hand and an operator who carries a kayak, and it holds its own against A and C.
5 stops · tap to open
The long run west across Bacuit Bay to the beaches you have to swim into
Tour C goes furthest of the standard El Nido tours. While Tour A pinballs around the sheltered inner bay, Tour C points the bangka west and commits to an hour of open water toward Matinloc and Tapiutan, the two blade-shaped limestone islands guarding the outer edge of Bacuit Bay. The payoff is a day of beaches you cannot walk onto: you swim through a crack in a cliff to reach Secret Beach, wade a gap between house-sized boulders into Hidden Beach, and snorkel a strait where the current keeps the coral alive. It costs roughly PHP 1,400–1,800 a head plus the PHP 400 eco fee, and it is comfortably the best snorkelling day in El Nido.
A standard shared-boat day runs 8:15–9:00am hotel pickup, 9:00–9:40am departure from the pier or Corong-Corong beach, and back in town between 3:30 and 5:00pm. The crossing matters because Helicopter Island is 40–50 minutes out, and Matinloc and Tapiutan sit over an hour from town, the farthest of any standard El Nido tour. Most operators run Helicopter Island first, then cross to Matinloc for Secret Beach, the Shrine and Hidden Beach, then finish in the Tapiutan Strait at Star or Talisay Beach, where the crew grills lunch on the sand: fish, chicken, pork belly, rice, adobo, and a mountain of pineapple and watermelon eaten off a banana-leaf table. Order gets shuffled constantly depending on wind, tide and where the other boats already are, and a good guide reads the swell at Secret Beach before committing. Tour A is the greatest-hits tour (Big Lagoon, Small Lagoon, Secret Lagoon, Seven Commandos) with 20-minute hops and genuine queues at the lagoon entrances. Tour C trades that for longer, bumpier crossings, far better coral, and a fraction of the boats. Nearly all snorkellers and repeat visitors pick C. In November you are at the turn from habagat to amihan, when typhoon risk drops fast, seas settle, and underwater visibility climbs to about 10–12 metres in the strait, though the northeast wind can still put a real chop across the exposed water between Matinloc and Tapiutan by late morning, so take the tablets if you are prone.
6 stops · tap to open
The 15-minute tour: Bacuit Bay's calmest, cheapest, emptiest island-hopping day, spent entirely in the lee of one giant limestone island
Stand on El Nido's beachfront at dusk and the mountain filling your whole western horizon is Cadlao, 6 km away, the biggest island in the Bacuit archipelago and close enough that its shadow lands on the town. Tour D is the day you go there. Tours A, B and C haul you 45 to 90 minutes out into open water; Tour D's boat is anchored at its first stop about fifteen minutes after the engine starts, and it never strays far: a hidden emerald lagoon on Cadlao's north side, three or four palm-backed swimming coves on its flanks, a coral garden at Natnat, and a bump of an islet 200 metres off its eastern shore. You won't come home with a bucket-list photograph from any stop here. It stays unusually quiet for El Nido in 2026, cheap at ₱1,200–1,600, and sheltered, because Cadlao's southern and eastern coves sit in the wind shadow when the northeast amihan turns the outer bay into chop. On the day the others are miserable, this is the tour that stays swimmable.
How the day runs. Pickup at your hotel or the tourist office around 8:00–8:30, boat away from the beach by 9:00, and the first hull-scrape on sand by roughly 9:15. Operators quote 45 minutes per stop; in practice every stop runs an hour or more because someone is always still in the water. Lunch happens between 12:00 and 1:00, usually beached at Pasandigan, Natnat or Bukal: grilled fish or chicken, rice, a pile of sliced mangoes and bananas, eaten off a banana leaf in the shade. You are back at the pier between 3:00 and 4:00, which is early enough to shower and still get a beer on the beachfront for sunset. In total the day runs 5 to 7 hours, of which only about an hour is actual boat time, the lowest ratio of any El Nido tour. What it costs in 2026. Joiner (shared boat) is ₱1,200 walking into a town agency, ₱1,500–1,600 booking online or through a hotel. The classic Tour D is the cheapest of the four lettered tours. Private charter runs roughly ₱6,000–12,000 for the whole boat; Big Horn quotes ₱9,000 for two plus ₱1,000 per extra head. On top of that, the Eco-Tourism Development Fee is ₱400 per person: it went up from ₱200 under a 2024 municipal ordinance, and a lot of blogs still print the old number, so budget the higher one. The ETDF is a one-time payment valid ten days and covers every tour you do in that window, so it only stings on your first day. Kayaks in Cadlao Lagoon are typically ₱350 per double and usually not included. The thing to check before you book. Since roughly 2023 a large share of operators (KKday, GetYourGuide sellers, Go Pinas, TripHappy, travel-palawan and others) have moved Small Lagoon off Tour A and bolted it onto Tour D, and they now market Small Lagoon as Tour D's headline stop. If your booking includes it, three things change: you add a ₱200 lagoon environmental user fee, you add roughly 40 minutes of open-water crossing each way out to Miniloc Island, and you add the single most crowded lagoon in El Nido to an itinerary whose entire selling point was that it isn't crowded. Read the stop list on the voucher, not the tour letter. If you want the calm, close-in, empty version described here, book a Cadlao-only Tour D and say so out loud when you pay. Who it suits. Tour D is a beach day, not a landmark day. There is no Big Lagoon, no Secret Lagoon, no Hidden Beach, no Snake Island sandbar. The snorkelling is a rung below Tour A and Tour C. The fringing reef around Cadlao tops out around 6 metres and is pretty rather than spectacular. Do not make this your only tour, and do not do it first. Seen after A or C it reads as a relief; seen before them it reads as thin. It is the right choice as your second, third or fourth day out; the right choice with small kids, non-swimmers, anyone prone to seasickness, or anyone who wants to read a book on sand for two hours; and the right choice in the amihan months when the outer bay is grey and lumpy and Cadlao's lee-side coves are still glassy. One caveat on that last point: when the Coast Guard suspends sailings for weather, it suspends all of them, and Tour D is a rough-day tour, not a bad-weather backup. The DIY angle. Because Cadlao is only 6 km off the beachfront, you don't strictly need a tour at all. Charter a private bangka from the pier for a half day and name your own stops, or paddle a rented sea kayak from Caalan Beach (about 30 minutes each way to the island's near shore) and have Paradise Beach to yourself before the first tour boat rounds the point at 9:15.
5 stops · tap to open
Your own bangka, your own route, and the Big Lagoon before anyone else
The joiner boats leave El Nido's Buena Suerte beach in a pack at nine and hit the Big Lagoon at the same moment as forty other hulls. Charter your own bangka and the whole equation flips: you push off at seven, slide into an empty lagoon while the karst walls are still holding shade, and eat lunch on a beach the fleet won't reach until two. There is no itinerary to argue with. You name the stops, the crew cooks the fish, and you come home when the sun does.
A bangka is the double-outriggered wooden boat that does everything in Palawan, and in El Nido you can rent the whole thing. Two distinct markets exist and the price gap is enormous, so know which one you are in. Negotiating bare-boat directly with a captain on Buena Suerte beach between 6 and 8am gets you a hull, a captain and two crew for roughly PHP 3,500–8,000 a day depending on size and season, with basic snorkel masks, drinking water, fruit and life jackets thrown in and lunch on you. Booking a packaged private tour through an agency on Real Street or Hama Street, or online, runs PHP 10,700–11,600 for the whole boat and includes a guide, cooked lunch, fees handling and an inspected boat. Step up again and Sea Quest (elnido-tours.com) will put you on a premium two-deck outrigger yacht from PHP 18,000 for two plus PHP 1,500 per extra head, a speedboat from PHP 22,000 for two on a half day, or a three-cabin catamaran at PHP 40,000 for four plus PHP 10,000 per additional person to a maximum of twelve. Customisation is what you are paying for, and the classic move is a hybrid: Tour A's Big Lagoon and Secret Lagoon in the early morning, then jump the fleet entirely and run west to Tour C's Hidden Beach, Matinloc and Star Beach in the afternoon; most operators charge a combined-route supplement of about PHP 5,000 for the boat. You can also skip stops you don't want, add Cadlao or Nacpan, request a 7am departure instead of the standard 9am, ask the crew to grill fresh fish rather than serve the standard buffet, and extend the return so you are on the water at golden hour. Group sizes: a standard bangka carries 6–12 comfortably, larger ones 15–20; speedboats 6–10; the catamaran caps at 12. On top of the charter, every visitor pays the Eco-Tourism Development Fee of PHP 400, valid ten days, plus roughly PHP 200 apiece at Big Lagoon, Small Lagoon, Hidden Beach and the Matinloc Shrine. Budget PHP 600–1,000 per person in fees.
2 stops · tap to open
If we get a spare afternoon
The land day: Nacpan, the Canopy Walk, a waterfall, and the Las Cabanas zipline
Almost everyone stacks island tours back to back and ends up sunburnt, salty and slightly over it by day three. El Nido's land side fixes that, and it is no consolation prize: four kilometres of empty golden sand at Nacpan, a bolted walkway up the fin of Taraw Cliff with the whole bay laid out below, a jungle waterfall with a swimming pool under it, and a 750-metre zipline that flies you off Las Cabanas Beach out over the water. None of it depends on the Coast Guard clearing small boats to sail, and all of it costs a fraction of a tour.
Las Cabanas Beach and the zipline. Ten to fifteen minutes south of town by tricycle (PHP 150–250 round trip after a friendly negotiation), Las Cabanas is the west-facing beach where the town goes to watch the sun go down: shallow warm water, hammocks, beach bars, and a bonfire or two later on. The zipline runs roughly 750 metres from the headland out to Depeldet Island; expect around PHP 500–1,000 depending on whether you go seated or superman-style and one-way or return, and note it closes before dark, so ride first and drink after. Nacpan Beach. Around 45 minutes north on a rough-ish road, Nacpan is a four-kilometre arc of gold-tinted sand backed by coconut palms, with almost nobody on it midweek. A tricycle costs roughly PHP 800–1,500 for the vehicle round trip (or PHP 250–350 per person one way) and there's a small PHP 50 environmental fee. Walk to the headland at the south end for the classic view down onto Nacpan and Calitang, the 'twin beaches', meeting at a spit. The shore break is punchy on some days, so keep small kids in close. Taraw Cliff Canopy Walk. The old free-climb to the Taraw summit is dangerous and has hurt people; the Canopy Walk is the sanctioned, bolted alternative on the same limestone: a via-ferrata-style walkway with harnesses and guides included. Around PHP 400 plus a small barangay fee, roughly 1.5–2 hours round trip, and the sunrise slot is the one worth setting an alarm for. You end up looking straight down on the town roofs, the boat fleet and Cadlao Island. Nagkalit-kalit Falls. On the road out to Nacpan, so it stacks neatly with a beach day. It's a 20–45 minute walk through forest with several shallow river crossings (wear sandals, not hiking boots) to two cascades; the bigger one has a natural pool you can swim in. Entry is around PHP 150–200 with a guide fee of roughly PHP 300–500 for the group. Volume depends entirely on recent rain: in November it should be running well, which is not true in April. Lio Beach. The Ayala-developed estate up by the airport has a long raked beach, kayak and SUP rental, a handful of good restaurants, and the Kalye Artisano craft village. It's the polished, easy option, the beach day where someone brings you a cold drink. Corong-Corong sunset. The barangay immediately south of town looks due west across Bacuit Bay, and in mid-November the sun drops around 17:35–17:45. Claim a plastic chair on the sand, order grilled fish and a San Miguel, and watch the bangkas come home in silhouette, the single cheapest good thing in El Nido. ATV to the viewpoint. Guided quad rides climb the hills behind Corong-Corong to a viewpoint over the bay and the islands, typically one to two hours for around US$35–55 per person including guide and helmet. It gets muddier after rain, which riders tend to count as a bonus. Spending the open third day. Do the Canopy Walk early while it's still cool, transfer north around mid-morning with a stop at Nagkalit-kalit, spend the afternoon on Nacpan, then come back for the Las Cabanas zipline and sunset. That's one hired tricycle or van for the day, no boat and no schedule risk, and it is usually the day people talk about afterwards.
Nacpan Beach: 4km of golden sand, ~45 min north, plus the twin-beach headland view over Calitang
Taraw Canopy Walk: the safe, guided version of the cliff (harnesses, bolted walkway, sunrise slots)
Las Cabanas: the sunset beach, with a ~750m zipline out to Depeldet Island
Nagkalit-kalit Falls: 20–45 min jungle walk, river crossings, a swimming pool under the main cascade
Lio Beach: the easy, polished beach day near the airport with restaurants and SUP rental
Corong-Corong sunset around 17:40 in November, free and the best hour of the day
Every one of these still runs when rough seas cancel the island tours
Dinner
Five places in and around El Nido town, from wood-fired pizza to a sunset bar built out over the water.
The doors open at 7am, and the upstairs terrace looks straight up at Taraw Cliff, so you eat homemade bread and Swiss muesli with a 640-metre limestone wall over your shoulder. It has been the town's default meeting point for three decades, with a tour desk and handicraft shop downstairs and an all-day kitchen upstairs, all wooden floors, capiz lamps and no walls. The menu covers Filipino silog plates, Swiss rösti, Neapolitan-style pizza, Indian curries and Greek salads, all built on their own organic farm produce, which makes it the one place in El Nido where a family of five will each find something they want. Come for breakfast on your first morning: it is a five-minute walk from most town hotels and it sets the day up before an island-hopping boat leaves at 9am. Order the Swiss Rösti with Ham & Eggs (₱460) or the Banana Oat Pancake with honey (₱380) and a basket of their bread; the yoghurt and Swiss muesli (₱380) are made in-house. Come back for dinner, when the kitchen switches to Fish Fillet with Mango Salsa (₱460), Sinigang sa Buko (shrimp soup simmered in young coconut juice, ₱480), the Seafood Basket for the table (₱980), or a Pizza Family Size (₱550) that feeds four. Kitchen runs 7:00am–10:30pm Monday to Thursday and Sunday, until 11:00pm Friday and Saturday. No reservations taken, but there are three floors of seating and turnover is fast; the top-terrace tables with the cliff view go first at sunset, so arrive by 5:30pm if that is the table you want.
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