Coron, Palawan (Day 1) June 4 – 7, 2009

Last June 4-7, 2009, I joined my long time friend, Noel along with his family to a few days on Coron, Palawan. As godfather to all his three sons, my role was to play yaya when needed.

We took PAL Express from Naia 3 to Busuanga, Palawan. The trip was uneventful. We took the first flight in.

View Coron, Palawan in a larger map

Welcome to Busuanga Airport.

From the airport, we took a van which took around 45 minutes to our resort. The Busuanga Island Paradise (website)

It’s a nice little resort. It’s one of those places which is not too far from its website. I’s not a seaside resort, and the main water feature is the pool. But the place was clean and fairly cheap. I got my own casita… and as fate would have it… they gave me the blue casita.

  

  

My room was clean. The only problem is the area, by nature has a lot of bugs.

Traveler’s Note:
My one really frustrating thing about this place. No Globe Signal. So there goes the broadband equipment I brought my Globe Tatoo. I had no internet while I was here!!! I had to wait to get to town to do any Facebook updates (hehe). Note: They do have Smart signal at the resort. Had I known, I would have brought SmartBro.

After checking into our rooms, we were hungry. So we had lunch by the pool.

As mentioned. I played yaya to my godchildren. Here I am with Gavin.

Anyway. After lunch we were now off to take a look around Coron. We took a van to town, and arranged some tours at a local tour office.

Horse Valley

After lunch we went to the town of Coron for a little Horse back riding. We didn’t get to ride because the cowboys weren’t around… so we just went around looking at the horses.

 

 

Know the expression, “hung like a horse?” Well… if you look closely… that is NOT a fifth leg. This is the first time I saw this phenomenon. Hahaha.

Since we couldn’t ride any of the horses, we just looked around. From there we went to our next venue. After the Horse Valley we went to Mt. Tapyas where the guide told us we should walk up the steps… 700 (or so) steps up to the 2000 feet above sea level.

Mt. Tapyas

The walk up had nice scenic views around Coron.

The view somewhere in the middle of the stair climb up.

With Noel Reyes.

STAIRS!!! STAIRS!!! AND MORE STAIRS!!!!

I got to the top and looked down. Hard to believe I walked up that. (pant pant)

The view from above is breadth taking!

Mt. Tapyas’ main landmark which could be seen from all over is this steel cross. In front of the cross is the big cemented deck. But you can walk around behind the cross for the views of the mountain range.

And again… what a view!

Anyway… it was time now for the long walk down. Personally I prefer uphill steps than downhill steps.

When we got down, I noticed the dedication plaque. Now… this is a pretty strange dedication don’t you think? Seems weird for a tourist destination.

Maquinit Hot Springs

From Mt. Tapyas we headed for Maquint Hot Springs. I actually don’t recall ever visiting a hot spring before… anyway this was really… HOT!

This is was an interesting place. As mentioned, the hot springs was very hot. After getting used to the water, it was actually quite comfortable. Supposedly it has healing properties.

 

With Noel and Jenn.

After soaking for a while we drressed up. Dried up. And had dinner in town. We found some nice local restuarant that served some pretty good Filipino food.

End of day 1

Day 2 promises to be fun… Island hopping! Yehey!  (Go to Day 2)

For a somewhat full album of the whole Coron trip, visit my FaceBook Album at:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=115167&id=545092789&l=5b2efbdf3a

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