Palawan Part 3: Just Keep Swimming

HONDA VS HUNDA

So what is it really: Honda or Hunda?

On our third day in Puerto Princesa, we left Sabang early in the morning and transferred to Legend
Palawan, a hotel in the city proper. We just checked-in, deposited our bags, and hopped onto the van. It took about 30 minutes for us to get to Santa Lourdes Warf, Tagbanua, Puerto Princesa City from the hotel. Because we have already paid for our tour in advance, our tour operator arranged for everything including the fees and registration needed.

Tip: bring your own snorkel and mask if possible, packed lunch, sea-sickness meds and other basic medication. If you can, bring water-proofing for your gadgets so your can take photos and videos of the beautiful underwater life.

Pambato = Bet

Our first stop in Honda Bay was Pambato Reef. It's a protected area discovered by local fishermen in 2006. The following year, ABS-CBN's environmental foundation gave them a helping hand and formed Dalub Karagatan or "School in the Seas", which is the ultimate goal of the facility - to enlighten visitors on the marine ecosystem, it's current condition, and educate us as to how we can help preserve, save and protect it in our own way. With the existence of a proper structure and rules, it is best that you wear the required life jacket, stay within the designated area, do not feed the marine life and leave your footwear in the floating house. You wouldn't want to swim after you slippers or worse, have the fish feeding on your slippers, right? Wear your snorkel and mask, hold onto the pawikan-shaped floater and enjoy the swim around the area. What astounded me was the size of the fish in the area. Some were the size of both my hands with fingers spread wide apart. We even saw a giant clam!

The Dalub Karagatan, with its sea turtle roof

After Pambato Reef, we headed over to Starfish Island. En route, we saw Luli Island and Snake Island. We didn't make stops there because we wanted quality versus quantity, thus choosing to go to fewer islands but having more time there. Starfish Island, locally known as Tabuan Island, was named as such because there used to be a lot of starfish in the area. There still were quite a number when we went, but the boatman said there used to be even more. We stayed to take photos, check-out the mangrove patch, and have lunch.

Mangroves at Starfish Island

View from Starfish Island

After stuffing ourselves with the glorious lunch prepared for us by our guide, we got some rest and headed over to the final stop: Pandan Island. The island was packed with beach-goers when we went, so we docked, and just went straight into the water. We didn't find the need to rent a cottage, since all our belongings were in the boat anyway.

Pandan Island is great for those who are new to snorkeling because from the shore, you can swim to a depth comfortable to you. At about 7 to 8 feet deep, there are already schools of different kinds of fish. Unlike Pambato Reef, they allow fish feeding in Pandan Island. Many enjoy this, but I chose to just snorkel and swim around. At around 3pm, we headed back to the city to get some rest as most of us were tired from swimming all day.

We were supposed to go for Firefly watching early that evening, but because of some hoolabaloo our travel agent was apparently doing, the tour guide and van driver refused to bring us to the Iwahig River. We were still thankful to them because they explained it to us properly that it was the travel agency's wrongdoing and even told us how much we should ask for as refund.

Immaculate Concepcion Church

Since, we had nothing in our itinerary, we just asked them if they could bring us to the church to hear mass. We went to Immaculate Concepcion Church and said a few prayers. Then, our van driver suggested for us to have dinner at Bilao at Palayok along Rizal Avenue (yes, same street as KaLui). They serve mostly Filipino dishes and seafood, which was all that we have been having the past couple of days. So at that point, we were just a bit tired of it. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't the food as it was not bad at all, our meal was still very affordable and cheap, the ambience was pleasing also. Just like in some relationships, there wasn't anything wrong with Bilao at Palayok; there was probably just something wrong with us. Hahaha!

I couldn't write much about Legend Hotel as we were only there to shower and sleep. What I distinctly remember was that I got rashes from what may have been bed mites. Breakfast wasn't bad, but it was nothing great either. Overall, our stay was pretty okay.