After a month in the Philippines and two weeks to focus on family in Boston, we were so ready to pick up our little fur child from Salida! As expected with traveling, the journey from Boston to Mr.Dookie was long and tiring! We attended Tyler’s graduation in Lowell the night before our departure. This meant a midnight train ride and Lyft back to our apartment in Cambridge, some last minute packing and then a 3 hour nap (only 30 minutes…
We had originally reserved the last few days of our Philippines trip completely open to spend time with Alan’s family, but since we learned that his parents would be away in Japan, we decided on an impromptu trip to go surfing in Baler instead. We booked 2 nights at a hotel on Sabang Beach, the most popular beach in town with tons of surf shops catered to the newbie surfer. The journey to Baler was a lot more exhausting than…
The first night that we hung out at Spin Hostel, the guys connected with two artists who were performing at their jam night. This eventually lead to us having connections for our island hopping tour and hike up Taraw Peak. Lucky enough, one of the artists, Mike, is also known as “the surfing guy” in El Nido. He introduced surfing to the tiny town and is solely responsible for teaching every local surfer how to shred. They even named a surf…
Taraw Peak. Where do I begin?!?! It’s not the most difficult climb in El Nido. It’s not the highest peak either. In fact, it’s the easiest and most tourist friendly of all of the limestone monoliths surrounding Town Proper. With that said, you’re probably expecting a nice little hike along some developed trail. Well, you’re terribly wrong… It’s the absolute opposite! The peak is guesstimated at ~230m (754ft) and should only take 3 hours max out and back. Seems simple enough,…
You can’t go to El Nido and not go on an island hopping tour. It’s like paying for an all-you-can-eat buffet and not eating. Literally the second that we left LIO airport, we saw a poster advertising the various tours in our trike. Then once we were in town, we began seeing them on practically every wall we looked at! Town Proper is extremely small given how popular it is but probably 90% of the businesses there advertised something to…