Location: El Nido, Palawan, Philippines

Sav: Normally I would say we woke up at ass o’clock, or the crack of dawn. But today! OH TODAY definitely calls for a combination of the two because waking up at 3AM after falling asleep around 1AM can only be known as:

The crack of ass.

That’s not sleeping! That’s barely napping.

We blearily and grumpily made our way through the airport, showing up extra early to avoid the inevitable Monday morning traffic jams we’ve heard lots about. Max grabbed a donut, and I grabbed a cinnamon bun and we quietly fuelled up with some sugar before our flight to Palawan Island!

I was pleased the flight was only an hour long because after that we had a six hour van ride to the North tip of the island to get to El Nido. God forbid this is the same kind of van ride as yesterday!

Somehow it was worse. We weren’t jammed in too tight, and it was warm but not swelteringly hot. The problem was the road… crazy twists and turns and bumps with a spastic driver made for quite the ride. We both ended up pretty carsick almost the entire way, just barely holding on to our lunches.

It’s not always glamorous, this travel stuff.

We arrived in El Nido and I immediately felt better after getting out of the van. We rolled up to Frendz hostel, where we were greeted with cold face cloths and lime water. Excuse me what? We both sighed so heavily and must have looked pretty rough because they carried our backpacks and were extra helpful. I can confirm I looked like garbage after that van ride. I’m in love with this place already.

The sun was going down as we got here, so we had the tiniest glimpse of the mountains and ocean all around us and decided that despite our exhaustion we were going to try and wake up for sunrise tomorrow to see it for the first time.

The rooms are super comfy and clean, there’s a rooftop bar and pool and a huge restaurant downstairs and we are just minutes from the beach. Alas our basic needs had to come first tonight! The beach can wait! We set up a laundry service since we are both completely out of clean clothes, and then beelined to the rooftop for the BBQ dinner special, scarfing down food to settle our stomachs.

We haven’t left the rooftop since, after finding recliner chairs under the stars. We’ve been writing and chatting the evening away and from what we’ve talked about we are clearly excited for tomorrow. We have no plans other than the sunrise, but it’s looking like El Nido is going to be incredible.

Sav