El Nido

The Road to El Nido
The journey to El Nido was perhaps one of the most difficult journeys I have ever undertaken. The first leg of the journey was fast and efficient. Our driver, a old man in his 50’s, drove at great speed along well sealed roads. After an hour or so I lost all feeling in my ass and reserved myself to not feeling it again until I got to El Nido!

For the first few hours I was lured into the feeling that ‘it wouldn’t be as bad as its supposedly meant to be’. After 3 hours the roads went from being sealed, to unsealed, to dirt tracks, to almost no track! Yet this apparent change in the road conditions did not seem to affect the speed at which our driver felt he could drive. One of the few benefits of this was that I spent a great deal of my time in mid-air where I happened to find feeling in my ass again!

Five hours into the journey it began to rain. At first it was only a few drops, but within half an hour the few drops turned into a torrential downpore. It didn’t take long for me to realise that this would have an effect on the quality of the road and hence the journey as we were by now driving on a dirt track. A month or so ago the area had been hit by torrential rain for many days which had literally flushed away many of the bridges and road structures in the area. As we drove along the road I got the feeling that I might not make it to El Nido as we drove past destroyed bridges which laid in pieces beside the road. Rather worryingly the way we now seemed to be making it on the road was by driving directly through rivers where there used to be bridges! Unfortunately as it has raining heavily this rivers continued to increase in size to the point where I was rather concerned they would flood the engine as the water level rose so much.

About an hour away from El Nido we came to a hill which had been turned into a mud-bath. Ahead of us were trucks, tricycles and jeepneys stuck and unable to move. As our driver put foot to the peddle the engine roared with smoke bellowing out the side. Suddenly hot smoke from the engine burst out into the bus creating panic and mayhem in the bus, with some people jumping out windows and others running for the door at the back of the bus. At first I thought that the engine had blown and that was the end of the trip to El Nido. Pictures of me trekking through knee high mud began to pour into my head. However, as I looked at the driver I could see he was calming sitting on his chair trying to put the cap back on the engine where the smoke was coming from. Hardly the actions of a man in distress! So I quickly realised that it was simply excess water. A child behind me sitting with his mum was panicking so I turned to calm the child down.

So here we were stuck in the mud up a hill which seemed impossible to move. People had already began to walkthe hill reserved to the fact that we were not going anywhere. As people left the vehicle they realised the full extent of the mud which rose above most peolples shoes. However, a few minutes earlier we had driven past machinery being used to re-build parts of the road and bridges. Within a few minutes a bull-dozer slowly past us and began to pull us up the hill. Although the journey was slow we made our way steadily up the hill passing vehicles which had not been so fortunate!

El Nido
Arriving into El Nido an hour or so late in the pouring rain we rushed to try to find a place able to take us for a few nights. Eventually we found a room at ‘Rico’s Cottage’ overlooking the sea front. Although the weather was still abysmal it provided a beautiful location to sit and enjoy the views. The sea was a few metres away and I could hear it rolling in and out from my bed. The previous day I had got to know a Swiss traveller called Michael and we decided that we may as well share a room for a few days as it would work out cheaper and easier. Michael is in his mid 20's, with long hair and very laid back, and is coming to the end of his year of. Outside the room we shared a balcony with two other rooms which had tables, chairs and hammocks we could sit and relax in.

Within a few minutes of arriving we met a Dutch and Philippino couple who had caught the previous bus. Noel, a mild mannered American Philippino in his early 40’s, joked about the journey and asked us if we had to do the same on the hill? Well we naturally assumed he meant waiting for the bulldozer so we joked that we had. However, this impression was soon eradicated when he asked me how many men it took? I said ‘what do you mean, took?’ He said ‘to pull the truck up the hill!’ . As you can imagine I was shocked by this! It turns out the previous bus had not had the fortune of having a bull-dozer nearby so ten men had had to pull the bus up the hill! They had to do this whilse it rained in almost knee high mud! Suddenly I felt my journey hadn’t actually been that bad! It's weird how other people's experiences can make you have a different perspective on your own.