If there is one thing that is sure to ruin even the best laid plans, it’s rain. However, if you are in a place as sublime in its beauty as Coron, the raindrops hardly matter. (I am writing this post as I am listening to news about the magnitude 4 quake that rocked my world – and I don’t say that lightly – this morning as I was headed for work. It lasted for a couple of seconds, but darn if it didn’t make my heart jump out my throat!)
But enough of that. I’ll take this chance to relive our rainy-day-out-in-the-waters-of-Coron instead. Limited pictures, though, because the rain didn’t allow for better pictures, yanoe. Not to worry; I’ll do my best to get better ones next week.
Day 2 in Coron marked the first of 2 days of island-hopping. As I mentioned in my previous post, we availed of the tour package of Coron Village Lodge. Let me show you some of the stops we made.
Lusong World War II Shipwreck
There are times when I wished I knew how to legitimately dive. This was one of them. We were literally green with envy as our guide, Argel, effortlessly swooped down and under then back up to take closeup photos of the wreck while, we, people from the highlands, were literally up there, fighting to float. Haha!
There are a number of shipwrecks – vestiges of a war long past – around the area, and the Lusong Shipwreck is simply one of them. This is a Japanese gunboat from World War II. We saw part of the hull, which was already encrusted with corals.
At the time, there were a couple of other divers who went inside the wreck as we (need I say it? Oh, all right~) looked on with envy.
After a bit, we got back on our boat to proceed to our next destination.
Marile Coral Garden
The most beautiful corals I’ve seen were those in Club Noah Isabelle Resort in Apulit, Palawan several years ago. I’ve been to several other beaches with coral reefs and, while many of them were gorgeous, I found that nothing still could defeat the ones I saw at Apulit.
What I experienced at the Marile Coral Garden may not have surpassed it, but it’s pretty close.
Granted, though, I think it had more to do with the atmosphere of the place more than the actual sight of the corals. You see, when we went there, we were the ONLY ONES. No one else, so it was soooooo quiet and serene, and there was no other sound to be heard but the water lapping against your skin. Ah~ Bliss.
We spent quite a long time here, longer than we did at the Wreck. In fact, the only reason we went back to the boat was because of the impending rain.
After this, we went to Pass Island, which was considerably further. There, we had lunch, played around on the beach and in the water. Sometime when we were there, rain pelted down on us. But did that stop us? No, sirree, it didn’t.
We waited a bit for the rain to slow down, then we took the long boat ride back to the mainland/town. What do you know, sometime during the ride back, the sun peeked a bit. What. A. Tease.
Below is a view of the town as we approached the pier. There’s the cross atop Mt. Tapyas.
The Coron-in-(rainy)-August will continue next post.