Rock Island and La Natura – Busuanga Island

From the houseboat, we got a quick boat to the port and a minivan to the other side of the island. After a 30-minute boat to a remote island, we arrived at our destination; Rock Island Eres Bella. We were the only guests on the Island and we were looked after by a lovely team including an awesome cook (but more on in a sec).

The beach at Rock Island was pristine and sandy. Off the shore there was great snorkelling, we saw a lobster, batfish, trumpetfish, triggerfish, pufferfish and this mysterious creature (which by the way, stumped the locals as well as us😕, if you have any ideas, feel free to comment).

Here we also saw lots of beautiful sunsets and some bats. Around 6 o'clock every night, hundreds of big bats flew by. Sometimes we saw lone bats (I think they get lost a lot).

The food at Rock Island was very good. You know that saying ‘Quality is better than quantity’ at Rock Island we had both. There was always sooooo much food and we could never finish it all, even if we were all hungry. We felt so bad leaving all that good food, but we just couldn’t finish it. We got pancakes for breakfast every day. YUM!

After four nights at Rock Island, we travelled back to Coron to our next adventure. We stayed at La Natura for three nights. There was a nice pool, but it was in an interesting location, only accessible via a bumpy track. We got trikes in and out of town, which took about 15 minutes. This trip involved a life-threatening crossing over a rickety bridge (we all held our breath for this).

On our first night at La Natura, we went into town for dinner. We also sorted out (after a bit of haggling) a snorkelling trip for the next day. This involved a walk down to the wharf where some pirates, I mean boatmen, sorted us out for the next morning.

We got up and prepared for our trip, we (once again) caught a trike to the port and, because we needed to get food for lunch on the boat trip, Dad and I headed for the local market.

We bought all the food we needed and hopped on the boat. This involved an interesting clamber through four other boats. Nan wasn’t too keen on all the jumping between boats.

The ride to our first stop was an hour… it was worth the wait. We got to snorkel the wreck of a Japanese gunboat from WWII!! There was so much coral and so many fish.

Our next stop was a coral garden, it was even prettier than the wreck! We saw aqua coloured coral, clams and three more types of coral that we had never seen before, one looked like a dog toy, another looked like purple cauliflower and the last looked like mushrooms.

We had lunch at Pass Island, where we saw big cuttlefish. (maybe half a metre!) For lunch we had the usual; fish, chicken, rice, salad and fruit.

The food at the accom was nothing special, so we mostly ate dinner in town.

La Natura was our last stop in Palawan, we’re now off to Moalboal; only two stops left in the Philippines!