So many people had told me about the little paradise around Coron that we finally booked flights to Busuanga in April. It’s indeed worth travelling to El Nido’s little sister where you’ll find routes less traveled and a town less crowded!
Out of the many boat trips, we chose Ultimate Tour B1 including the white-sand CYC Island, colorful coral reefs with huge schools of barracudas and trevallies as well as one turtle view near Siete Pescados, a barbecue in front of Calachuchi Beach, more snorkeling above Coral Eden, and 300+ stairs from the Hidden Lagoons to Kayangan Lake, which is probably the most famous viewpoint of Coron Bay.
Our stay at Coron Town was also a gastronomical experience with lots of calamaris and other Filipino food in different local restaurants. Kawayan Grill became our favorite place where we got delicious plates in a quite cozy ambience.
Coron Town doesn’t have a beach, which is why we booked a hotel with pool. That was definitely a good choice because we needed some relaxing time for at least one day. In the late afternoon, we decided to climb Mount Tapyas to get the famous and astonishing sunset view over Coron.
View on Coron Bay from Mount Tapyas
Ship wreck diving in Coron Bay
Coron is also synonymous for wreck diving. And that was one more highlight during our last day. Even though you usually need to be an Advanced Open Water diver, Coron’s dive clubs are quite flexible and also accept the lower level divers, which makes Coron Bay THE place to do your first wreck dive. Most shipwrecks in Coron Bay are very well preserved and lie there because of a US air attack on the Japanese Imperial Navy on September 24, 1944.
My second and most impressive wreck dive lead to Morazan Maru, a 95m-long vessel at a maximum depth of 25m. It’s an easy wreck covered and filled with corals, which allows to dive through the entire length and has many light openings.
Here are some impressions from our boat trips and dives in Coron Bay:
Public transport on Busuanga island
We chose Palawan SandCastles as our second and more laid-back destination on Busuanga Island. And that’s when we saw how poorly developed this island still is, which is perfect for relaxed beach time and nature discovery. But that requires patience to reach your destination. If you wanna experience the local way of transport, you’ll take a bus from Coron Town’s market. It’s actually a little truck, which will be filled with people and goods to supply the island’s northern parts. After more than two-hours of waiting and interacting with the child passengers, we finally left Coron Town. It took us multiple stops and a short motor break down to discharge goods and arrive at our destination after approximately two hours, compared to only 45 minutes by private van on our way back to the airport at the end of our stay. But I loved the experience, people were so joyful and helpful during this trip.
Then in the north of Busuanga we rented kayaks every day to discover the coastline on our own. We found deserted white-sand beaches, met children during their summer break and got exhausted from paddling all day long between offshore islands.
Hamocs, bukos and San Miguel were the perfect conclusion of our evenings there. The two students Jhona and Dexter, who work at SandCastle during this summer break made us laugh and enjoy this last stop even more.
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