Puerto Princesa: A Two Day Tour

Troy Jacob Saturday, 28 July 2018 Add Comment Edit

|Travel|

Here’s the next part of my Travel Diary entry for when I was in Palawan. Maybe this will be my last entry for my trip to Palawan but if ever I’ll get the chance to recover some memories of my trip there and also some more photos, I might do another or other entries for when I was there.

For this post, I am here to share to you what my experiences were for when I was in Puerto Princesa. I’ve already posted my trip to El Nido prior to this entry, if you wanna take a look at that 1st then click here - El Nido. So we went first to El Nido, before having our stay at Puerto Princesa even though we landed at Puerto Princesa International Airport and not at the airport near El Nido.

Pertaining to what I said, we were already at El Nido so in order for us to get to Puerto on time we left our hotel at El Nido at around 5 am due to the travel time to El Nido to Puerto is approximately 5 hours. I actually slept the whole trip because truthfully there was nothing to see along the road but trees and more trees because it is a province anyway.

Technically, we didn’t head off first to the place where we’ll be staying in at Puerto. In the middle of the journey, we were dropped at an intersection along the road and the reason for this was we were already scheduled to take a tour first at one of the Seven Wonders of Nature — Puerto Princesa Underground River. My mom already rented a private vehicle for us via a travel agency, so the driver picked us up at the junction and luckily we were the only ones in the vehicle so more space for us. I don’t know if you would call it luck, but the weather that day was a gloomy one. Once at port we rode a boat to the main entrance of the underground river where the perpetrators and handlers of the place are located. Here we were welcomed by a ton of people and once you’re ready to head out to your own bangka, we were given special devices with a sole purpose of being out virtual tour guide inside the underground river. The cool thing about this is the virtual tour guide comes in different languages from french, spanish, chinese, korean, and etc. and we were also given safety vests.

I can assure with this one — the exterior of the underground river was breathtaking, I mean yes we’ve already seen this view from postcards, television, and pictures, but the mere fact that you’re in front of the real thing is quite different I tell you. I can’t really describe to you the feeling and experience of what it's like to be inside the underground river but it gave me chills and it still does now even just by remembering it, because the fact that I was witnessing and seeing one of the Seven Wonders of Nature is no joke. Imagine the years of its existence and the vitality of its value for our nature is really beyond. I tell you, head out to Puerto Princesa, Palawan and experience the Underground River for yourself. What’s good about the tour package was that it comes with its own accommodation for your lunch, and mind you it was a lunch buffet so yeah I am guilty that I went all out on that lunch because of exhaustion and severe hunger after witnessing the Puerto Princesa Underground River. Then after that we head on off to our hotel.

Actually we didn’t do a lot of exciting things at Puerto Princesa, although the next day we went to a butterfly farm and also a crocodile farm where Lolong (conceived as the world’s largest crocodile) while he was still alive but nonetheless that’s it.

The main highlight of my stay at Puerto Princesa was really my experience while I was inside the Underground River. The aim of the tour was actually not about you mesmerizing and gazing upon this Nature Wonder, but making you realize that we need to preserve our environment because once we did this right, a beauty like the underground river can be achieved. People nowadays tend to steer off from anything nature related because they deem this as dirty or inappropriate for someone who has money, and that’s the downside of this generation’s people.

The tour made me realized, that my gahd! This is what we are missing?! This beauty of what Mother Nature can give and provide for us?! It made me realize that we need to start changing our antics and be a better version of ourselves for our environment because this will not just benefit us but also benefit future generations to come.

While I was writing this content, chills were continuously running up and down my body due to the content and purpose that I am sharing out to you who is reading this post. And I hope it shall make a difference on you and for everyone else.