Monday 20 Feb 2023
Coron, Philippines
Arrived Coron and... you guessed it.. more rain!!!
Arrived Coron, with yet more rain. I did seem to be cursed weather-wise, though thankfully that was soon to change in the coming days.
As my only real experience of Philippines to this point had been Siargao island (which I assumed was a dusty backwater), on arriving in Coron I realised that Siargao was actually paradise in comparison!
The town reminded me of Kathmandu. Dusty and chaotic downtown with hundreds of tour shops to visit the nearby islands or to take scuba dives. The beach, if you can call it that, is more or less a port with mudflats. I had previously thought that you could use Coron as a base to take an SUP out to visit the surrounding islands but in reality the islands were so far away you really need to hire a boat or take a tour to visit the islands. Coron itself was purely a base from which to launch from and had little going for it apart from just somewhere to rest in between tours.
In Siargao you could visit surrounding islands via tours too, but at least Siargao itself was a lovely place to be based and had great beaches and you could do activities like SUP and Wingfoil directly on the mainland.
Given that I discovered this new reality, once I was settled into my hotel the priority was to organise some tours, and so followed the laboursome task of first finding out what tours there were (and more importantly where to go as I hadn't got a clue!), then shopping around to compare prices and finally trying to bargain to get a good deal!