Fun in the sun winter 97/98 part 2 THE PHILLIPINES, what a trip, part 2 ...The ride down the island was great, looking over the massive cliffs that form Coron island, checking out the beaches, casing it out, it looks like a fantastic paddle, numerous beaches, great colours and hot...Will be paddling on the leeside of the side and the weather, magical is what it is promising to be... We arrived at Calis point [ 11'48'41"N/120'14'32"E] around noon, hoping to find the place deserted, but a fishing family had decided to camp over for the hot period of the day...Not wanting to invade their space, we paddled over to Monkey beach, 1.9 nm up the beach, this took us a few hours as we were totally mesmerised with the scenery and had to roll over into the water on more than 1 occasion... I am now realising that distance is very minimal while paddling the tropics, not even like Vietnam where it is cooler...Here in the heat, it is more pleasant to jump into the waters and swim and snorkel than it is making wake... The corals are so incredible in colour and shapes, it looks like some artist's work more than just grown there, how can so many colours be together... The second day paddle was even shorter, as we had so many Kingfishers moving with us, I had to contemplate them as I never seen them before and are truly the majestic bird they say...It looks like the fruit loop bird with a smaller beak...WE went just past monkey beach as there were some fisher people who had made camp on this beach...So after a short rest we went not 1 but 2 more beaches, to find a spectacular one just big enough for us...W tied up to a cashew tree, did some delicate pruning and had us a very small fire with cashew wood to boil water for my b'day dinner...And I tell you what a B'day it was, the idyllic spot folks... The next morning, first thing I saw waking up was a dragon or was it a small dinosaur...Oh! I see it was a giant lizard, about 2 meters in length, barely a few meters away...What a day it is going to be... At the end of the 3rd day we came to what I will call the nicest part of Coron Island, the tip of the western shore, where it turns right to go North east, it is there that the shore becomes a tangled mess of inlets, separated by limestone spires and walls, some with arches to paddle through...Good thing I have incredible faith in the tenacity of this Hypalon underside of my yak... We spent the next 2 days travelling along this shore, going maybe 5 or 6 kms in 2 days...the first of these 2 days, we even ran into some ICE COLD beer, and cigs on a isolated beach...offered to us by a very interesting phillipino couple...We just had to stay there for the night, specially when they left and decided to leave us the rest of their beer...Most of the afternoon was spent snorkelling around a Japanese sunken boat at 7 meters deep... The 5th and last day of this paddle we explored every inch of the last few kms and headed across to Coron city in the only chop we seen in the last 5 days, about 30 cm [1']seas with starboard/aft beam... WHAT A TRIP ... For a couple days we headed into the mangroves just west of Coron, for day trips...Paddling the mangroves is something else, the noise is so unreal, it is hard to paddle while watching the bottom so not to disturb and to try and find the source of the noises at the same time...Makes for very slow and interesting paddle...Blue spotted rays are abundant and very fast, the birds...it is almost eerie all the sounds ...There are rainbows a flying... Yours naturally sylvio lamarche Wycliffe organic gardens & Exotic locales all over the globe *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:32:50 PDT