Asia > Philippines > Visayas > Palawan > Articles > Palawan: Nest of Dreams

In reality, no lagoon in Palawan is as intensely turquoise as the souvenir T-shirt I brought back from there. Yet every time I pull on that old shirt it's like slipping into a memory — Palawan floods my mind. I see its upstart isles that rise like an anarchist's wedding cake, all mad marble pinnacles and wild jungle tiers.

Next comes the image of a Palawan dusk when a million bats exit the caves high on an El Nido cliff — a huge dark wave washing across the sky, heading for the moon. In all, it’s a pretty intense T-shirt experience.

For a cluster of 1,770 islands, Palawan is a well-kept South-East Asian neighbourhood secret. This slender archipelago stretches some 650 km down the South China Sea, running southwest towards Borneo. Palawan Island itself is the Philippines' fifth largest island, yet in many ways this province is a world apart even from the Philippines.

The northern Palawan archipelago is the creation of a profligate god — a realm of sparsely inhabited islands burnished by sunsets and washed by incandescent moonrises. Its celebrated region known as El Nido ("The Nest") offers scuba diving sites, a trove of lagoons, limestone cliffs and a select handful of good resorts. Initially opened to tourists as a diving destination in the mid-1980s, El Nido Marine Reserve and its adjacent mainland are an encouraging example of how responsible tourism can preserve rather than trash its own nest. By using local staff and services, small resorts like Miniloc Island and the more luxurious Lagen Island have brought a sustainable, alternative income to many villagers and preserved El Nido from dynamite and cyanide fishing, and indiscriminate logging.

Miss Aleen, the enthusiastic co-coordinator of guest activities at my resort shows me her domain of limestone isles, ancient burial caves, tiny half-moon beaches and those vertical, namesake cliffs. Local spider-men still scale the latter for their swallows' nests — a precious if ecologically unsustainable gourmet indulgence.

The islands of El Nido can seem like a chain of dreams. For two days we explore by banca boat and kayak a world where jungle-clad islets jut from the sea crowned by an untamed topiary of witch's hats and mitre caps. Amid the architecture of some prehistoric Gaudi, we snorkel where piers of coral, undercut by the tide, balance like ballerinas on a jade sea. As we swim, Aleen scatters bread and soon a whirlpool of thousands of jackfish obscures the water around us.

El Nido Marine Reserve and its uninhabited islands are home to a score of scuba diving sites, most with 20–30 metre visibility. Wherever our boat wanders seems to be a diver’s, or snorkeler's playground with some 200 species of fish and 100 species of coral down there for there for our delight.

Swapping our outrigger boat for kayaks, Aleen points the way beneath a low coral archway that is passable only at mid-tide. We glide into a hidden lagoon walled by pandanus-topped cliffs. Within this silent grotto there is little that moves but our paddles. Then a black heron drops from the treetops, swoops across the water and arcs up to perch on a limestone crag. A stingray mirrors the bird's trail, scudding rhythmically across the lagoon floor.

At dusk each day we return to the resort. There’s a terrace overlooking the ocean where I like to relax with a beer, but even by night the gods of El Nido seem incapable of calming their profligate palette. By full moon, the shallows still glow as green as old jade.

Lagen Island Resort sits in Bacuit Bay, surrounded by a lei of some 45 limestone isles that hide tiny beaches and soaring cliffs. The 310-hectare island takes its name from the local word for "stone stove" because its shape resembles a primitive stove with funnels. My fellow guests at the resort are a mix of tourists, Filipinos and expats from Manila, and honeymooning Korean couples.

You know you’re getting old when the honeymooners look too young to even vote, not to mention take marriage vows. One evening, as I survey the resort’s lush dinner buffet – will I have sashimi, chicken adobo or beef satay? – I notice a young Korean man looking perplexed. Spoiled for choice by the gourmet overload, perhaps? He has a worried word with the headwaiter. A chef soon hurries from the kitchen to present him and his dear bride with their heart’s comfort-food desire – instant noodles-in-a-cup.

In the beginning there was a Pacific Eden. The President said, "Let there be zebra." And there were zebra — plus giraffe, gazelle and impala. Calauit Island in the very far northern reaches of Palawan might sound like a Creation Joke but there is no joke about it. This remote island is "home" to eight species of animals that by rights should roam wild only in Africa. Their story, as with many connected to the name Ferdinand Marcos, is an essay in imperial hubris.

In 1976 Philippine President Marcos thought he'd like to go big-game hunting without ever leaving home. Having selected the 3,700-hectare Calauit Island in the Calamian Island group, he had its inhabitants — some 250 families — chased off to another island. He then stocked Calauit with 104 animals from eight non-predatory African species. The animals multiplied and prospered in inverse ratio to the political fortunes of the kleptomaniacal Marcos mob. Big Ferdy and his cronies are long gone but their former playpen remains. On slim resources the Calauit Island Wildlife Sanctuary now operates as a reserve for endangered Philippine species, as well as its exotic African exiles.

Leaving Busuanga our banca boat slips through the silken islands of the Calamian group on its way to Calauit, about one hour away. The Wildlife Sanctuary project manager welcomes us ashore and we pile into his old Landcruiser. Bouncing across the open cogon grasslands of Calauit, I soon spot the languid, cherry picker heads of giraffes drifting through the trees. Nearby, a gallery of op-art zebras seems to have adapted very well to diaspora life in Asia. The manager says that the original animals have bred so well that there are now around 550 of them. Either selling or culling some is now necessary in order to avoid overcrowding.

"All the animals are grazers and browsers," he explains. "Being non-predatory species, they don't attack each other — or the 'locals'." He points out the latter, a group of dainty native Calamian deer sheltering among the ipil-ipil trees. Meanwhile, across the open grasslands are scattered various members of the antelope family ¬— horned bushbucks, waterbucks, eland, shy topi, gazelle and impala. Our vehicle spooks none of them, although when I approach a group of waterbuck, they scoot away from this odd species, a camera-toting, hairy-legged no-buck.

The African animals attract most attention because of the anomaly of their presence, but Calauit's Conservation and Resource Management Foundation now concentrates its efforts on endangered Philippine species. A guide takes us to a netted enclosure holding a beautiful royal blue Palawan peacock pheasant. Staff cutbacks — from 400 in the Marcos heyday — mean that resources are stretched to protect the peacocks, as well as the Philippine crocodile, the Calamian deer and the dainty Palawan mouse deer. One local inhabitant that seems to be doing very nicely is the Palawan bearcat. This bushy, indolent fellow, who is built like a well-fed possum, hangs from a rail by his tail, munching on his favourite snack, a salami sandwich.

We head back out to the grassy plains again, then park up to watch the giraffes swaying by with their bodies both above and below the tree canopy. Try as I may, I can't see anywhere that Marcos-era mutant, the legendary, one thousand-shoed “Imelda-pede.” Gazelles amble past. Bushbucks and waterbucks stare back at us, but since Marcos fled in 1986, Calauit hasn't had a “fastbuck”.

Southern Palawan is less spectacular than both Calauit and El Nido — but so are most places on earth. Its main town, Palawan's provincial capital, Puerto Princesa, has several pretty offshore islands in its Honda Bay, but the south's main claim to fame is the spectacular Underground River, the longest navigable sea cave in the world. From Puerto Princesa it's a bumpy, two-hour jeepney ride to St Paul National Park, then a shorter, less jarring banca boat journey along a jungle coast until we reach the cave mouth of the Underground River.

Hiring a canoe and a boatman equipped with a battery-powered spotlight, we glide into the darkness. This subterranean river weaves eight kilometres inland through limestone caverns. With his beam, Rogel the boatman points out giant calcified flowstones, encrustations of yellow marble that cascade in frozen blooms from the cave ceiling. Bats swirl, more heard than seen. Stalactites drip their minute, millennial extensions. Skittering swiftlets fill the air with clicking sounds until it seems we are in the Cave of a Thousand Geiger Counters.

And then, after 45 minutes we paddle back into the light, to be surrounded again by a jungle of cathedral trees and skittering monkeys, plus a giant lizard waiting for snacks by the picnic tables — the usual range of anomalies of a day in prolific Palawan.

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