Trip Advice: Palawan Early/Mid October

[caribbeandiver]

Greetings All,

My friend and I are flying into Puerto Princesa in mid-October and plan to explore Palawan for a week. We are an Advanced diver and Divemaster and are pretty open to most types of dives. We plan to dive three of the days we're there and explore the rest of the time. Suggestions of where we should head, who we should dive with, reasonable places to stay, things we should see topside, anything we should be wary of (other than the standard fare - we've traveled to 30+ countries), etc? Thanks so much for any and all advice!

Best,
Sara

 

[Kenr]

i just got back from Palawan last month. From Puerto Princesa you could work your way up to El Nido. Its a 6 or 7 hour van trip from PP. You might be able to arrange for a trip out in the morning to Sabang and see the underground river. Have some lunch and head out on a van to El Nido. El Nido is small secluded town, its a nice place to hang out of a day or two and get a days worth of diving in. The diving there at least for me was so so but the scenery is worth the trip. If you can make it over to Coron the wreck diving is excellent. You can even do a day trip to the Apo Reef. There are a few boats that go from El Nido to Coron. Its a long trip 7 or 8 hours, the boats may not be running then because its still in the typhoon season. You can fly from El Nido to Coron, I think it was Seair a small regional airline that makes the flight but i recall the fare was expensive. Other than El Nido and some of the high end resorts there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of diving options unless you head out to Coron. If it were me I would go to Visayas for a dive vacation, you have Bohol, Moalboal, Malapascua, Dumaguete, Apo Island, Balicasag, etc.