Bacuit Bay
Lagoons, sandbars, hidden beaches and reef. Pick a letter, or let us build the day around you.
The routes are fixed. The day is not.
El Nido's island hopping is regulated into four lettered routes, each with five stops grouped by geography so the boat spends less time moving and more time anchored. Every operator in town sails the same water. Boats leave the main beach around nine in the morning and are back by late afternoon, and the standard fare includes lunch cooked aboard or on a beach, drinking water, mask and snorkel, life jacket, and pickup from your hotel.
What we add is the boat and the timing. Our crews know which lagoon fills first and which stop is worth taking late, so the order of your day is not the same as the boat next to us.
The postcard route, and the one to take if you only have a single day on the water. Big Lagoon is the centrepiece: a narrow entrance opens into a wide emerald pool walled by limestone, best paddled rather than motored. Small Lagoon is reached by swimming or kayaking through a gap in the rock. Secret Lagoon hides behind a crack barely wide enough for one person.
Quieter than A and C, and geologically the most varied. Snake Island is not named for reptiles but for the S-shaped sandbar that surfaces at low tide and lets you walk between two islands. Cudugnon Cave is an archaeological site where evidence of early Palawan inhabitants was found; the entrance is a squeeze.
Many people who do more than one route say C is the better day. It trades lagoons for outer islands, dramatic rock and the best snorkelling of the four. Secret Beach sits inside a limestone ring reached by swimming through a crevice at the waterline. Helicopter Island takes its name from its profile on the horizon.
The closest route to town and the least crowded, which makes it a good half-day or a good second day. Cadlao Lagoon sits under the largest island in the bay. The beaches are small, shallow and calm — better for swimming and lying still than for covering ground.
Short on time? A and C can be run together in one day by speedboat, as can B and C. You see the headline stops of two routes and skip the rest. It is a long day on the water and not the one to choose if you want to swim at every stop.
Your own boat, your own departure time, your own order of stops. Worth it for families, groups, photographers and anyone who would rather reach Big Lagoon before the fleet does. We can combine stops across routes on a private day, which is not possible on a shared boat.
On selected stops our crew goes ashore ahead of you and builds the beach out before the boat arrives — shade canopies, beanbags and low tables, coolers with cold drinks, towels, proper serviceware and music pitched to the hour. You step off onto somewhere already set up rather than onto bare sand with a dry bag.
Lunch made to travel. Proper food in a box that survives a morning on a bangka and gets eaten on a beach with no kitchen within twenty kilometres — not a foil tray of rice going cold under a tarpaulin.
Municipal eco-tourism fees and lagoon entrance fees are collected locally and are not included in tour fares. We will tell you what to expect before you travel.
Tell us your dates, how many of you there are, and what you’d like to see. We’ll put together the days that make sense and come back to you.
hello@soma.tours