El Nido, Palawan is known for its beautiful islands, and island hopping is one of the most popular activities that you can do there. 

There are four island hopping tours that you can do while in El Nido. There's tour A, B, C, and D. Since I was traveling solo, I decided to join group tours that are being offered by a travel agency in Palawan. I wanted to do all four tours but only Tour A and C were meeting the minimum number of tourists joining, so I wasn't able to do B and D.

On my second day in El Nido, I joined Tour C. These were the islands on the itinerary: Helicopter Island, Secret Beach, Talisay Beach, Hidden Beach, and Matinloc Shrine.

Helicopter Island, with local name Dilumacad Island, is called as such because it looks
like a helicopter from afar.

Secret Beach is a small piece of paradise that is hidden by cliffs. We had to swim for a short
distance to get to this beach. It is a cove that has a nice shallow spot for swimming. There is also
a shallow reef area where you can see lots of little fish.

Talisay Beach is a small beach with white sand. It is a nice spot for chilling and swimming.
It's also where we had lunch.

Talisay Beach also has a nice snorkeling spot on the right side when you are facing the island.

Hidden Beach is another beach that is concealed by cliffs. We also had to swim to get there.
The distance that we swam was much longer compared to that of Secret Beach, and this time,
we had to enter through an underwater cave.

Matinloc Shrine is an abandoned site hidden at the foot of towering cliffs. The site has
a dome-shaped structure with columns. In the center of the dome, there is a circular altar with the
 image of the Blessed Virgin Mary with a cross.

The site also has a deck where you can get a nice view of the neighboring islands. We had to go
on a very short trek up the cliff to get to the deck. 

The whole tour lasted for nearly the whole day. The meet-up at El Nido Port was around 9am. We got back past 4pm.

It was a pretty organized tour. We were given ample time to enjoy each stop. Lunch and afternoon snack was included and the food was good.

Overall, it was a good day even though it rained really hard towards the end as we were making our way back to the port.

That's it for this blog. Keep posted for more Palawan adventures.