Arrival at Puerto Princesa

We were four in this trip but we had different flight schedules. I was alone in my flight and perhaps I arrived Puerto Princesa Airport around noon. I took a tricycle to bring me in Puerto Apartments where one of my friends was already waiting.

I highly recommend this house to those who want a budget accommodation here in Puerto Princesa. It has complete amenities for cooking, has aircon and quite spacious. It’s near tourist attractions, markets and the airport. My friend booked this room for P765.00 per night its for four persons already. Incredibly affordable right? She booked it in Agoda.com by the way. I really liked our stay here.

Beside Puerto Apartments was a restaurant named Coco Garden Cafe’. The place was relaxing but the food was quite expensive for me with respect to the quantity or servings.

I chose to eat Danggit  to taste something native in this place. But I didn’t like it. The Danggit meat felt like a rubber and I had a hard time chewing it.

This is actually a chill day and we didn’t have particular plans. But I didn’t want to waste our time here in Puerto Princesa. So I searched the internet for an attraction nearby that we can also visit during nighttime.  Iwahig Firefly Watching fits the bill. As soon as my friends arrived at around 5pm, I immediately told them to drop the bags and hit the road immediately.

Iwahig Firefly Watching

I have never seen a firefly myself. The visuals I know would only be from what I saw in movies and animations. So this got me really hyped.

IMPORTANT DETAILS

• We traveled to Iwahig by renting a tricycle for P500.00 and that would transport us back and forth. We had to rent because transportation from Iwahig would be very difficult specially at night. Most people come here by car.
• Firely watching is done by a 30-40 minute boat ride. Only three passengers + 1 tourguide can fit a boat. Since there were four of us, we were later merged with a couple in one package of P1800. So that would be six of us in that fee.  Then we split in to two boats.
•  There is a buffet restaurant here for P250.00 each person.
•  There are a lot of mosquitoes here. I had to buy a repellant eventually because my legs were bombarded with itchyness.
• There is an official photo during the boatride. It costs P50.00 per print.

The boatride was a little bit scary because it was super dark. But once you get near with the trees and see the fireflies lit up together, it was really cute. However, don’t expect too much that they will come of as magical sight. The fireflies are quite too far and they are too small. It doesn’t looks like the movies.  But still I enjoyed it. The boatman which was the tour guide as well had told as many stories about Philippine fireflies during the ride. He said that the existence of fireflies in a place means a clean environment. This was the reason why you won’t see a firefly in the city. Another interesting thing we encountered here are the sparkling planktons. If you shake the riverwater, the planktons will sparkle. However, the most memorable thing that happened has to be when the firefly flew near our boat and actually landed on my palm. It looked like a mosquito but with lightbulb on its tail. I wish I had taken a photo of it.

Like I told you, the river was so dark my camera had no power to capture anything. These are the only things that I captured while the boat was sailing.  I eventually gave up and just kept my camera in a waterproof bag. I advise, just focus on watching the fireflies and disturbing the planktons when you get here.

By the way, here’s the official photo of our ride. They edited the firefly glows in the picture. That was funny. It costs P50.00 to get a copy.

After that, we retreated back to the Puerto Apartments and get ready for our adventure the next day.

That’s it for the Day 1.  I hope this blog will contribute to your ideas in planning your Puerto Princesa Palawan trip. Because this is a really worthy experience.

Remember, you are awesome!

Gurezu ❤