Few places in the world are as breathtaking as Bacuit Bay. Picture dozens of limestone islets rising sheer from an impossibly turquoise sea, crowned with jungle, with secret lagoons of emerald water tucked between the cliffs, dazzling white-sand beaches reachable only by boat, and reefs full of colourful fish. That is El Nido, at the northern tip of Palawan, the 'last frontier' of the Philippines, chosen again and again as one of the most beautiful island landscapes on the planet.
The heart of the experience is 'island hopping': heading out on a bangka (the traditional Filipino outrigger boat) and cruising from islet to islet, paddling into lagoons hemmed in by stone walls, swimming in crystal-clear water, snorkelling over the coral and having grilled fish for lunch on a deserted beach. The classic tours (A, B, C and D) each cover a different selection of these wonders: the Big Lagoon and the Small Lagoon, the beaches of the Secret Lagoon, the islets of tour C with its Hidden Beach and Matinloc… A catalogue of real-life postcards.
This guide helps you plan paradise: which tour to choose, how much they cost and what they include, how to get there (by air or by road from Puerto Princesa), which beaches and viewpoints to see on land, and how to handle fees and cash in a destination as beautiful as it is somewhat overcrowded. El Nido may be trendy and packed in high season, but all it takes is paddling into a hidden lagoon, with the rock walls closing in over the green water, to understand why the whole world wants to come here.
The name 'El Nido' is Spanish and literally means 'the nest': it was named after the edible nests of the swiftlets that nest in the area's limestone caves and cliffs, whose nests have been harvested for centuries for bird's nest soup, a highly prized delicacy in Chinese cuisine. Before that name, the place was called Bacuit, and the area was inhabited by Indigenous peoples such as the Tagbanua and the Cuyonon. Thanks to its strategic position between the Philippines and Borneo, Palawan had early contact with Chinese and Malay traders; there are millennia-old archaeological finds in the region (such as the famous Tabon Cave, further south, with human remains tens of thousands of years old). The Spanish held more nominal than effective control over much of Palawan, which remained a remote, sparsely populated frontier. For a long time El Nido was a quiet fishing village, almost unknown to tourism. Only in the last decades of the 20th century and, above all, in the 21st century did the fame of Bacuit Bay's beauty turn it into one of the great destinations of the Philippines and the world. The full history of Palawan and El Nido is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The Philippines' last frontier: a long, wild island that holds the country's oldest human remains, the Second World War wrecks of Coron and the karst landscapes of El Nido.
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No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Oddly enough, the name of this paradise is Spanish and very literal: 'El Nido', meaning 'The Nest'. But a nest of what? The answer lies in the limestone cliffs that make the place so spectacular. In the caves and sheer walls of those rocks live swiftlets, birds similar to swifts that build their nests out of their own hardened saliva, stuck to the rock in the highest and most hidden corners of the caves.
Those nests are no small detail: they are an extremely expensive delicacy. In Chinese cuisine, bird's nest soup is a luxury dish, prized for centuries for its supposed properties and its rarity. Gathering the nests is an old, dangerous and specialised trade: collectors have to climb the cave walls, often very high up and in the dark, to carefully detach them. For generations, this trade linked the remote Bacuit Bay with the markets of Asia.
Before it was called El Nido, the place was known as Bacuit, a name the bay still carries. It was the Spanish who, in the 19th century, renamed the area 'El Nido' precisely because of the edible nests that were gathered in such numbers from its cliffs. So the name we now link with turquoise lagoons and dream beaches actually came from a bird, a cave and a bowl of soup: a small story that sums up the mix of cultures (local, Chinese and Spanish) that shapes all of Palawan.
You can't understand El Nido without Palawan, the long, narrow island province that stretches like a bridge to the south-west, between the rest of the Philippines and the island of Borneo. Palawan is known as the country's 'last frontier': because it is so remote, so thinly populated and so remarkably well preserved, it was a distant, wild territory for centuries, and it is still the most biodiverse province in the Philippines, a refuge of jungles, reefs and unique species.
This 'frontier' has been inhabited since very ancient times. Palawan is home to one of the most important archaeological sites in South-East Asia: the Tabon Caves, in the south of the island, where human remains tens of thousands of years old were found (the so-called 'Tabon Man'). They show that the region was one of the gateways through which the first humans settled the archipelago. Its closeness to Borneo made Palawan a natural bridge for migration and contact.
In pre-colonial times, the El Nido area and northern Palawan were home to Indigenous peoples such as the Tagbanua and the Cuyonon, each with their own culture tied to the sea, fishing, foraging and trade. The Tagbanua in particular still keep their traditions, an ancestral script and a special bond with certain sacred islands and lakes in the region (as in neighbouring Coron). The history of El Nido was built on this Indigenous foundation and this frontier geography.
Sitting between the Philippines, Borneo and the South China Sea routes, Palawan was linked to the great Asian maritime trade from early on. Chinese, Malay and other traders sailed its coasts exchanging goods, and many finds of old Chinese porcelain bear witness to that contact. With its hiding places among the islets, the north of the island was also, for centuries, a passage for all kinds of boats, including feared raids by pirates and slave-raiding groups from the south.
For much of its history, Spanish colonisation of Palawan was more on paper than in practice. Unlike Luzon or the Visayas, which were densely populated and organised by the friars, Palawan was a distant frontier: hard to reach, thinly populated and with a strong presence of independent Muslim and Indigenous communities, especially in the south. Spain set up a few outposts and missions but never fully controlled the island, which remained a remote, peripheral territory within the empire.
In this context, El Nido (then Bacuit) was little more than a small settlement of fishers and gatherers, known, if at all, for its swallows' nests. It only became a formal municipality late in the colonial period and, above all, under American administration in the 20th century. For a very long time, the extraordinary beauty of Bacuit Bay went unnoticed by the world, known only to those who lived off its waters. Paradoxically, being a forgotten corner helped keep its landscapes intact until tourism discovered them.
For most of the 20th century, El Nido remained a quiet fishing village in a forgotten corner of Palawan, completely untouched by tourism. Change began to take shape in the last decades of the century, when divers and adventurous travellers started arriving, drawn by the still-secret fame of the incredible Bacuit Bay. A major milestone was the opening, in the 1980s, of the first luxury resorts on islands in the bay, which put El Nido on the map for high-end tourism and conservation (the area was declared a protected area to preserve its marine and land ecosystem).
The big leap came in the 21st century, thanks to the internet and social media. Images of El Nido's turquoise lagoons, sheer islets and hidden beaches went around the world, and the place began to appear again and again on the big travel magazines' lists of 'the most beautiful islands on the planet'. Within a few years, El Nido went from a destination for well-informed backpackers to a mass tourism phenomenon: hotels, hostels, restaurants and tour operators multiplied, and the town grew at full speed to welcome an ever-rising number of visitors.
That dizzying success brought prosperity, but also the usual problems of rapid growth: pressure on the environment, waste and water management, overcrowding in high season and the risk of becoming a victim of its own success. The authorities responded with regulations (environmental fees, limits and controls at the lagoons, sustainability campaigns) to try to balance tourism with protecting the very things that draw people here. Because, at heart, the story of El Nido is that of a fragile paradise that the world took centuries to discover and now has to learn to look after.
21st-century El Nido is one of the undisputed stars of Philippine tourism and one of the most famous island destinations in the world. Every year, hundreds of thousands of travellers from all over the planet make their way to this corner of northern Palawan to sail around Bacuit Bay, paddle into the Big Lagoon, swim at Secret Beach or watch the sunset from Las Cabañas. Its economy, once based on fishing, now revolves almost entirely around tourism, which has brought jobs and opportunities to thousands of local people.
That boom lives alongside very real tensions. In high season, El Nido's popularity has pushed it to the edge of overcrowding: crowds of boats in the lagoons, packed beaches, and pressure on water, energy and waste management in a town whose infrastructure grew faster than its services. The example of other Philippine destinations hit by uncontrolled tourism, such as Boracay, which the government even closed for six months to rehabilitate it, is a constant warning. That is why sustainability has become the key word: limits on visitor numbers at the lagoons, environmental fees, bans on single-use plastics and awareness campaigns.
For travellers, all this comes down to a concrete responsibility. Enjoying El Nido mindfully (respecting the corals and not touching or standing on them, using reef-safe sunscreen, leaving no rubbish, choosing responsible operators, and avoiding peak season if you can) is not an imposition but the only way for this paradise to stay one. Like few other places, El Nido shows that extreme beauty is also extremely fragile, and that the privilege of seeing it comes with the duty to protect it.
