Travel deep dive
El Nido, Coron and the Wrecks Between Them
El Nido and Coron sit on the same island province and get lumped together in trip planning, but they're genuinely different experiences built on different mechanisms — one a fixed-route lagoon-touring system, the other a single historical event that left a bay full of sunken ships.
Updated 2026-08-15
Why El Nido's tours are lettered, not custom
El Nido's Tours A, B, C and D aren't marketing labels for a flexible itinerary — they're four fixed routes, each visiting a different combination of Bacuit Bay's 45 islands, run by a rotating pool of licensed boat operators under a shared system rather than each operator inventing its own route. That structure exists to manage boat traffic and protect specific reef and lagoon sites from being visited by every tour on the same day, which is also why a multi-day stay typically means doing two or three different letters rather than repeating the same tour. A separate Eco Tourism Development Fee, valid for ten days and required before joining any tour, funds the marine park's ranger presence and conservation work — it's paid once regardless of how many tour letters get done within the validity window.
Coron's lakes, not open-bay islands
Coron's own island-hopping tours run on the same licensed-operator model as El Nido's, but the geography is fundamentally different: Coron's signature stops are freshwater crater lakes — Kayangan Lake and Barracuda Lake among them — filled inside collapsed limestone formations rather than open ocean bays. Kayangan Lake's water is often cited as among the clearest in the Philippines, a direct result of being enclosed and largely wind-sheltered compared to open water. That's the genuine reason Coron and El Nido aren't a repeat of each other despite both being sold as “island-hopping” — one tours a bay of islands, the other tours inland lakes reached by a short walk from the shore.
A single afternoon that built a world-class dive site
Every major wreck in Coron Bay dates to the same few hours: a US Navy carrier air raid on 24 September 1944 caught a Japanese logistics fleet sheltering in the bay, sinking around a dozen vessels before nightfall. The bay's calm, moderate-depth water preserved the wrecks well enough that decades of coral growth have turned several hulls into functioning reef habitat, which is the specific reason Coron ranks among the world's best wreck-diving destinations rather than merely having old ships underwater. Depths range from near-surface — some wrecks are shallow enough for snorkellers — down to around 40 metres, spanning easy recreational dives through to technical-certification territory on the deepest hulls.