Nacpan Beach

Nacpan is on the north-east coast of Palawan, about forty minutes by road from El Nido town on a route that was unsealed within living memory and is now mostly not. The beach runs four kilometres, ending at a low headland with a second beach, Calitang, on the far side.

It is the counterweight to El Nido's islands. The town's reputation rests on limestone karst and boat tours through the Bacuit archipelago; Nacpan is the mainland beach nobody built on, and it stayed that way largely because the road was bad. Development has arrived since, in the form of small resorts and beach bars, but the scale is still low and the palm line still reads as the tallest thing on the shore.

The sand is golden and fine, the slope gentle, and the water open ocean rather than reef-protected — there is real surf here in the north-east monsoon and a shore break at other times. Swimming is straightforward in calm conditions and less so when the swell is up. The headland at the far end, the Twin Beach viewpoint, is a short steep climb with the view that sells the place.

Development is a scattering: a village at the southern end, a handful of bars and small resorts, tricycles and vans running from town. There is no strip, no promenade and no continuous line of anything. Duli Beach, half an hour further north on a rougher road, is the next beach along and is what Nacpan was fifteen years ago: longer, emptier and with almost nothing built on it.

Four kilometres with almost nothing on it, twenty minutes of rough road from El Nido, and a shore break that is stronger than it looks. Climb the headland between Nacpan and Calitang for the view of both, then swim at the southern end where the current eases.