No island hopping or travel meant no alarms in the morning. After a welcome sleep-in we missed breakfast and decided that we would do some local exploring in El Nido today. After a awesome bowl of noodles for myself and a not so awesome sandwich for Mirsada we left kitted with running shoes and rucksack.

After picking up a hat for Mirsada and asking locals for the way as we were walking through their backyards we found the path that would lead us to the Marble Cliffs. How hard could it be? It was rather steep and the sun somehow managed to gaze through the rather dense jungle but we kept up our pace until we got to a fork. After some thinking we thought that the right path must be right, right?

As we kept on walking a dog started to bark in that not so friendly way, and was quickly joined by one, two, three others standing some thirty-twenty meters from us. As one dog started to move towards us rather than just barking we thought perhaps this was the wrong way after all. Luckily an older lady (is it coincidence that it’s always those saving us?) showed up and with a stick and some sounds made the dogs calm down. She explained that this was indeed the wrong way and we should turn back since there was nothing to see here. Slightly curious if this was true or if the dogs guarded some drug farm we turned back.

After a couple of more forks Mirsada felt slightly tired and rested while I scouted ahead. No marble cliffs but instead a large valley, I guess we could have used a guide after all. We decided to call it a day with the jungle exploration though and headed back, we still had a beach we wanted to find rather close to our hotel.

The beach called Lovers Beach or something similar was not much to see so after some reading we headed back to our hotel. We had sent out some queries for accommodation in Coron wise after our encounter with the fully booked flight the other day. None of the replied made much sense, but I think that “Kokonuss” got it best though. We had asked what rooms they had available, whether they accepted credit cards, how to get there and what dive packages they had. The response was as polite as it was concise – “You are very welcome to check out our available rooms”. I love this country.

We asked around about the rumored ATM in Coron and were informed that it indeed existed, however it did not accept international credit cards. Well, better finding out now than in Coron so we made a cash advance (at the Petron-station, 6% rather than Art Cafés 10% fee) to be on the safe side.

We had dinner at some place that seemed popular among the locals and ordered steamed Tuna. After 45 minutes a waiter with that If I smile more than this I’ll rip up my cheeks-smile appeared with two plates with a small fish and some rice. We pointed out that we had ordered Tuna and he said that this was Tuna, small Tuna. We were hungry so we just smiled and finished our plates. When the bill arrived we pointed out that this was not Tuna, nor “small Tuna”. The manager simply offered us a lower price – no excuses or comments that they had tried to trick us. Magical.