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.

When we woke up we realized that this was a special day indeed, it was time for *drumbeat* Island hopping tour C! We shared the boat with two couples and a older German guy. The older German started off by friendly asking Mirsada which sports she was exercising, since she had so muscular calves. Mirsada as most girls was very flattered by a stranger pointing out how muscular legs she had.

The tour offered some rather nice snorkeling, we saw two smaller sawfishes playing/fighting with each other among other things but the most spectacular thing was a white and black banded sea snake. It was slightly above a meter long and rather thin, still for the first time I decided that closer is not always better and observed it from a safe distance not knowing whether it was harmful or not.

After the somewhat awkward introduction Mirsada and the German guy become best friends. He explained that Mirsada was special (no news to me, in every possible interpretation) and he could sense this from her aura. They discussed spiritual healing and traveling (the guy had visited some 76 countries or so and had quite a few tales) while I found some razor sharp rocks to practice my climbing on. I even managed to get down without major injuries when lunch was ready.

The photo depicts the rather small opening one had to snorkel through to get to a small lagoon with a beach inside. It was rather rough seas though (don’t trust the photo) so timing was quite important, currents and waves could mess one up pretty bad on the rocks. We both got there safely but I’m not sure your average senior tourist would have passed unscathed.

After finishing the island hopping we had pizzas at Art Café and sealed the future plans by booking our trip to Coron with a larger banca for Thursday and buying tickets online from Coron to Manilla on a “Superferry” for Sunday. The calm evening was concluded by watching some episodes of Elfen Lied, nice anime – kudos to Ulf for the tip.

The days objective was to come up with a rough plan for the remaining trip. We wanted to see the whale sharks in Donsol (which required a flight to Legaspi) and also wanted some more diving and a couple of days in Manilla. This ought to be no match for two persons familiar with scheduling optimization.

We gathered of intel from the guidebook and Internet and came up with a rough plan; we would head straight to Manilla, take a round-trip to Legaspi and then take a bus towards Puerto Gallera (possibly passing by lake Taal and it’s volcano). This required us to get an early flight out from the expensive ITI airline and we thus went to purchase this ticket since they had no online booking.

This was of course doomed. That the prices had risen too 140 € didn’t deter travelers and the first available tickets were two days later in the afternoon. No suitable ferries left in time and it was not that compelling to take a whole day of bus to Puerto Princessa and from there try to find a flight. Bah. We started to revise our plan at Art Café (according to our guidebook housed in a shack – in reality a spacious two-storied villa) where we met Christian.

Christian was a swedish tourist who combined his trip with a little work for Metro as a journalist about the Survivor shootings. We chatted about travel and the futility of plans, he had himself had a backpack of his stolen two days before his departure while he was moving. In this backpack he had his passport, tickets, keys to to an apartment, work computer etc. He still had his phone though and had stayed at a friend (over Christmas) and was now traveling on a temporary passport (without all needed visas) and looked forward to obtaining a new temporary passport with required visas in Manilla for future traveling. We agreed that rescheduling needs were rather small in comparison.

The night was dedicated for a slightly more robust plan, we would take a larger banca to Coron for some diving and then a superferry (love that name) to Manilla where we would shop and chill. If we got a hotel with a swimming pool we could perhaps find a replacement for whale sharks (e.g. obese tourists) there.

No photos were unfortunately taken during the day but I’ll present a picture of the island that Mirsada and myself have named “Yoshi Island”. After the underground river we have gotten into the habit of making out familiar patterns from natural formations. Since apparently anything can look like the holy virgin Mary, it’s not more than fair that a few things which really do look familiar should be named as well.