Philippines : Mile Post #7

Waking up a little after six a.m., we headed out to get breakfast before our island tour began. Over-hearing there was a "big" storm coming in that day, although it was pretty nice still, we stopped into the tour agency before breakfast. Apparently, due to the tropical storms proximity, the one mentioned on T.V. the previous night (or was it morning?), the Coast Guard cancelled all tours for the day. God damnit! No boats were allowed to sail. If a magic-ball could only have told us to take the tour on Friday and go out snorkeling, by ourselves, on Saturday. But such a magic-ball was not consulted and we were left wondering what to do with our day. The Siete Pecados were beautiful and we considered travelling back there, swimming out there, until acknowledging that perhaps a possible winter typhoon was a serious claim. We checked three other shops and they all claimed we could not go anywhere. In fact, even the land trip over to a Safari area, required a boat -- and any boats in the water would be subject to severe penalties. Yes, a northern island of Busuanga possess an African safari type reserve and we could have visited if situations would have changed. Zoos / wildlife reserves and third world countries don't usually mix, and we opted out of the safari originally, when considering Coron, because of the probable way they would treat the animals. Perhaps I am being overly judgmental, but there were not sufficient enough reviews to warrant a visit, reviews that could enlighten us of the conditions that the animals lived in and if they were happy or treated poorly. But anyway, we couldn't even get there. We couldn't go hiking because no tricycle driver would take us out, fearing the muddy roads would make it impossible to return, so we were stuck in town. In fact, everybody was stuck in town. Loads of people meandered about with long faces obviously disappointed that their plans were cancelled.  Reflecting on our true mission of the island, we decided to return to Manikit hot spring for a long soak. We saw Ador on our way to get breakfast and, after eating breakfast, took him up on the offer to chauffeur us around for the day. It was just past eight fifteen when we arrived at the hot springs, the gates opened at eight a.m., and we asked Ador to return for us at four p.m. Thus is how our day began; and what a day it was!

(pictures taken on both days compose shots for this post)

A banner to welcome guests

The entrance, with armed guard

 It costs 150 pesos, roughly $3.50 for admittance into the spring area.

The five hundred feet (roughly) walk to the pools

On the left, a shack sells drinks and treats for guests. Unlike the price gauging that goes on elsewhere in the world, this unique spot sold water for the same price as could be purchased in town. Long story short, Dacota and I (with the help of others) bought them out of bottled water during our stay.

Some of the pools

This is a natural salt water spring with artificial retaining pool. Unlike the sulfur, Alkalescent carbonic acid, or Alkalescent sodium bicarbonate hot springs, no scent issued from the salt water. It was simply hot salt water, consistent in temperature and extremely unique. This spot proved all hot springs are not equal and gave a completely different feeling than the other springs we've visited. They did not help, as much, with muscle soreness but made my skin feel like a million bucks. There are four main pools. The largest pool is at a depth of roughly three and a half feet and at a temperature of  37C. The two hotter pools are roughly 40C, around four feet deep. Separated from the others, a small wading pool for kids was about a foot and a half in depth. The main pool is huge and can be swam across if one wants exercise. It was also the perfect temperature

No cold water flowed into the pools and the consistent temperature felt as though one was truly in a hot tub / bath tub. A cold water douse feels really nice, as a means to combat overheating, yet no cold water can be found. In fact, one needs to head out some 100 feet into the bay for the cold (tropical cold that is) water of the ocean to be cool enough. If there was any downside to the hot springs, this is my one complaint.  A constant input of hot salt water pored in and various overflow ports allowed water to escape, perfectly regulating the water volume. Green algae grew in the the channels that the spill-over ran down to reach the ocean. Algae also grew in the pool but wasn't overbearing. I'd think that even the most prude person would find these clean enough. Because of this spill-over, the ocean bay near the pools is comfortably warm, hence the required distance to actually find cold water. If ever a person cannot afford the entrance fee or the pool becomes over-crowded (which would be difficult given its size) one could find comfort in the bay.

Another vantage

The third pool on the other side of the shrine

The shrine

A walkway allows one to walk to a small dock on the other side of the mesh fence. Probably to keep critters out of the pools, a mesh fence runs around the exterior of the hot-springs.

The walkway

Definitely not as practical as a "well-built" deck, something rustic and beautiful drew me to the construction of this walkway.

Mangroves

Mangroves stood as a natural barrier between the ocean and the pools. These beautiful trees most likely inspire vivid stories to the youths of the country.

We found a crab

 During one of our various cool-off session, we climbed the "ladder" (a makeshift ladder of natural branches nailed together) from the bay onto the dock. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw this little fella and, thinking it was a tarantula at first, began snapping photos. Once we stopped moving, the crab edged its way into the light and we realized that we were mistaken, but happy enough with the photo session.

Various times already, rain hammered the island. Deciding to cancel the tours that day now made sense. Dacota and I, expert hot springers, (well Dacota is and continues to teach me the art) sat under our umbrellas happy to have the cold water run down our backs, creating perfect homeostasis. Mini arrived, with a few friends, and provided a few hours of conversation. Dacota and her got along famously and, while they talked, I relaxed.

It was this beginning that started our loquacious day. After a few hours, Mini departed and we were left by ourselves. Meeting her in El Nido, some four days ago, helped to stage an excellent/eventful trip. Without her insistence, we would have simply taken the Friday shuttle, completely missing the Germans, Jennifer (the new age Chinese woman), Steve (the youthful retired man), and the interesting banca ride. Given that the storm hit on Saturday, we would have missed out on any adventure in Coron. Although I haven't spoken much of Mini, the life she lives is rather amazing. After working an extremely well paying job, she has spent the last year having awesome adventures, although her proclivity to travel started long before and, even during her busiest times, managed a few adventures a year. India, Africa, Nepal, The Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, Europe, the United States ... and the list continues. Everything from scuba diving to sky diving, her adventures are impressive. Dacota basically found the woman of his dreams and fell madly in-love with her; maybe one day she will realize my brother is the perfect guy.  I sincerely hope the best for her.

After she and her friends departed, the flood gate opened. At this point, we'd been in the hot spring for over five hours and more and more people began showing up. Dacota, taking every chance to practice Chinese, talked with more people than I can remember. Anyone from foreign workers in Manila, to Shanghai, Beijing, Hunan, etc. people were conversed with. Many seemed to find him a surprising anomaly, an American who could speak fairly fluent Chinese.

At one point we greeted an older white man and struck up an intense conversation. Douglas, a Canadian construction worker (steel stud framer) in his mid fifties had spent the past month in the Philippines attempted to volunteer his services to reconstruct buildings on Coron. He wasn't like the electrician back home, that is for sure, and spoke on topics of cosmic destiny and freedom, about where our civilization was going and about leaving the monetary rat-race in search of personal satisfaction. I asked his advice on how to remain happy as an electrician, being a black sheep amongst my fellow electricians which has caused considerable confrontation at times, and he spoke of people offering me increased consciousness and increased chances/methods to reevaluate my premises. He told me that my own "light" would help illuminate the paths of others and that, through my connection to them, I offered them pathways for salvation as they moved in their own reality tunnels. (Although he did not speak of reality tunnels, this is what his meaning broke down to). He talked about his various shamanic journeys and about finding guidance, while using various "tools", about how to conduct his life in a positive manner. What an interesting man.

An American, Casey, living and teaching in Taiwan, and his girlfriend were the next, in-depth, conversation I partook in. Dacota, in the interim had spoken with dozens of people. Casey and I talked about how  amazingly safe, awesome and friendly Taiwan is, and about my pending decision to return to the States. The idea of trying to obtain a scholarship and start a master's program at a Taiwan university sparked my interest greatly. His opinion followed in-line with Steve, both questioning why I felt the conservative need to return home; whereas, Douglas offered an alternative view. The hot-spring gave me much needed reflection and have left me riddled with indecision. Fortunately though, I have another six months to decided.

Charley, a Filipino tour/boat guide, and I struck up a conversation. He recommended a few places that we might be able to find herps and talked about maybe hiring him for a island tour.

Mid-afternoon approached and we noticed an influx of people combined with armed guards.

An armed soldier

 Unsure what the deal was, we continued our soak. While sneakily taking a picture, I looked up to see two Chinese guys leave the pool and take a photograph with the armed guard. What the hell! As far as I am aware, in America, police and military members are not allowed to take photos with civilians while on duty and I couldn't help myself.

Strapped!

 I giddily requested to be photographed with this man who accepted my request. How awesome!

Hao shuài

Very handsome!
But what were these guards all about.

Four p.m. rolled around and Ador came to retrieve us. We reluctantly headed out, and, while leaving the muddy parking lot, that an additional four hours of hot springing was necessary. Absolutely necessary! We asked Ador to take us back and return at eight (when the springs closed). We cheerily waved to the armed guard, who had admitted us some nine hours ago, and entered without needing to repay the entrance fee.

Casey and his girlfriend ( :-( I forgot her name) were in the hot pool, to the east of the statue, and I decided to reestablish our our conversation. Dozens of people were taking pictures in the pool and I questioned him about the scene. Apparently, one of the women and two of the men (all extremely attractive) were famous Filipino T.V. stars. Who would have thought. We watched the scene progress and decided we should take the opportunity to have our 5 minutes of fame. Calling Dacota over, the photo session quieted down, and we requested a photograph with the famous lady, whose name was discovered some time later. She seemed happy enough to oblige, but her manager/father? seemed somewhat pissed off about our request. White immunity to the rescue!

Our new girlfriend

 She was very polite and we thanked her for the opportunity to meet a famous Filipina, although at the time we had no idea who she was.

Water distortion

 Serene living.

After a while, the famous people left and the pool returned to its normal level of activity.

Sunset

 This pictures was obviously not taken during the rainy day but is a good segue to continue the story.

Four filipino boys, all younger than us. At least two with kids already. Sorry for the water smudge.

 Filipino people, thus far, had been extremely friendly and nice and these gentlemen were no exception. They gave us soda and mangos and chatted with us for an hour. We showed them the picture of our new "girlfriend" and they were shocked. They told us who she was and, for the first time, we understood who we were able to take a picture with. This woman's name is Anne Curtis and it has been fun to read about her online. The two main guys we spoke with, (the plaid shirt and the short sleeve shirt) both had children, weren't working, to my understanding, yet somehow survived. The details were even unclear to me at the time but, no matter, they were really nice and interesting. The guy in plaid, recently, after a few affairs, decided to settle down with his child's mother and start an adult life together. I wish them the best. This style of life, as told to us by a few people, is common for the youthful men of the country and women are often left solely raising the children.

At this point, we outlasted everyone but the staff. We bought the small shop out of water, a few gallons worth, and were relaxed enough to leave when Ador came to pick us up. Almost twelve hours in the salt spring and I felt great. My skin was velvety soft, although not wrinkled in the slightest, and contentment filled my heart.

While at the hot spring, a boat operator but he name of Charley, whose mannerisms were almost identical to my brother Shea, told us of a place called Kingfisher park, where he'd seen snakes before. We asked Ador about getting there and he happily said he would accommodate us. At nine-thirty p.m. he would pick us up and take us to the park. At this point, you have the same amount of information we had about the rumored park.

A delicious meal of Korean food, meeting up, once again, with Casey and his girlfriend, and meeting a Canadian girl by the name of Lauren, we walked back to the hostel chatting. They planned to have a great night out and invited us, but we, of course, declined to do some exploring.

(Update: At this point, I want to announce that some of these species have been identified by some nice folks that I will be adventuring with in the future. I've hence changed the descriptions to a more enlightened tone.)

It took about forty five minutes to get to the mangroves at the park and the situation we came to was unexpected. I expect a park, like a park found anywhere in the U.S., but what we drove up to was a ship and a beach of sorts. The guard/ship owner came off the boat and asked us if we needed a guide. We, being cheap, obviously declined and simply asked for him to point us to the park, to which there was much confusion. What this beach area had to do with the park was bizarre. We thought we were supposed to go to a park with trees, why the hell were we here? Ador, nor his son's friend who came along, spoke English well enough to understand our demands and we were like, "What the fuck! This isn't the right place" We began walked along the shoreline and the captain followed, and soon began to lead the way. Where were we going? Thus a weird situations unfolded around us, lack of communication and sporadic plans unfolding into this debauchery. We stopped at a swamp area and began photographing everything that moved.

A common toad species

"a mudskipper (a kind of fish that can leave the water and move about on shallow land for brief periods)"

 I need do so some more research, but this guy is weird!

"A hermit crab, in its shell"

 It is hard to tell exactly what Dacota was photographing but we get some hint that it was cool.

The wharf cat

This friendly little guy lives under a small boat and is very spry. The fishermen obviously play with him, and fed him, and the old man walking with us, gave him a loving pat.

As we walked along, the old man would bring us his findings for us to photograph, besides what we were able to find ourselves. During one of these episodes, we heard some commotion, and we turned to see the cat, out herping with us, found a specimen.

Yum. Frog Dinner

Drop it for a minute!

 This old man did not speak any English and subdued the wharf cat before we could object (by holding him at the scruff of the neck).

The cat dropped the frog long enough for us to take a picture.

The doomed frog

The animal kingdom of predator and prey continued; we turned our backs to the very happy cat.

Crab ready to fight. 

 These crabs were none too happy being disturbed.

"Why do you want to fuck with me", asks the crab.

 During this brief encounter, our guide, the old man, flipped the crab so I could get a shot of its underbelly. Why he did this is a mystery to me. Again, we could not communicate with him and he didn't know our purpose besides finding critters. While flipping the crab, the one of the pinchers grabbed the old man's finger and held on. He relaxed, I gestured and fidgeting trying to help him, but he pushed me away. After about thirty seconds, the crab released its grip and the old man regained his subdued finger. Not sure why he was even here helping us, I felt bad about the situation, but what could I do without any means to communicate.

A "cricket"

These insects are pretty much the same everywhere.

This is when our story took a turn. We'd returned from the swamp area, patrolled the road, surrounded by mangrove swamp, and were huddled together with Ador, his son's friend, and the old man, trying  to ask about Kingfisher Park. The old man pointed towards the canoes and said we could get there by canoe. Huh?!

After a long conversation, with a significant amount of repeated sentences, I believe that Kingfisher Park is located on a small island a few kilometers from our beach and people rent kayaks or canoes to visit the area. Because of the time, the old man flat out refused to guide us out there, rightfully so!, but we were disappointed none-the-less. We thanked him for his time but didn't pay him. We brought only the required amount of money needed to pay Ador, but looking back, we probably should have dropped the old man some cheese, even though we hadn't asked his guidance. Ador would have waited for us to grab some money out of our things if we were short, no doubt about that. I've become better at tipping for services and respecting people's time by giving extra money (hence why we did next to no haggling in on an island where haggling is the norm. These people live hard lives, what is the difference between a dollar or a dollar fifty. I guess that is just my view though). The situation and time was just so weird that I was caught off-guard. We'd expected, unjustly, that this park would offer snakes and stuff. I guess I should have asked more questions instead of assuming something that was blatantly incorrect.

Ador, I believe, felt bad that we were unable to find snakes and stopped several times and joined us on our hunt. One stop, in a field, yielded nothing. He said that we would explore a river, and twenty minutes later, we stopped and headed down an embankment to do an evening river trace. Much like Bomb, neither of these men had searched for critters at night before but were quickly amused and interested. They followed us around, took off to explore some crab or fish they found, and I'm fairly certain they we all generally had a great time on our mini-adventure.

While walking through the stream, I almost stepped on this guy

 We spent a half our in this gross river water, hiking until the river became too deep to go further without getting soaked.

 A crab

Although this evening offered very little animal life, and was completely different than what was within our minds-eye, it was none-the-less very fun; an experience of misunderstanding and cock-sure thinking while in a foreign environment. We returned to our hotel a little after two in the morning. I very much appreciate Ador's enthusiasm and willingness to help us out. Part of me realizes that a motorbike would have been cheaper, if we'd rented one and drove around, but being driven around made me feel very high-class. For the entire days adventure with Ador, including his second return trip at eight because of our change of plans, we payed him $25. This was a decent wage for him, as most field hands make about $8 a day. His kindness deserved far more money but, given our means, we paid him the rate we agreed upon. What a unique evening.