The Adventure never ends in Coron

Finally, the super delayed continuation of my Coron adventures post!

Everybody was nodding off as we putter from the Siete Pecados to the Maquinit Hot Springs. As the boat docked, Gail and I were only concerned about finding the toilets. We hurried through the wooden brige that winds though the mangroves and into the Hot Springs’s only two toilets.

Afterwards, we settled into a hut. The day’s exertions in the sea left us famished, and our dilemma was that we haven’t any food. Ferdz and Marc made their way to the concessionair stand, and came back with a couple of bags of chips and a bottle of soda — the only things that the store sells. Once the chips and soda were gone, Marc, Eric and I went off to dip in the hot springs. And boy, was it HOT! I’m used to soaking on heated pools, but at the spa, it’s advised to go gradually — first taking a dip in the 36 degrees Celsius pool, then the 38C, and finally, the 40C. In Maquinit, however, there’s only one temperature, and nothing to prepare you for the near 40 degrees Celsius water. That’s why we were adviced to go here during the evenings!

The heat of the pool certainly woke us up. As the sun set, we made our way to the entrance. Roge, our boatman, promised to send his brother-in-law who owns a tricycle to pick us up at 7:30 pm. As we were walking, the lights went out. Perfect! To makes matters worse, the tricycle wasn’t there, and we’ve no way of contacting Roge!

The way tricycles work in Maquinit, is that you hire one at the town to take you there, wait for you, and take you back to the town. Since we went there by boat, we didn’t really have any arrangements, save for the tricycle Roge promised to pick us up. Luckily, Roge sent two — but only one arrived. We waited for a couple more minutes, and as hunger and made its presence felt, we managed to convince one of the drivers to drive us to town while waiting for his passengers.

 
Since we were fairly dry and utterly starved, we decided to have the trikes drop us off at a restaurant for dinner. We ended up at La Sirenetta, a fancy restaurant out in the water, which is a short walk from Kystal Lodge. Revived by the thought of food, we eagerly studied the menu, not really caring that the prices is going to blow our budget. Hey, we deserved a treat! Excitement, however, soon became annoyance as our orders took a lot of time to come to the table. After close to an hour, we were finally served the dishes we ordered. The food was quite good, making it somehow worth the price and the wait. But as much as we enjoyed our pasta, chicken, fish and pizza, it was hard to fully appreciate the service.

With our hunger satiated, we made our way to Krystal Lodge. Seeing houses with the lights on left us with hope that we had electricity in our lodgings. However, it seems only a portion of the town has electricity, and unfortunately, Cyrstal Lodge wasn’t one of them. Slowly, we made our way through the narrow alley and unto the rickety wooden bridge to our accomodation, with Ferdz’ headlamp the only thing ligthing our way. We finally made it to our little shack on the sea. We were all exhausted, but we just had to shower before heading to bed. I gathered my bath things and went to the bathroom. I turned on the tap and was welcomed by a very weak trickle of water. Uh oh. I left the faucet on and went out to fix my things as I wait for the bucket to fill with water. Thirty minutes after, the bucket was less than a half full. This isn’t good.

With three of us needing to use the bathroom, this wouldn’t do. It was almost midnight. Ferdz went to wake up Mhai, the resort manager. The power outage somehow affected the water pump in our room. It couldn’t be repaired until the morning, so in the meantime, Mhai let us use the bathroom of the other hut that was recently vacated. I used Unit 9’s bathroom, while Eric used the bathroom inside Gail & Marc’s room. It was almost 2 am when we finally finished. What a day!