It’s just 45 mins away from our house. Some springs were cold, some were warm, which was not surprising as this resort is nestled in between maars within the Laguna Volcanic Field.

We arrived at 7:45 am to maximize our day trip there as they haven’t renovated the cottages there for overnight stays. Going from the parking area to the pools required some walking through a rainforest.

We were provided lockers in the shower rooms since the huts were quite spread apart, which makes it hard to monitor your stuff.

The place is clean and easy on the eyes despite the resort being in existence since the 1980s, or even 1970s. Urrrrgh…research told me that the 45-hectare property has been run by the same family since 1918. 😱

Just like the forest back home.

It’s a bit tedious though to go back and forth the locker rooms and the pools because it requires a lot of walking up and down the stairs and winding paths.

We spent several hours hopping from one pool to another. We transferred to the colder springs before lunch and stayed there until we decided we were already tired of turning into prunes and needed to grab lunch.

Our PHP 2,800-per-head fee includes buffet lunch and snacks.

My girls have had enough so they had just hung out in one of the pavilions. Good decision since it rained. And it rained hard.

But my older sister and I were nonplussed and went around the rainforest under torrential rain, went upstream to try the other pools, one of which was called Lovers Pool. Well, I guess it was called as such because it was remote and it required you to cross bamboo bridges. Only lovers would seek that kind of secluded pool to do R-rated stuff.

We wanted to go further up the forest to reach the falls but it was raining so hard and going there was foolish because we had to cross a creek. Our experience living at the foot of a mountain all our lives taught us that torrential rains in rainforests could cause flash floods in creeks. Many students have died of drowning because of flash floods in an area we called Flat Rocks, where a natural pool was and had been a magnet for hikers since time immemorial.

It was fun walking under the rain in a forest. It has been a long time since I had done that. I didn’t do that while living in Metro Manila since I always felt rain in the city is acidic (we are perpetually covered in smog) and hardly refreshing.

On the way back home, we decided to take another route but Waze decided to take us to a less traveled road.

Damn that driving app. The road it told us to use was rough i.e. unpaved and at some point I got terrified because some of the rocks were sharp. I was trying to keep my cool because on the other side were cliffs.

I was literally driving through a rough mountain road, with no sign of civilization, with no end in sight.

I was overjoyed when we finally reached a hairpin turn that led us to a more familiar paved mountain road.