Originally Dan and my plan was to land as close time was as possible and then just meet in the airport terminal of the last to arrive. Naturally the universe had other plans and Dan's flight was delayed but quite a bit. I landed at T4 and had to try to get to T3 to meet him. Luckily there is no bus or passenger transfer system in place to get between the terminals, (according to one Taxi guy, it went away with COVID and hasn't come back yet) so I had to wait for a taxi to drive me the 1km to the other terminal. It wasn't possible to walk as it is all closed off to anything except cars.
Finally getting to the right terminal, I found somewhere to sit and waited for Dan to get through customs and immigration. It took hours!
Paperwork complete, we found a driver to get us to Tagaytay which we had read was between a 2 and 3 hour drive. Luckily, it was decent roads and not too difficult. We got to our hotel about 11pm and wandered off to find a quick beer to wash off the events of the day.
We discovered our hotel was basically on the side of a main road with nothing on it. about a 15 minute walk away was a 711, so we stopped and got some beers and just stood outside until a very friendly police office told us off. We suspect he was just bored as there were other people doing the same.
Our reason for coming here was the volcano. Taal Volcano which sits in the middle of a large lake. In 2020 it erupted and so since then you have no been able to get onto the island and climb the volcano itself as it is still too dangerous. So we had to settle for a boat trip around it instead.
We were out walking when one of the tuktuk guys approached us and told us he would take us to the boat trip area. We had no information on this area so were very much winging it and agreed. we drove down to the lake for what seemed like hours. In actual fact, it was about half an hour but being thrown about in the back of a tuktuk does make time slow considerably.
Once at the bottom he took us straight to a boat rental place and we were presented with a massive stack of options. In the end, we decided to do the whole tour, a 2 hour boat ride, complete with our own personal guide. It worked out quite expensive but this because there were only two of us, the boat could have held 6 easily.
 |
| Ruins of houses that were once 50+ meters from the water's edge |
We went all around the volcano, seeing the remains of houses and villages, many schools and churches. he showed us how much the island has sank and the luxury houses that were now abandoned, too dangerous to live in.
From the back of the island we could see steam rising from the crater as well as the lava tracks on the back. It was beautiful and I actually really enjoyed pottering about the lake for a few hours. Our guide was very knowledgable and chatty.
It's a shame it's not possible to hike to the top anymore but safety is a fair enough reason when dealing with a volcano I suppose.
On the way back, we went past the Tilapia farms and were lucky enough to see people feeding the fish. The water boiled with the amount of hungry fish jumping about to get their lunch. I thought it was fantastic, Dan was less impressed.
No comments:
Post a Comment