Manila Part 3 - Trip to Taal

Taal Volcano

A quick picture-trip through our last day in Manila. We took a taxi to the bus station where we luckily met up with our travel-friend Francois - lucky because it was hard to find and we were late and we had no way of contacting him. We found spots in a van headed for Tagaytay, the town closest to the lake/volcano. It was a crowded, bumpy ride but at least there was aircon and sweet 80's tunes!!

We didn't end up riding in a Jeepney,
which is too bad because they look so awesome!

We hopped out at Tagaytay, where we were, again, immediately recognized as tourists and offered a tricycle ride to Talisay. Tagaytay is at the top of a huge volcanic ridge and the ride snaked down, down, down to Talisay, at the edge of the lake. Taal is an island in the middle of the lake, created by a second, smalled volcano inside the first.

Halfway down to Talisay - the island is Taal Volcano. The main volcano is
somewhat on the other side of the island - the on you can see on the far
right of the island is just a smaller volcano (I guess).

Our tricycle driver must have had a deal with on of the boat companies, because he took us straight there. But they gave us a fair price to take the 3 of us across and to wait for us while we hiked. Our tricycle driver also said he'd wait - convenient!
The boats were pretty, if a bit slow!

Approaching the tiny town on the island. We paid a small fee to hike, repeatedly declining the offer to ride horses up the trek. These horses were real troopers, you could tell - they had to deal with all sorts of crazy tourists. The horse-riding tourists, in turn, provided us with a ton of amusement. On the way up we saw a guy fall off his horse while it was standing still. 

The hike was pretty steep and very hot (no shade)! At some places, you could see smoke/steam coming out of the ground and smell the sulfur of the volcano brooding beneath our feet. Taal hasn't erupted since 1977, with the largest modern eruption occurring in 1965. When we reached the top, we bought a coconut and some cold cokes and listened to a local woman (who sold us the drinks) describe the 1965 eruption - she was 9 years old and living on the island at the time. The warning signs were not interpreted correctly leading up to the eruption, and evacuation didn't start until after the eruption had begun. She was lucky to be staying on a side of the island that was not as affected, though on the other side nearly 100 people were killed. She described how chunks of burning rocks rained out of the sky - unbelievable!

Not a bad view!!

You could pay for a bucket of golf balls and hit them into the volcano - or at least try to hit them into the volcano.

This guy only managed to hit them into the grass, and gave everyone, including the local vendor, a fright when he proceeded to climb down into the grass to retrieve a ball - that is one steep fall that you do NOT want to take! Tourists :)

So dreamy!

When we were done gazing - and frying our necks - we made the trip back across the lake and back up the hill to Tagaytay, where we found a restaurant with an unbeatable view and knocked back a few San Miguels and feasted a bit. I ordered pork bellies in coconut curry - holy moly. When it arrived, I pointed out to the waiter that there was a dead fly sitting in the spoon in the dish, and he immediately responded - by replacing the spoon! So again, I tucked in, secure in the knowledge that food poisoning was a definite risk, but one I was willing to take.

We hopped a bus back to Manila - and spent the next 3 hours in exhausting traffic! There was a lot to see though, as we drove through some of the city's slums. Definitely interesting. Back in Manila we bid farewell to Francois, then I watched and prayed Jacob wouldn't get hit by a car while trying to flag down a taxi for us. After a false start with a driver who claimed his meter was broken (nice try buddy, but we'd already been burned twice on this trip!), we hailed a cab and arrived home. We found a nice restaurant called Relish in Makati and ate a nice dinner, followed up by chocolate and ice cream at a dessert restaurant called Chocolate Fire! My kind of place.

The next morning we packed up and then walked over to the Ayala Museum in Makati - which ended up being AWESOME! We first explored a whole exhibit dedicated to GOLD, which featured this necklace of gold weighing more than 8 pounds! It was huge. There was also an exhibit of artwork by Hernando Ocampo, a modernist artist from the Philippines. I LOVED some of his canvases - the colors were amazing!

Finally, we used the audio guides provided to take us through 50+ dioramas depicting the history of the Philippines and it's struggle for independence. Before this trip, I honestly knew next to nothing about Filipino history, and while I probably couldn't pass a test on it now, I definitely have a much better grasp of the country's history and identity. Manila was a fascinating place to visit, and I hope we get the chance to see more of the Philippines someday!

View of Manila from a hotel window - such a vast place!