Travel Tuesday: Inside Taal

I realized that there are no posts solely dedicated to the travels I had for the past years. As a young professional who is forced to allocate 40% of her 24 hours to her day job five times a week, I try to use my vacation leaves and holidays wisely and make it sure to travel to places whether it is near or a plane ride is needed. I decided to dedicate some Tuesday posts for the places I’ve been to, mostly local destinations, and post of sort like a photo diary. And as 2014 unfolds, I hope to travel more and share more travel experiences through this blog.

Tagaytay and Taal Volcano, Batangas

April 2010

Let me begin with something that I can recall of easily and somewhere near. Two of the places accessible to people who are in the Metro are Tagaytay and Batangas. We had a visitor at work who's from India and for someone who wants to see the beauty of the Philippines without spending much and without going too far, I and my former teammates decided to bring the Indian colleague to the said places.



That was the Merie they came to know "with the full bangs" haha! Why do we all look so weird in here??


We had our lunch (bulalo at Tagaytay is a must of course) at Leslie’s Tagaytay. As usual, we had the picture-taking with the Taal volcano as the view. Trivia: the infamous crater that we see in most Taal volcano postcards and photos is not actually the crater of the Taal volcano itself. So when you see this kind of postcard or photo again, no, that’s not Taal volcano. Taal volcano is one of those flatter mountains.

the boat ride across Taal lake

After lunch, we headed to Batangas and decided to have a boat trip across Taal lake to Taal volcano itself and trek our way to its inside.



The obligatory photos showing that we are inside Taal (upper photos)
Notice that Luke's sitting beside me sabi ko na nga ba April pa lang type mo na ko hahaha! Joke langggg!!!! (lower left photo)
Our soiled-looking pairs of shoes that were not meant to trek (lower right photo)

It was a tiring way up as we were not actually prepared to do such trekking. We are in inappropriate attires and we don’t even have water bottles with us to quench our thirsts. Regardless, I enjoyed doing it. Some tourists opted to ride a horse up but frankly speaking, we found it too pricey to do so and ended up filling our shoes with volcanic ashes/dusts/soil.

 

The upper photos show the sulphuric waters. This turn into magma when Taal gets angry. Labo. How lovely isn't it?
The lower left photo, if you could notice the "tip" of the mistaken Taal volcano. Gets niyo na?



Sadly, we can't go near the sulphuric waters of the volcano but we had a good view of it. Again we were not prepared but it would be a joy if we would have gone down and bathe in the water.



On our way down



The rough lake waters on our way back to the mainland.



We spent our stay savouring the view and nature tripping. It was peaceful amidst the summer heat. We then trekked down and rode the boat across the lake back to the other side. That way back though was not a smooth ride and scared our Indian colleague. Haha! Nonetheless, we just enjoyed the one-of-a-kind boat ride experience back to the mainland.




As we drift away to the place where moments ago we were just inside.



It was my first time to get this close to an active volcano. I can’t help but think that it may erupt any time but seeing the real beauty of it, the insides of it, makes me again be in awe of the wonder of God’s creation.