A Volcano within a Lake within a Volcano - Taal

We left a little early to go to Tagaytay on February 21st. It is about 60 kilometers away and takes a while to get there. It is a very pretty area on a plateau that is higher and cooler than Manila. The town is surrounded by pineapple plantations and banana trees and over looks Taal Lake. The Lake is in an ancient volcano and has a couple of craters sticking up out of the water on islands. One of the big tourists activities here is to take a boat out to the island and hike up to the crater. The crater has a lake in it so it has the distinction of being a lake in a volcano crater on an island in the middle of a lake.

 

Here we are in a boat on Taal Lake going to the volcano.

 

 

It is pretty unique and we heard about it when we first arrived and thought that Derek would like seeing it. The boat ride was a little more expensive than we thought and the ride was a little rougher than we had planned for. The boat is basically a large outrigger canoe with a motor. The lake was rough with white caps. The wind was blowing pretty hard which is unusual. They gave us a sheet of plastic to hold in front of us to keep some of the water off. Even with the plastic we got more than a little wet going to the island. Most of the tourists ride horses up to the top but we planned to hike up except Anna who was going to decide for sure once we got to the island. She was still a little sore from hiking in Banaue but after she saw how small the Filipino horses were she decided to hike up. The hike was about 4 kilometers up the hill but not near as steep as walking up stairs. It was very dusty and dirty with quite a few people riding up on horseback. It was funny to see large men riding these small ponies with a guide following behind holding the ponies tail to make sure that he didn't go up too fast. I was glad to be hiking.

It was an interesting view. We saw several steam vents along the way and steam coming up along the shoreline of the lake in the crater. There were sulfur deposits and it reminded me a little of Yellowstone. We walked back down rode back across the lake and had lunch before heading back to Manila.

 

 

 

We decided to go back a different way and went through Naic where there are some Filipino beach resorts. We stopped at one of them so Derek could see it. It would not qualify to be called a resort at home but it did have some covered picnic areas and a few huts. The beach was a dark almost black sand and the water did not look very clear. A lot like in Manila. We then headed back to our apartment.

 

 Naic Beach Resort