Got up with the sun this morning and no mosquito bites, amazing! Today we asked that instead of lounging around at the beach, if we be allowed to go to the Taal Volcano crater. With the blessing of Fed, we headed out to Tagaytay and then down the mountain to Talisay on Lake Taal. The road down was winding with very steep dropoffs. The kind of road I hate. In Talisay, we found a person who would procure a boat for us. Once the price was settled on and all of the extras were known, we set out across the lake to the island volcano in the middle. From above we couldn’t appreciate how big the lake was. It took 30 to 40 minutes in a relatively fast boat to get to our destination. After arriving on the beach we then negotiated a price for horses and a guide to take us to the crater. Saddled up, we ascended up the mountain to the crater’s rim. What a beautiful site of a hot sulfur lake. The horses were not allowed to descend to waters edge so if you wanted to go you needed to hike down, and of course back up. I elected to stay with Francis, the Rotarian with us, and let the rest of the team walk on down. They said the water was very hot, and it smelled. Apparently there was a family from Ohio there as well who actually took a dip. After the boys came back, pretty tired I might add, it was back on the horses for the trek down.
While we were in our boat we passed hundreds of fish gates or pens. It was explained to us that they were for fish farming and the pens all contained Tilapia, which was ultimately sold to the Manila market. Lunch on our return to Talisay was part on the agreed upon extras that we would incur for use of the boat. We had some very tasty BBQ Chicken and some Pork Adobo.
After our trip it was back to the Manila area to meet our new hosts. Sleeping in the car was the prime activity.
No comments:
Post a Comment