Today we ventured into the mouth of an active volcano! Well, it wasn’t quite as dramatic as that. We got a driver from our hotel and drove down the mountain we were on to the lakefront (the original volcano now is a lake, with the active volcano in the middle, with a lake within that).
Once we got to the land of the volcano, we were herded onto horses that we had hired to carry us up the dusty volcanic mountainside. Dad's horse was the island's race champion until last year so he was constantly trying to race mine... interesting situations did occur. Some pictures were taken (and later tried to get us to buy the printed and photo-shopped copies) and we continued to jog up the volcano. We bounced and joggled our way up until we reached the top. Our guides helped us off and left us to figure out what to do. So we located some steps and decided that was probably the way to go. (something I have found here is that there isn’t much direction given unless you ask for it)
Once reaching the top, we saw the beautiful crater lake with a little island in the middle. It was beautiful. However, it was not the volcano we thought we were going to. All the pictures of Tagaytay’s Taal volcano are of this little mountain thing that really does look like a volcano but it isn’t the real volcano.
Anyway, we looked around, took pictures of volcanic steam, and trotted our way back down the mountain and took the boat back to the mainland and made our way back to our hotel. We were beat and after lunch we took naps and read books for the afternoon. Quite peaceful. We ate dinner at a wonderful place across the street – and despite what I said about my food looking back at me, I ordered a whole fish..
And so ends the journey into the heart of a volcano.
~Elizabeth
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| climbing our way up the volcano |
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| lake within a volcano within a lake that was a volcano |
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