Lake Taal: Part 1

You can see the rim of the original vocano with the lake inside and the volcano within the lake, with a lake inside! Like a Matruska doll.



The green line is our banca ride across the lake and the red line is the pony trek to the volcano. These photos are from Wikipedia.

This was a fun trip on the spur of the moment; little advance planning, just all adventure to see what we could see. Carol, her driver Michael, Randal and I left Makati about 9 am and drove the 50 or so miles to Talisay, a small resort town that offers access across Lake Taal to the inner volcano. It took almost 3 hours in the Sturday traffic, winding mountain roads, and a slight goose chase to find the best (reliable, banca won't sink and we all drown in the lake) resort to find lunch and hire our banca. When you get to the main lake road in Talisay, you are met by bunches of men waving signs hawking their boat services. We finally settled on these guys and followed them wherever the led us; at times back and forth and back and forth along the main road till we said, "Stop, we'll eat at the first place."

Our "guides"

I can't really tell you much about our resort. Its name started with K and there is a large wooden fish over the entrance.

Carol and Randal look at the lunch menu.
We shared barbecued pork and rice for 5, though the 4 of us managed to eat it all. Pretty good too.


The resort had a fish cage where they raised talapia. You can see across Lake Taal to the inner volcano area. The large mound on the left is an extinct volcano. It looks a long way across, but it only took about 15 minutes to get there. It felt quite safe; the lake was quite calm.

A typical banca. It held the 4 of us and 3 banca boat men. (They're small.)


Randal and Carol.
Michael and I are in front.

View from the banca. C. C.


Not so pretty. This was the little ranch area where we got our ponies for the ride to the volcano. We took a few photos at the end of the ride when we had more time. I'll show you later. The ride was an experience, right up there with my pony ride in China when Sallie rode the "zebra."

Next stop the top!

Ruth Johnson
DoraMac
#end