Catching up on South Luzon
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009Since I last wrote, we’ve spent our time in Manila, the Bicol region in southeast Luzon and the Lake Taal region south of Manila. It’s been pretty slow going in terms of sights and activities after the daily boat trips of Palawan, but we enjoyed one great highlight and saw a few other decent sights along the way.
Manila itself did not seem as bad to us as it’s made out to be, though perhaps that’s just because we were fortunate enough not to be caught up in its famous traffic jams. We spent a pleasant morning in the old colonial quarter of Intramuros, with its Spanish fort and churches, and a couple of days later had a nice evening with a Filipina friend and a friend of hers.
From Manila we took a long bus ride (12 hours) to the peninsula jetting out from the southeast corner of the island. We spent three nights in the village of Donsol, and it was in the waters nearby, on our second morning of trying, that we did one of the things we were most looking forward to in the entire country: swimming with a whale shark. Our feeling of anticipation once the boatmen spotted a shark was matched by our unpreparedness for what lay beneath the water. But we were told not to hesitate, so with snorkels and flippers on, we plunged in and followed our guide. At first we saw nothing because we were looking too far beneath us; then, looking back towards the surface, the incredible, exhilarating, and slightly scary initial sight of a 9m (30 foot) long whale shark that somehow sneaked up on us and was only a couple of metres away. This was one of the most extraordinary single moments of our travelling lives together, and the last and best of our underwater adventures in the Philippines. We stayed with the shark for about 15 minutes before it swam away; hopefully the underwater photos will turn out OK.
Making our way back towards Manila slowly, we finally saw Mt Mayon after it had been shrouded by cloud cover for the previous few days, and then headed to Naga where we hiked to a waterfall and swam in some hot springs. Now we’re in Talisay on the shores of Lake Taal, which we crossed this morning in a boat to the volcanic islands at its centre. Once ashore, we hiked to a crater rim to look down on the volcanic lake with a small island within (and just to make sure you’re on top of this at home, that small island is inside a lake, which is inside an island, which is inside a lake, which is inside another island, which is inside the Pacific Ocean). Below is a photo of the steam and sulphur on the shores of the lake, and more photos are here.
With our on water and underwater expeditions in the Philippines now complete, we’re heading to North Luzon for the remainder of our time here, where we expect the highlights to be the colonial town of Vigan, the rice terraces of the Cordillera and climbing Mt Pinatabo.
Nick