Today threatened to be another slow, unplanned day. But then I met two Germans over breakfast who convinced me to join them on a tour to the Taal lake and volcano. After about an hour's drive we reached the shore of lake Taal. Since the volcano is located in the middle of the lake, we had to take a boat across to be able to hike up to the crater. The boats - there were many of them, I don't really want to imagine lake and crater in high season - all looked like the one in the picture, very narrow with bamboo balancers on the sides:
The landscape on the hike up to the crater was beautiful, lush and green. The trail winding through it was more like a highway though - populated mainly by horses carrying people to the top. There weren't many people besides us making the 45 minute hike on foot. Luckily, the smell of the sweating horses and their droppings was often countered by the lovely scent of the mint plants lining much of the trail.
The Taal volcano is funny: it is located inside a lake, and its crater, filled with rain water, makes a lake within a lake. To make matters even more complicated, there is another small island inside the lake-within-a-lake - and you also have to consider that the entire lake-island-lake-island combo is located on another island: Luzon, the main island of the Philippines...
The crater rim must be a very popular tourist spot. I got away with having my picture taken, but everyone tried their best to sell me drinks, fresh coconuts, a ride down on a horse, or the possibility to drive a golf ball from the rim into the crater lake. I can't really see the point in riding up to the crater rim just to put a golf ball into the lake, but there were quite a few people up there doing exactly that (and posing for pictures with golf clubs in their hands.)
The crater lake itself is off limits to tourists - which is a good thing, or otherwise I wouldn't have been able to shoot beautifully undisturbed pictures such as the next one. I love how you can really see the lake-island-lake-island succession:
