21st - 24th March 2012
Having arrived in town and fed ourselves Kate and I decided to explore the town so we headed out together and bought some rather tasty drinks in the form of a buko (coconut) shake. We saw a sign advertising a cock-fighting and pigs and piglet farm so on a whim we decided to visit it. It just so happened that it was up a very steep hill and the road wasn't very short. We had fun though and plenty of rest stops, the views going up the road from various points, was beautiful we looked out over Lake Taal and it's resident volcanoes. Just so you know the general attraction of Talisay is it's proximity to some rather spectacular and occasionally active volcanic landscape, we had hoped to make a day trip to one of the volcanoes but it was off limits due to seismic activity, better safe than sorry!
Having walked up much of the long steep road that was still long and steep for much farther than we cared to walk, we saw one cock-fighting farm and went in to have a look and asked for directions. The guys didn't speak much English but one young guy with a few words took us round his farm and tried to explain things as best he could apologising the whole time for the gaps in his English, basically half the cocks that he breeds go on to be winners, a 50/50 split between that and a loser. The views of the volcano in Lake Taal from the edge of his farm were wonderful and an older guy soon joined us and gave us directions to the pigs and piglets that we were hoping to see.
We continued on up the road and after a while we saw another sign and followed that, all we saw was some cockerels sitting on their separated perches and some rather hungry looking guard dogs. We heard some pigs but we never found anyone to show them to us and decided to leave the barking salivating dogs to it. The walk back down was much easier and quicker and we arrived back before dark.
The next morning we woke up bright and early for our boat across the lake to the volcano. We met some German guys over dinner the previous night and had arranged to share a boat (and the cost) with them. The ride over wasn't particularly long ad the waves were quite small although we all got rather wet coming back. We arrived on the island in the lake and realised that we didn't have enough money to pay the park fee and have breakfast, fortunately the Germans were better prepared and lent us the cash, we followed our skipper's directions and started up the dusty track dodging horse poo and kicking up dirt. I was rather mortified to find that I wasn't quite as fit as I thought I'd come to be since Kate last visited us in Nepal. With all the yoga and the working out I thought that I'd be leaving them way behind eating my dust, ha!
If only. I did manage to squeeze in a few more rest stops using the excuse of taking photographs and we made it further on and up – taking about twice the amount of time that the guy at our hotel had told us it would take. The views were gorgeous and there was a delicious breeze that swept the long grass flat and kept us cool on the hike up to the crater rim of the lake in the lake. There were a few houses and some people selling coconuts but we were the only people there, we got to the edge and looked out at the dark green lake that was ringed with hidden vents letting out steam.
Kate had stayed to wait with her gasping elder(ly) sister and we walked up a ridge to join the boys, the view from there was even better, they had found a spot on some hot rocks to sit down on and enjoy the view from, avoiding some of the steaming vents we joined them and took photos of the lake in a volcano in a lake in a volcano.
The whole place was beautiful and we killed a fair amount of time sitting around and taking photos, just as we were about to leave a couple of guys with golf clubs strolled up and invited the lads to a few puts, they brought some golf balls and did their best to get them into the water, no-one even came close but Djalma did manage to get the furthest (that's my boy!). We climbed back down kicking up huge streams of fine dust blinding the people who weren't quick enough to be in front. We located our skipper and got in the boat to be taken back across to mainland and were royally wetted along the way. I am too old for this.
Back in our rooms we had a nap and then once again Kate and I headed out. This time we decided to head about 9km up to Tagatay where there were supposedly some good views of Lake Taal, I say supposedly because we only really saw one view and couldn't be bothered to walk the 5km odd into the centre of town to find out more. Instead we stopped off at a coffee shop selling art and talked over coffees, cake and chips. I did manage to get Katie to one lookout point but the views weren't that amazing so we headed back, at one point I realised that I'd lost my watch and we spent the whole way back searching the ground for it – it turned out that it had dropped off in the tricycle ride up to Tagatay and the driver had left it with a group of drivers who spotted us when we got back into town.
The ride back was fun, I really tried hard to negotiate a cheaper fare particularly as they wouldn't drop us off at our hotel but the guy was friendly so after much umming and ahhing Kate and I clambered in a were whizzed downhill to a drop off point and walked the rest of the way into town.
We left Talisay early the next morning on a Jeepney, at some point we got on a bus, much more comfortable, and then on another Jeepney to the right part of town. We spent the whole afternoon in one of the largest shopping centres in Asia, Katie treated us to pizza, we strolled round the shops, I treated Kate and myself to enormous ice cream sundaes and then we watched the Hunger Games. Aside from food and some duct tape (to fix Kate's bag) we didn't buy anything else. We caught a yellow van back to town and had a very early night.
Kate's flight to Cebu left early the next morning and we'd managed to book flights to the island of Palawan shortly after hers left, so after dropping her off at one terminal we jumped in another taxi and went to ours. Our flight was delayed and I spent most of the time twiddling my thumbs debating whether or not to get a coffee. By mid-morning we had arrived in Palawan and had sorted ourselves a couple of seats on private minivan, it took it's time to fill up and we ended up behind some Italians with their Italian speaking Filipino wives who were clearly more used to European ways than Asian. We were travelling to the Southern tip of the island, El Nido which took us about five hours. We spilt up for our usual hotel search and for the first time managed to lose each other. We eventually found a room that we could afford and wouldn't set off Djalma's allergies/asthma and settled in for a few days stay.
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