Philippines Travel Log 3

Tagaytay

Well, we managed to escape from Manilla, at least briefly.  We caught an aircon bus down to a small, sleepy town called Tagaytay.  We could not really get too far away, since we still had to come back to Manilla to pick up Manius once he finally arrived. 

The Lonely Planet guide billed Tagaytay as a small town with one primary attraction:  “A lake with an island, with a volcano, with a lake, with an island.” Yes, we were intrigued by this as well.  We spent a good time of our trip down there trying to figure out exactly what that meant.

It seems it is pretty self explanatory, and Craptastic to boot.

A small, one-stop-light town, if you consider a round-about a stop light.  It was up on top of a giant cliff which had a long winding road that leads down to a large lake.  A rather tumultous lake with what could be considered surfable waves.  In the middle of this large oceanesque lake is a long island with an old volcano at one end.  Inside the volcano is a crater lake.  In the middle of the crater lake is a small island.  Chad and I greatly debated the possiblity of that tiny island also having a lake, and maybe even a smaller island in that lake, so on and so forth.  It is enough to boggle the minds of greater men than us.  (Chad is sitting next to me and does not like me questioning his mental prowess.  He should start his own blog, because in mine, he is a dumb ass.)

We lost a day due to a nap that raged out of control.  We ate some breakfast, walked around the area a bit and then decided to have a quick nap to prepare for some late night adventures.  The nap began about two pm, at around six pm I woke up and nudged Chad, “This nap is raging out of control.” Chad barely lifted his head up and just said, “I can keep going.” So we did. 

We woke up again about eleven pm.  We lounged about in our beds while watching episodes of the old campy Batman and Robin; I never realized just how bad that show actually was.  It did have Vincent Price and Liberace as guest villains, so it must have been the height of pop culture in it’s day. 

We actually went back to sleep at three am and finally left the room around seven am.  Breakfast was had, and we chalked up that day to poorly contained nappage. 

We decided we would check out this island in a lake, within a volcano, on an island in a lake, but we did not want to use any of the thousand scraggily looking guys on the side of the road holding “boat ride” signs.  We just knew that if we could get down to the lake side there should be a dozen cheap boat operators who will just ferry you to the island, without committing to a day long group tour.  We don’t like group tours, other people suck.  They always want to take pictures of stupid shit and get angry when I take my pants off. 

We even decided to forgo the many offers by Jeepney (bizarre elongated jeeps that pack people in like sardines for fifty cents) drivers and Trike (a small engine motorcycle with a covered cart welded to the side, it can often be seen hauling four to five Filipinos and all their livestock in one single cart, but for me it is a tight single fit) drivers.  We instead opted to walk, because the hand painted sign said it was only five kilometers and it was all down hill.  I am a newly minted fitness expert, so I knew I could walk downhill all day.  I am still aching.

It turns out a hand painted five kilometer sign is not to be trusted: the son of a bitch.  After walking for over an hour steeply downhill, which can be more grueling than you would think, we saw a second hand painted sign which informed us that the lake was only a short four and a half kilometers away. 

We managed to make it to the bottom of the mountain, just shy of two hours.  Once there we were accosted by many of the exact same boat operators.  It seems there really is no cheaper way to get over to the island.  The whole operation has been hijacked by inflation and greedy bastards. 

They wanted nearly fifty dollars (US) to ferry us across the rough, tumultous waters, in small outrigger boats, then we could ride horse back to the crater edge (or walk the “four kilometers”, but we already had seen the local ability to judge distance).  The apparent greatest selling point was that with our purchasing this package, we could have unlimited use of their special cabana.  Which from the much ballihooed photos it appeared to be a small, shitty gazebo. 

Needless to say, we opted to skip the original plan of journeying to the center of the volcano lake island to explore for the presence of an additional lake-island combo.  Instead we began the process of finding a reasonable price for riding back up the mountain.  Surprisingly the price for going back up is much steeper than the price for coming down.  Greedy Bastards.

We ended up paying a trike guy to tote both of us back up this steep moutain, but with much trepidation as to whether his small bike could actually pull off the task.  He amazingly succeeded, but he did so by always driving in the wrong lane, even in blind curves.  I knew that I was going to die in a shitty motorcycle side car on the side of a mountain in a crappy town in a third world country.  I think that is how James Dean died.

We made it to the top, had him drop us off in town, we found what might be the only bar around and got drunk.  Sore of foot, lighter in the pocket book, but very happy to be alive.

Don’t go to Tagaytay.

•   Comments(4)    Posted by killer on 08/16 at 06:59 PM
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