We left early-ish for our sweet Southern Road trip. First stop: Taal, a volcano located a couple hours south of Manila. (It’s pretty close to Jenna’s mission actually. So that’s fun!) Can I just say that the ‘getting everyone ready and out the door’ phenomenon is one of my least favorite things ever. Once we are out the door and on our way, it’s all good. But man, it is so hard to get to that point. Also, we were supposed to get a GPS with our rental car. But apparently, they were all out. And then, I was supposed to look up our directions and everything….totally forgot. I was really struggling with that whole brain thing.
So, we pulled up basic directions on Jonathan’s phone and then hoped for the best. Fortunately, traffic isn’t bad on Saturday mornings in Manila. Unfortunately, roads and things like that are not labeled very well. But really, why would you need to know the name of the street that you are on anyway? So, basically, we got lost several times. #butitsallok #causeimonvacation. We were a little concerned, because it rained for a good portion of our drive. But, we decided to press on and re-evaluate whether or not we’d do the volcano once we got closer. Do you notice anything strange about the picture below?)
There is no option for heat!! Just varying degrees of cold air. We are in a tropical area apparently. We ended up on the SLEX, the Southern Luzon Express. There were very regular toll booths. It’s very strange. We were in a line that was 2 km long to go through a toll booth, and then once we were through, we thought it was smooth sailing. But then, there was another toll booth after another 20 km. It was odd…. Especially because it completely slowed traffic down every time there was a toll booth. Finally, we exited the expressway, and we promptly found ourselves in the middle of nowhere… on some little road that was probably called Bob’s road (Twister reference, anyone?)
But we thoroughly enjoyed it. It reminded me of the pictures that we saw of Jenna’s mission. It was just the coolest area. It was just so fun to see an ordinary town with ordinary people.
At one point, we saw a bakery and Jonathan decided to buy some bread. He bought Spanish bread. I’d never had it before. Let’s just say, I’m in love. I love all the things in this picture:
It was this lovely, chewy bread, and inside was this amazing stuff it was almost like the texture of a dense jam…. But I have no clue what it was. But man, it was good. Logan devoured several of them. He LOVED them.
By sheer luck (and the prayers of our mothers I’m sure) we ended up at the Taal Lake Yacht club. This was the Saturday of a three-day weekend (Philippines’ Independence day). So we were really concerned that this place was going to be completely packed.
But it wasn’t. Not even close. We literally had the place to ourselves. The grounds were gorgeous. We are talking legit jungle. It. Was. Awesome. Everything was just green. And lush. And beautiful. 
My Mam would’ve been in heaven. So many cool plants and flowers. #plantlady. Clara sure enjoyed herself and she lamented that the rest of the flower team wasn’t there. 🙂
Jonathan got us all set up for our trip to the volcano. Logan provided moral support and gnawed his way through yet another piece of Spanish bread.
Meanwhile, the two older kids and I wandered around, checked out the scenery and snapped (way too many) pictures. I hope you all know that I exercise serious restraint when I put up a blog post. It may seem like I post every single picture ever. I don’t. Oh no. Not even close. You’re welcome.
We hopped on our boat, the Kasili, which means Eel in Tagalog. (Also, Kasili is a much prettier word than EeeEEeEeEl. That’s all.) It was approximately a 10 minute ride from the shore to the shore of the volcano. We had amazing views of the surrounding area.
Of course, we really enjoyed the boat ride over to the volcano. On the bottom right, you can see our cute boat captain and our guide.
Yay!! A sign!!
We rode horses up the side of the volcano. Each of us had a ‘driver’ that walked along the horses with us. I rode with Juju, Jonathan had Logan, and Clara’s driver rode with her.
Thousands of people live on the island (volcano). And all of the drivers are people who live there. And they each go up the volcano 3-4 times per week. My driver, Amisha, was a serious boss. She went up that mountain at a crazy pace! Seriously. She was practically running the whole way. IN FLIP FLOPS!! I think it would’ve killed me… Literally. I was way impressed.
It was so interesting, all the tours over the years have carved little canyons in a lot of place.
These tours of the volcano are the lifeblood of the community here. It was so interesting to see. It’s just such a different way of living. But yeah, seriously, Amisha was a boss. And so were the horses we rode (Alas, I’ve forgotten her name….). There are about 400 horses on the island that are used for these tours.
And this volcano is by no means dead, there were places along the path that spouted steam (see image below). And at the bottom of the lake in certain places, you could see more steam spouting out. It was pretty cool.
Our guide (who came with us from the resort told us that Taal is a lake within a volcano within a lake within a volcano. It is so meta. Taal itself has a lake inside of it. And there is a lake that surrounds Taal. And then the Philippine islands themselves are formed by volcanic action.
In the image below, you can kinda see how the water level of the inner lake is quite different from the level of the outer lake. 
It really was beautiful up there. I mean check out this panorama!
After we wandered around for a bit and took pictures, we hopped back on our horses and made our way back down.
By the time we got back down the hill, my poor hindquarters were so incredibly sore. Juju sat in the actual saddle, and I rode behind him on the horse, bareback. Man, oh man!! You know how you get sore from riding a bike? After you haven’t done it for a while? Yeah, same feeling. And let’s just say my poor saddle was sore for the next 3 days…
We embarked on our boat. The gal that pushed our boat back into the lake had to be at least 70 years old (I am not even close to kidding you) she was also the one that maneuvered the boat into place when we arrived. Seriously, what a boss. I hope I’m like that when I’m an old gal.
This actually turned out to be an amazing day to come. It wasn’t busy at all. And the overcast sky meant that it didn’t get as hot as usual. Don’t get me wrong, it was still hot, and it was pretty dang humid. But it wasn’t nearly as bad as it normally is. And that made a huge difference for us. We were so grateful for that #tendermercies. We headed back to the ‘mainland’. The children were so happy to be on the breezy boat. Here’s a view of one of the volcano.
We disembarked at about 3:30. And, we reckoned that it might be a good plan to go check in at our hotel. We went on the backroads again. Which was so fun. We passed by an area where there seemed to be some kind of city-wide celebration or festival. There were people everywhere, and it was just cool to see.
We got to our hotel, and it is a nice place! There wasn’t much available in the way of hotels because of the Philippines Independence day on Monday. So, it is a 3-day weekend. This was the closest place we were able to find. And it was actually quite lovely.
We got our stuff in our room, settled things a little bit, and then we went outside to swim.
We also got to witness a wedding (at least the reception and photos part.) That was kinda fun.
And we swam until it got dark. Then we came back in, got all rinsed off and went and grabbed a light bite to eat at the hotel restaurant and then we came back and crashed. I was surprised by how sleepy I was. It was only 8 pm. And poor Jonathan has basically survived the last day or so on 2 hours of sleep. Poor guy. I would say that this was a very fun, successful outing.
