Taal Volcano, Philippines

Our last day in the Philippines draw closer and we were thinking about what we could do as a last adventure. We already had been to the National Museum (Museum of the Filipino People) in Manila and moreover, nobody but me thought it to be even slightly exciting. And even though it contained the oldest cultural material from the Callao Cave and the fabulous burial from Neolithic Duyong Cave and although I couldn't have a look at all the exhibits because they were closing and throwing us out, there was no way the rest of the family would go there once more.

We could have spent our day lazing around like this tired bike driver,

but we instead opted for a tour to the Taal volcano. What is truly remarkable about Taal volcano is the fact that within the Taal caldera which filled up to Lake Taal there is another small volcanic island called Vulcan Point, and on this island there again is a lake. If you consider that Luzon itself is an island, there is actually an island within a lake on an island within a lake on an island. Hm...does this make sense to anybody?

Anyway, we were packed into a minibus with one other guy and brought to Tagatay. On our way we stopped to watch fields of ...

can you guess?

Quite right, pineapples, lots of pineapples. We headed on and soon had a first glimpse of our target, lake Taal with a view on the island Vulcan Point:

We were greeted by a friendly monkey

and settled on a motorised outrigger which brought us to the island.

Although you can have a horse ride up to the crater rim of Vulcan Point we decided against it due to M's allergy and instead had a hike up the mountain.

Once you reach the top, you will notice that stands with knickknackery arrived long before you, selling souvenirs and drinks.

After a nice and cool coconut and getting back our breaths we had a closer look at the scenery.

This is the lake in Vulcan Point; in the background you can see lake Taal.

Since it is an active volcano, you can see smoke billowing out of the larger cracks:

After having a close look at the butterfly effect

we climbed down the volcano again and returned with the outrigger boat to Tagaytay where a wonderful lunch was waiting for us. Sorry, you are late, we nearly finished off everything.

On our way back to Manila we shortly stopped at a streetside market with huge jackfruits

and met a proud jeepney owner

The next day, M and P had their flight back home, but C and my humble self went off for more adventures. But this is a different story for a different blog entry :)

Angono Petroglyphs, Rizal, Philippines

Back in Manila and knowing how boring big cities can be from time to time the majority (i.e. my person) decided to get some fresh air and visit a petroglyph site along the trip. So off we went to the small town of Angono where the rock shelter covered by petroglyphs is situated. With 235 masl we had a lovely view over the bay and Manila City.

To get to the rock shelter of Angono we had to walk through puddles of water full of tadpoles

and slippery ground until we reached a not so inviting dark tunnel

but at the end of the tunnel we found ...a small museum that exhibited some finds from the excavation in front of the rock shelter

The 63 m long rock shelter is just next to the museum

From the finds of this excavationthe petroglyphs can be roughly dated to the Neolithic, which in the Philippines was somewhere between 6000 and 2000 BC.

But so close to the jungle there were not only rock carvings but also all kind of creepy-crawlies like poisoneous millipedes

not to mention this poisonous dahong palay! The name is Tagalog and means rice leaf and is the local name of the so-called vine snake (Ahaetulla prasina)

(but I have to tell you in secret it is only mildly venomous and not really a threat to humans)

Thank god all the creepy-crawlies were kept in check by their biggest enemy, the cat

The very friendly staff at the museum told me they are very good in hunting down snakes. This one here will one day become a famous snake hunter; it was already very good in hunting fingers.

If you want to know more about the cats petroglyphs you can read more on my other blog here in English and here in German.

Trip to the Philippines - and even more on Cebu

The next day we headed towards the Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral, a typical colonial Spanish church, squat and massive. Not one of my favourites, but still impressive with its thick white walls.

Next was the San Carlos University Museum

Unfortunately, taking photos was not allowed, so I can't show you any of it's exhibits. Lucky you :)

Although only one exhibition room was devoted to Cebu's prehistory (the other ones were filled with zoology, ethnography, and more recent history) it was quite interesting.  I loved the secondary-burial boat coffins and the many limestone burial jars found in cave. These jars, some with lizard motives on them, some only with stripes, were also used for secondary burials.  Secondary burials are known in the Philippines as bone washing. The body of the deceased is buried in earth and then after some time recovered, the bones washed and buried again in for example earthen jars, limestone jars or boat coffins. So it was a good day for me *hehe*

Since our hotel was booked out, we had to move to the Crimson Beach Resort in Mactan. This is how our beach villa looked like from the outside

And this was behind the facade, our very own plunge pool :)

The Crimson Resort was utter bliss, a brilliant beach, a superb infinity pool, cool beach villas, the best spa in the world; I had a deep tissue massage with hot stone therapy and the girl was sooo good, I felt like being in heaven afterwards. Besides, they have spa facilities which makes you feel like being in a Japanese onsen (hot spring spa). The only downside was the restaurants; all shared the same menu and although there were some vegetarian dishes, with three vegetarians you have quickly eaten your way through the menu and it got soon very, very boring.

So we started using the shuttle bus to the Ayala Mall, where loads of nice restaurants waited for us.

Out of curiosity we also wandered into the supermarket and marveled at the many different types of rice:

The Crimson Resort also offered a lot of beach activities and so we had a ride on the banana boat.
This is not us, but a photo from an Indonesian hotel site, but it shows what can happen when you ride the banana boat:

http://marbellaanyer.com/

you can imagine M and I got pretty wet :)

This night we also ritually killed a bad book. And I mean a really bad book:

If you ever want to read a German book about a 'detective' in ancient Rome, avoid this one. It was written by a teacher of Latin and it exactly sounded like a lesson in Latin. I don't want a recap on Cicero's Catiline Orations nor a history lesson on Cesar's achievements, all I wanted was a thrilling story about an abduction of a boy and how an unwilling wounded veteran gets interested and solves the case. You could really have done a nice story about it, but I haven't a read a more boring book in a long time. So we had to kill it to save other people from reading it.