24 hours in Tagaytay

A handful of officemates and I went to Tagaytay this last Saturday for an overnight stay and a hike to the Taal crater. I wouldn't have guessed that we could do so much in 24 hours.

Once we got to Tagaytay the first thing to do was to find a place to stay. On the way to the 2nd lodge, we miscalculated a turn into a downward slope which got the van stuck, and the only way out was to back up. Unfortunately the slope was too steep for the engine to handle even with all the passengers out, so we helped by pushing the van from the front. Surprisingly, it worked. Haha. :D Fortunately the apartment that we got in the lodge was worth the trouble (I am now sorry that I didn't take pictures). It had two floors, air conditioning, a refrigerator, cable, bathroom with a shower and room for six people to sleep comfortably.

Once we were settled in, we did a 15-minute drive to Alfonso to visit The Coffee Farmhouse, which happened to be owned by a family friend of TR's. After a quick tour around the coffee trees and various facilities, we had some coffee, which was refreshing after getting used to the dispenser-type coffee back in the office. We had planned to have dinner at a restaurant in Splendido, but found there a wedding reception was being held, so we climbed the bell tower instead and took some pictures.

We went back to The Coffee Farmhouse to have a sumptuous home-style dinner, then went to the recreation room for some videoke. For a moment then I had thought we were too tired even for sing-along, so I was surprised we managed to try out just about everything inside the recreation room: table tennis, badminton, bicycles, scooters, even those kiddy-size vehicles that move by turning the steering wheel. And then it was time for videoke and some beer. It was almost midnight when we came back to the apartment, and we were all asleep in minutes.

We left at around seven in the morning for Taal, which was a surprisingly long downward drive to the lake. Despite the season, we passed a couple of landslides along the way. It's scary to think what that road would be like during the rainy days. When we arrived at the lake we rented a boat for a 20-30 minute ride to the island.

Shortly upon arriving, we were assailed by the stink of horse dung and offers of horse rides. We insisted that we didn't need horses since that would defeat the purpose of hiking and would mean that we'd have to bring along a stranger each. They were persistent though, lowering the offer from 500 PHP to 300 PHP per horse/stranger, even following us as we start up the trail. After several minutes it got to a point where the offers were more irritating than the horse dung. Thankfully they eventually decided to leave us alone.

After a good hour's trek and some photo shoots along the way, we reached the mouth of the crater. It was breathtaking, literally and figuratively. We could even see steam coming off from some areas at the bottom of the crater. After some fresh buko juice, more photo shoots and more offers of horse rides which we declined once more, we started down the trail. We were dirt-y all over when we got back to the boat, and when we got off we weren't exactly as dry as when we got in. You would've thought the boatman was mad at us by how much we were soaked.

We were apprehensive about going back up the same way we came down not only because of the road condition and the landslides but also because the van might not make it. Fortunately we made it back up with no incident.

Then we went to the Sunrise Hotel to have an all-you-can-eat buffet lunch. The food and service was well worth the 365 PHP/person fee even for me who can't eat most seafood dishes.

We went home shortly after that. Even after writing it all down, I still can't believe we did that much in 24 hours.

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(All photos were taken using my 2 Megapixel phone camera)