The Complex Volcano of Tagaytay

I was unable to catch a flight to Bohol this morning so I had two options. I could find a Manila city tour, however with this traffic I would most likely be touring the inside of a bus. Or I could go to Tagaytay and see a volcano inside of a lake that was inside of another volcano, or what they call a complex volcano. I chose the hour and a half ride to Tagaytay.

A shot from the outer caldera.

These are the people who will die next time it erupts. It’s the second most active volcano in the Philippines so they probably won’t live much longer.

Some local fisherman, although I would not eat anything out of the lake due to the higher CO2 emissions and concentration of radon gas bubbling up from below.



Yeah it was pretty cool and if you have a day to kill it's worth checking out, but otherwise probably not worth the three hour round trip unless you are going to stay overnight.



Once back in Manila I found that not far from my hotel was the Rizal Monument that appears to be guarded 24/7. Jose Rizal tried to rebel against the Spanish occupation but ended up getting executed instead. I wonder if the bars are open yet? This heat is killing me.

There was also a Fort nearby that probably had a name of some kind, I just did not catch it. At first I was interested but then I found the dungeons were closed off. There must be some kind of bar around here, wouldn’t you think?

Here we go, a nice old Spanish style restaurant. While the beer was nice and cold, the food was quite bad and had me craving another Balut instead.

They had bikes for rent but you had to return them back here so I was not able to ride one back to the hotel.

On the way back I stopped at this church, and believe it or not I quite enjoyed it. Around 85% of the Philippines are Christians.

This was the San Agustin church and its architecture was beautiful.







I’ve seen this guy before, but this is not his best pose.

There were no holes the coffin like in Sagada so I was not able to peek inside.

They had some really cool stuff in here, like Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam. Of the two schools of thought on this painting I subscribe to the Pineal gland hypotheses.

For some strange reason I was drawn towards this. It turns out it was Saint Michael the Archangel. I’m a far cry from the definition of being religious however I am familiar with his spirit as a result of my third Ayahuasca ceremony. And then it all became clear. San Miguel is Spanish for Saint Michael, the beer I liked so much was named after the Archangel Michael.

I found a few more tombs and it looks like they had a few vacancies.

I returned to the hotel to have a drink with an old friend, San Miguel. It’s so hot in the Philippines that they often serve beer with ice. I enjoyed it neat and then went to bed as tomorrow I would be heading south to the beaches. As I fell asleep I realized how the classical Southeast Asia countries had these deep rich histories with lots of ruins from Buddhism and the Khmer Empire. While the Philippines history is largely filled with occupation after occupation and natural disaster after natural disaster.