You can see the rim of the volcano and the lake within it. Another volcano is within the lake with a lake in it also.  Like a Matruska Doll.  The green line is our banca ride across the lake and the red line is the pony trek to the volcano.  These photos are from Wikipedia.

This was a fun trip on the spur of the moment; little planning, just all adventure to see what we would see.  Carol, her driver Michael, Randal and I left Makati at 9 am and drove the 50 or so miles to Talisay, a small resort town that offers access to the inner volcano. It took almost 3 hours in the Saturday traffic, winding mountain road and a slight goose chase to find the best (reliable, won’t drown in their banca) resort to find lunch and hire our banca.  When you get to the main lake road in Talisay you are met by bunches of men waving signs advertising their boat services.  We finally settled on these guys and followed them wherever they lead us; at times back and forth and back and forth till we said “Stop, we’ll eat at the first place.”

Our “guides.”                                                                                                       All I can tell you is that the name of the small resort starts with a K and there is a large fish over the entrance. 

                                                                                                                           Carol and Randal look at the lunch menu.  We shared pork and rice for 5, but the 4 of us ate it all up. Pretty good too.

The resort had a fish cage where they grew talapia.  You can see across the water to the inner volcano area.  The volcano on the right is extinct. It looks a long way across, but it only took about 15 minutes.  It was calm and felt quite safe in the small banca.

The terrain  adjacent to our little resort.  Very lush.

A typical banca.  We took a different one than this, but they are all quite similar.

  It was overcast, better than bright sun and heat.

  Here we go.  Randal and Carol.  Michael and I are up front.

View from the banca.

  I know, not so pretty!  A strong contrast with our late afternoon trip to the Taygaytay Highlands.

But this was the little ranch area where we got our ponies for the trip to the volcano.  It was not lovely or scenic and we didn’t have much time for photos. 

Carol actually took this at the end of the trip.We actually could have walked but didn’t know that until we were there. 

The ride was an experience.  Right up there with my ride in China when Sallie rode the “zebra.”