On this morning we road in a jeepney west to Carmen before loading on a sweat bus and heading south to Angeles. There were good views of the mountains from the bus as we passed through Tarlac, Tarlac; a very busy city.
About 50 kms south of Tarlac we entered Angeles; the old home to the Americans Clark Air Force Base. Very quickly we could see that prostitution thrives in this city; we learned that many a pregnant Philippine had waited at the airport after the war to spot the military officer that impregnated her. The prostitution is apparent in all of the cities so one gets used to seeing the foreigner with an Asian local.
After making our plan for the next days adventure we settled in for the night in a hotel that had a lousy bed. Our reason for not bypassing Angeles was that we wanted to check out Mt Pinatubo which is an active volcano best known for it's 1991 eruption in which the forested mountain spewed particulates high into the stratosphere. This volcanic eruption was such a major event that the earth's weather pattern changed after it occurred (second largest eruption in the 20th century). There were many facts to be learned from visiting this site; such as information about the Aetas indigenous people that used to inhabit the land around the volcano.
At 6:50 am we took two different jeepney rides to Sapang Bato in order to arrive at the registration office for entry into the Mt. Pinatubo area; we since learned that it would have been better to enter from the north at Capas, Tarlac. We were required to hire a guide; once a guy showed up at the office my wife and I looked at each other and I said, "this couldn't be the guy." Turned out that this rather overweight mid-30's guy in flip flops was indeed our guy. We then hired a jeepney for the short drive to the village of Target where some people from the Aeta tribe still exist (they moved back after the eruption). These peoples were very different looking than a usual local Philippina, they are short and have more of an appearance of a Samoan than a Philippine. We were to give a donation in that village and then we headed out for our hike.
After about one hour of walking the views became incredible.
We walked through a dried valley with cliffs of lahar (sand, gravel, mud, and rocks) that reached about 80-100 metres. It was easy to see how fragile these cliffs were since such fine particulates were holding rocks in place. The views were so nice that is was hard to capture the true experience in a photo.
It seemed that heavy rains had caused a collapse of some cliffs and a blockage on the 6 hour hike from Target to the crater so we had to turn back without completing our task. The previous day on the bus we had seen a big dike making project going on just south of Tarlac and now it was evident that the material had came from the eruption.
Many locals who cannot move from the immediate area of the mountain have recurring health issues. With a big flood in the 70's, a bad typhoon prior to the eruption in 1991 and a bad flood in 1995 this area is not ideal for habitation. Although we did not get to the crater; again, perhaps trying from Capas would have been better, we still witnessed some magnificent scenery and got familiar with a catastrophic event that really affected the local population, even to this day.
The next morning we headed south on a jeepney, only to load onto our worst conditioned sweat bus to venture into San, Fernando, Pampanga. We passed another huge diking project west of this capital of Pampanga; as well as a dead body laying on the road. From San Fernando we hopped a bus to Olongapo then boarded yet another bus to Iba. Our main goal was to cover new territory and if we saw something inviting out of the bus window we would stop. The scenery of the Zambales Mountains on the way to Iba was very nice, Iba has some nice beaches.
We headed back south and got off the bus at San Antonio where we took a jeepney to San Miguel. Our plan was to stay on the beach for the night but San Miguel ended up to be right on the highway, so again we loaded a jeepney and made our way to Barrio Barretto at Subic Bay. We ended up to find Lita's Compound for lodging and were happy with our accommodation.
On the bus the previous day I noticed a communications tower atop a pointed mountain close to Alongapo, that was to be our destination on this day. Our hope was to get high enough to get some good photo's but we soon found out from two forest rangers that people could not go up this mountain without written permission from the navy base. When we turned around to walk away when the guys told us to jump in the back of their truck to go up. Turned out that these guys were the supervisors in charge of operations so we were able to get a tour of the building plus see the excellent view from the top.
Heading out in the extreme heat on this day was definitely worth it; plus we met a couple of nice guys.
In the morning we left before 7am on a jeepney to the bus station in Alongapo and then boarded a bus for Manila.
The loaded bus left the station only to pull into a work yard about 3 kms down the road. I watched out the window as the driver, conductor, and workers chased each other around having fun. We sat there in the bus for about 20 minutes in the heat before the driver got back on the bus and we headed out. Our bus was actually for Pasay, which is a city south of Manila; like Metro Manila, so we were able to pass through the hustle and bustle of this city of 1.6 million. Manila seemed to have a mixture of high rise office towers and dense tin nipa huts. By mid-day we had made it the 240 kms from Subic Bay to Batangas, after changing buses in Pasay. We experienced some terrible behaviour that we would fully understand the next day.
Our bus from Pasay was the Batangas Pier bus, so it was to take us right to the ferry dock (pier) which is where people catch a ferry for the some of the Visayan Islands. Our plan was to go to the pier so we knew exactly where to go the next day, then go by jeepney back to Batangas proper. We witnessed some locals calling Mindoro, Mindoro ( a large north -western Visayan Island) to us foreigner passengers, but we were not interested. There were 5 unknowing tourists (4 Germans and a Brit) who got on that jeepney, seemingly going to a ferry. I met the British guy a few days later on the island of Mindoro and he told me that this jeepney driver drove him and the Germans to a small dock with an outrigger boat that was to take them to Mindoro. When they tried to insist that they wanted to take the ferry these guys said oh no,no the last ferry is gone. When they refused to pay the 4,000 pesos for the ride the guys refused to drive them back to the Batangas Pier. In the end they got cheated big time and it left them angered at the locals here.
When we made it back to the town of Batangas proper we could see that the locals were not very friendly. We guessed that very few foreigners even stop here on their way to the islands. After walking around briefly we decided to make our way to Lemery where we would stay for the night, before starting our island hopping portion of our trip. The people were very friendly in Lemery, sure makes a traveler feel welcome.
No comments:
Post a Comment