the real volcano crater

Since I saw a photo of the Taal volcano on a post card or on my grade school Civics text book, I thought that it was this island/mountain.

However, during our volcano trip last April 13, our tour guide corrected this belief. Actually, according to him, the whole lake is the crater of the volcano. There is also a "main" crater but it's also not on this island. Most people probably thought that this was the main volcano because of the large crater in it. It really is a crater in every sense of the word, but it is not a volcano crater. The real volcano crater is located on the island with the circle.

taal volcano trip

There are several aspects of our journey to taal volcano I would like to include in this blog entry. These include our misconceptions about the volcano, a personal account of my experience going to the top of the volcano to see the crater, a post-mortem analysis of the trip to analyze what we should have done prior to the trip, and of course, thoughts about my UWA 10-22mm lens which I used exclusively to document this event.

But before we go into those aspects, I would like to outline how this trip became possible. This is specially for the benefit of those who want to see the volcano crater themselves.

1. Travel by land to Talisay, Batangas. Actually according to the Internet, you only need to travel to any town by the lake side.
2. Look for a boat. For our case, we employed the boats of Taal Yacht Club. A boat for six costs 1500 PHP.
3. After the ride, you'll probably be already in the island. You just have to walk a couple of hours to see the crater! Or you can also hire a horse if you have plenty of cash. A horse costs approx. 500 PHP.

Here's a view from the point where the crater is visible.