What a nice sunny weekend we had at the beach. We headed out early on Saturday morning and drove to Tagaytay, where Taal one of the largest volcanoes in the world is located. This is the one Terry went down into a couple of years ago on those tiny little horses. You can no longer go down inside because it has shown some activity recently-not an eruption, but rumblings. We ate breakfast overlooking the crater lake and the volcano. It was quite foggy when we sat down, but by the time we finished eating, the sun had burned off the fog and we had a wonderful view.
We journeyed on to find Philvoc, the volcanology center there where seismic activity throughout the Philippines is monitored. There are 200 volcanoes in these islands, 23 of which are active now. This center also monitors nuclear weapons incidents. It can tell when and where in the world a nuclear weapon has been used. There should be no activity at all since the testing of nuclear weapons has been banned, but they have the technology to find it, if it happens.
On to Matabungkay Beach Resort. We found this place on the internet and didn't know what to expect. We had been told that it might be a little run down. It was a bit dated and the rooms were very basic, but it was clean and had a nice pool. The word beach doesn't exactly explain the sand next to the South China Sea. At high tide there was a strip of grey sand about 8 ft. wide between the water and the grass of the resort. We wanted to sit on this in lounge chairs, but that was a strange request to them. I guess most people want the clean pool atmosphere. We were wanting to hear ocean waves and watch them lap up on the beach...... They did bring us some lounge chairs so we could sit, look at the water, and see a few waves. We took a little banca boat out to a reef for some snorkeling. (skinny, long boat with arms on either side to help balance it. It looks like a funny water bug) The water and the reef were beautiful, but the masks they had given us were rather old and scratched up so we couldn't see as well as we could have if we had brought our own equipment. We had a delicious meal at the restaurant so we think this place was a pretty good find.
On Sunday, we all had massages on the floating spa! It was a cabana on a raft and two of us went at a time. As we lay on our stomachs there was a hole in the floor of the raft and we could watch the water life as we were getting our massages. I saw fish and crabs and listened to the waves as the raft rocked softly. It was a great experience. Today we sat at the pool as we were there earlier at really high tide and found out why they don't like to bring their lounge chairs to the beach. It was completely gone! Water was lapping up the the bulkhead adjacent to the grass. Where we had been yesterday was completely under water!
On our way home we drove around to check out a few other resorts we had heard or read about and discovered that the one we had chosen had the best all around amenities to be had in that area. One place we looked at ended up being a huge complex of hotel rooms and condominiums, but it was really run down and quite spooky as there were no guests there at all. We decided it was the perfect setting for a really scary movie and we were not about to stay there, EVER!
We went back to Tagaytay on our way home and stopped for dinner at a great little place that Allison spotted- Breakfast at Antonio's- They had breakfast all day as well as pizza and burgers. Great food and another chance to sit and look out over the beautiful crater lake and volcano.
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