Stories of Places, People and Photography in the Philippines and Beyond
Barely a month when I last visited Taal Town, I found myself there again. It is such an interesting place that it’s worth exploring the second or the third time around. It’s only a few hours bus ride from Manila which makes it a nice weekend getaway. I wrote about the Taal Basilica before but it was just a cursory visit. This time around join me as we explore the grounds up to the bell tower.
Often mistaken as being part of Cavite or Tagaytay than Batangas because of its name, Taal Town is a heritage town, much like Vigan that showcases heritage houses and structures dating as far back as the 1800s. I’ve been to this town south-west of the Taal Lake before but have never really explored the place yet. So when an invite came to tour Taal Town again with Nokia and test out its latest Nokia N86 8MP on field, I thought it would a great time to explore further. It’s a full afternoon of exploration and all photos and video here are taken with Nokia N86’s 8mp camera-phone with a whopping 28mm wide angle Carl Zeiss Tessar lens.
At the camp, we get to pitch our tents. The Columbia Dome tent is actually very nice. It has 2 doors, one on each side and very spacious iteriors with a hanging compartment at the ceiling and can room 3 medium sized persons. Early morning, it actually rained more but we were still dry inside the tents. At camp we get to eat some pasta, toasted breads and baguettes prepared by the Columbia folks. We get to share some stories as well with the other bloggers. The next day, we had some clearing and we get to do a summit. This is actually the 3rd time I visited this mountain and it’s the first time I did a summit. Maybe because I knew the summit here wasn’t that spectacular as the other Batangas mountains.
I never thought that I’ll be back in Mt. Maculot so soon. But since I promised an old climbing buddy I haven’t seen for some time that I’ll take him here after seeing my previous post on Mt. Maculot, I scheduled our climb. Thanks to Cruise for inviting me here the first time around, it greatly added to my logistics of the area. Same as what we did, we went on a night trek, but the fun came much later as 2 new friends were added to our list during our climb.
Had another chance of climbing again last weekend thanks to the gracious invitation of Adtrek on their anniversary climb. Thank god the weather was nice (I guess too nice, – it’s freaking hot!). It was really hot, probably why I got lazy to take more shots than the usual.
Nung isang linggo, nayaya akong mag Mt. Maculot. At dahil medyo matagal-tagal na rin akong di nakaka-akyat ng bundok pumayag na rin ako. Una medyo nag-a alangan ako kasi Mt. Maculot. Isa ata sa pinaka sikat na bundok na inaakyat sa Batangas, na-iisip ko di masyadong maganda at baka madumi paligid. Pero dahil mura lng naman at wala naman akong naka schedule nung weekend na yun, pumayag na rin ako.
I’ve been longing to go back to the mountain for quite some time so I accepted an invitation from, fellow climber Ruby of MFPI to climb Mt. Daguldol in San Juan, Batangas. Still weary-eyed from lack of sleep, I packed my bags around 4 am Saturday morning and quickly set off to sleep. Good thing our assembly was at noon time in Buendia where our Vans would pick us up. Don’t know much of the guys who will be coming along, but I saw some guys mostly with “daypacks” and large sleeping bags. Some girls even have shoulder bags with …
