Christmas on Mt. Pinatubo

With a day off for Christmas, it seemed like a perfect time to climb my 1st volcano on the other side of the ring of fire.  We left Manila at 4:45AM on Christmas day.  If traffic were as light as that every day, living in this city would be an entirely different experience.  We met our guide out in Capas at 7am and then headed off in the 4x4 through the riverbed leading up to Mt. Pinatubo, followed by a 2 hour hike to the crater lake of the volcano.

Xmas photo shoot

Sec. Kerry visits and Diving

Sec. Kerry visited Manila and Tacloban last week.  My only job for his visit involved holding the door open for him during his brief trip to the embassy for a meet and greet on Tuesday.

This weekend I finally found a weekend to finish my advance open water course dives down on the coast in Anilao.  Not many picts, but had a good sunset Saturday night and a great morning on Sunday.

Typhoon site visit - Tacloban

On Monday morning I attempted to get to Tacloban, ground zero for the recent typhoon, for work, but due to some flight issues had to overnight in Cebu before finally making it to Tacloban on Tuesday morning.  Luckily Cebu isn't a terrible place to get stranded and there were several of us in the same boat from various organizations funding recovery efforts.  Cebu was the landing point for Magellan (and his cross), as well as the site of his death.  

Lapu Lapu - his troops killed Magellaan.  

His head was recently cracked during the October earthquake

 Magellan's cross, still being propped up after damage from the earthquake

Tuesday was a more somber day as I attended meetings related to recovery efforts in Tacloban and witnessed first hand some of the devastation from the Nov typhoon.  Though the destruction was incredible, the most visible and striking observation of the trip was actually seeing the resilience of the people who remain and the fact that daily life continues to go on.  The markets are re-opening, people are reconstructing using whatever materials they can salvage, city offices are re-opening under makeshift conditions, haircuts are being given on top of debris piles, water and electricity have been restored in parts of the city, and a Christmas tree of plastic bottles is being erected in the town square.

The Airport

I assumed that these boats were fishing, but they are actually salvaging bottles of rum from a boat that sank during the storm

Pasko = Christmas

Batanes

Batanes is one of those places that everyone in the Philippines has heard amazing things about, but due to lack of transportation options until recently, few have actually visited.  Daily flights just started in November and flight cancelations are common.  Luckily, we had only a short delay and very bumpy landing.  

Batanes is a series of islands, the farthest north in the 7,107 islands of the Philippines, just south of Taiwan.  It's characterized by rolling hills and rocky beaches that are unlike more of the rest of the Philippines. A boat from the mainland with gas and supplies arrives every 15 days.   It's still relatively undeveloped for tourism, but I'm guessing that will begin to change quickly now with the daily flights.  We only had time over the Thanksgiving holiday to visit 2 of the 10 islands, Batan and Sabtang.

 a little windy

from the Honesty coffeeshop…..honor system payments

Ivatan stone houses

our trusty boat for the open-ocean crossing to Sabtang Island