South West Luzon

South West Luzon

You would think an 80 km drive to the beach might take an hour.  On the other hand, if the traffic was horrid on the way to the coast maybe an hour and a half.  You have not been to the Philippines.  This trip would take almost 3 hours.  The first 75 minutes would get us almost 60km then we got to the port of Batangas.  Near the beach you may think, smell the salt air, seagulls or surfboards. NO!!!  We got to a traffic jam through parts of the Philippines that would make a town planner think they were in a nightmare.  The car wreckers were next to the primary school, food outlets next to the fertiliser factory.  Then things got ugly.  The oil refinery was next door to the up market housing estate.  During the next 150 minutes we saw about 25 schools, 30 churches, enough political advertising to make even Anna and Campbell blush, about 500 stray anorexic cats and probably a million Jeepneys and trikes (more on these in another blog, you have been warned.  Think of John Cleese in the travelogue before Life of Brian and those lovely gondolas.

We reached Anilao, a not so sleepy seaside town that looks beautiful in the picture below.

After a look around this little town, we decided to go in search of a beach.  Looked at the map with our faithful driver Dindo and set out for Matabungkay.  It took about as long to drive there as pronounce it.  About 70km away to the north west, the nearest beach to the south of Metro Manila.  We thought we would be there in 2 hours based on our earlier experience.  NO!!!.  Think of Mackay during the cane harvest, factor in Filipino drivers and of course Jeepneys and trikes.  The photo below shows about 5% of the cane trucks we saw on the road that day.  We finally reached our destination, I know you are still trying to pronounce the name of this little beach side town.  On the way we encountered our first Filipino road accident, amazingly, this had taken more than a day.  After an accident, Filipinos stand in the middle of the road with their motorcycles prone beside them wondering what happened and what to do next.  Dindo avoided them by several honks of the horn, the accepted method of communication on the roads.  Still, much better than the road rage at home.

Did you know that beaches in the Philippines are actually privately owned and you have to run the gauntlet of everyone trying to entice you to their resort. This is achieved by standing in the mddle of the road, flagging down your car and then bashing on the windows when you fail to do what they want.   Eventually, we decided on the one that had a sign ordering you to leave your firearms at the gate.  We stepped back in time, this was left over from the 1980s but had some great beachsideoptions where you could eat.  Next stop Tagatay.

A beautiful city that overlooks Taal.  A lake, within a volcano, within a lake within a volcano.  We decided on the Taal Vista Hotel for lunch and were rewarded with this stunning view .

Unfortunately, there was a market and Liz could not be denied, we had to investigate.  On the way back to our hotel we drove down the mountain from Tagatay to home.  More furniture for sale than every Harvey Norman in Australia, some beautiful fruit and vegetable stalls and enough orchids to fill Wivenhoe Dam.  After the obligatory traffic jam on the way home we reached our hotel and promptly orderd a stiff drink.  Our little 250km odyssey had taken over 9 hours including the stops.  Imagine how we would have felt if we were driving!! Poor Dindo, he then had 1 ½ hours travel home.