"Pinatubo" a Philippines Travel Page by phi78

We decided to climb the Pinatobo Vulcano. This Vulcano erupted in '92 and it was one of the biggest eruptions in 200 years. At this moment there is a big lake inside the crater and you could swim in the lake though we heard it is not too healthy because of the big amount of solfor in the water. There are tours organizaed for around 50 dollar per person to get to the vulcano but we thought it could be done cheaper. (We are still Dutch Also the LP said it is easy to do on your own. NOT SO! Maybe because the LP we used is out to date (3 years old). So we get up early and acctually we would go with the four of us, but we two, S and me were the only ones who get up after going out the last night. T. and C. could just not be waken up, how hard we tried. They were proberbly in some kind of coma
So we took of at 8 to the busstation to take the bus to Santa Juliana where the visitors center would be located. At the busstation nobody seemed to know the place Santa Juliana. Would we be the only tourist going on our own?? At one moment everybody started to try to get us on one of their busses for a lot of money and we get a bit frustrated of all the people shouting at us to get in their bus. Finally we found a local bus who could take us somewhere close, (they said). After one and half hour we stranded in a town (forget the name allready) in the middle of nowhere, and here also nobody seemed to know the place of Santa Juliana. Would it acctually exist? Luckily we found some people who knew the place and could even take us there. After some negotiating we were able to hire a tricylce to get to the visitors center. First I should explain what a tricycle is. It is a motor with a small cabin besides it. Two ordinairy Filipino people can get easily in this small cabin. We were not ordinary Filipino people so this meant one had to sit behind the driver on the motor and one cramped in the small cabin. So after one and half hour of bumping around and dust eating we finally arived in the visitors center of Santa Juliana. So it actually exists
But unfortunately we were not there yet. We had to hire a Jeep on even more bumpy road for a hour more where we finally could start doing the hike up to the crater. This was a quite nice hike of one and half hour. When we arrived at the crater of the vulcano we knew we had done the right thing to come here and do this thing. The view of the lake is just stunishing with the azur blue water. We quickly forget all the trouble to get here. We spend an half hour near the crater viewing this beautifull lake. Really amazing.
But we still had to get back the same route which made is a bit worried. When we arrived by the Jeep it started to rain, and it made the road back quite adventurous. The small rivers we passed before turned in big rivers so quickly we were really surprised. We even saw other Jeepneys stuck in the middle of the river because of the quickly rising of the water. Luckily we had a good driver who managed to get us through the river with the 4 by 4 Jeep.
After that a bumpy road back again with the trycicle and a quite long bus drive back to Clarck Fields.
When we arrived we were really exhausted but in the end it was all worth it!