Taal: A Lake Inside a Volcano Inside a Lake

Taal was their idea. The volcano sits inside a lake that sits inside a larger island that is itself nearly surrounded by the outer lake, a geography that sounds improbable but is entirely real and is in fact the result of millions of years of volcanic activity producing nested calderas of varying ages. The current active crater, which contains a crater lake of its own, has erupted more than thirty times in recorded history, most recently in significant ways in 1965 and again, dramatically, in January 2020. In 2011 it was described as dormant, which in volcanic terms means quiet but not finished, and this caveat, which seemed academic from sea level, became more present in the mind as we climbed toward the rim and the ground began to smell of sulphur.

The journey from Manila had taken the best part of the morning. A public bus to Tagaytay, a town on the ridge above the lake that has a long view across the water to the volcano, followed by a trike, the Philippine motorcycle sidecar that serves as a taxi in most smaller towns and which covers this kind of terrain at a pace that is very comfortable for two passengers and rather less so for the third person sitting on the rear rack of the motorcycle itself, which was my position for approximately thirty minutes of descending hill road. Ashley was initially uncertain about the trike arrangement and then, as is the nature of most things you’re uncertain about, entirely fine once it started moving.

On the bus to Tagaytay, food vendors had boarded at each stop, a different one at each, selling things that ranged from recognisable to aspirational. The Philippine bus food system is essentially a moving market: you are presented with a succession of local produce by people who shout its virtues at you from the aisle with the enthusiasm of someone who has been doing this since before sunrise and is still, improbably, finding it rewarding. We tried several things. The coconut cake, or what I believe was coconut cake, was not a success.

At the top of the volcano the crater lake is a colour that the word green doesn’t fully describe, pale and slightly luminous, with steam rising from vents in the sulphur-yellow ground around the rim. The landscape is bare of vegetation for a wide radius around the caldera, the earth the colour of bone, cracked in places by heat and gas. It is very quiet up there, or it was that afternoon, with a view that extends across Taal Lake to the ridge at Tagaytay and beyond to the southern Luzon highlands.

We stayed for longer than the heat technically recommended and then came back down the same way we’d come up, on foot past the horses that the less enthusiastic hikers had ridden, back to the boat and the choppy return crossing and the trike and the long bus back to Manila. A few weeks after we visited, news came through of significant seismic activity around Taal and the evacuation of residents from the area as a precautionary measure. The mountain had been paying attention to its own processes in the background, as mountains do, and reminding people in the surrounding area that dormant and finished are not the same thing.

Elizabeth texted to say she had seen the news. She was fine. She had dried out well before we got back to Manila.