Something new I learned today: Mt. Pinatubo is located on the tripoint boundary of the Philippine provinces of Zambales, Tarlac, and Pampanga. I wasn’t sure which one to use for my title so I settled on Zambales.
I went on a Tripsanity tour yet again (Php2600 for the entire package, meals excluded), I really appreciate how they take care of their customers from start to finish. The meeting time was 1:30am at McDonald’s Eton Centris, I took a cab from the office and it was an easy and quick 40minute ride. From here we travelled for 2 hours and stopped over at another McDonald’s for breakfast (in Tarlac), afterwards we continued to Mt. Pinatubo Tourism office. Registration was pretty easy, we did wait a while for our 4×4 ride to the jump-off point to start our trek. At around 7:30am we started the hike, the first few kms were easy and since we started early the sun wasn’t scorching yet. By 8:15am we reached our first mark, we were now 5kms away from the crater (7kms in total) and by 10:30am we finally reached the crater.
I don’t think I’ve been so tired in my life going up and down the mountain LOL! What I found most difficult were the rocks and boulders we had to walk over. I have weak knees and hindi naman ako athletic, by mid-descent my knees and ankles were feeling the burn. The heat was tolerable, it wasn’t as hot as Taal but because I wore ankle socks and my leggings didn’t cover my entire leg meron akong 1 inch thick na sun-burnt band around my ankles. I also wore my Quechua hiking shoes for the first time and it’s better than my Merrell trail shoes, not slippery at all but being a lesser known brand I’m not sure how long it would last.
Upon reaching the summit we had to walk for a few meters downhill to see the actual crater (side note: dun daw nanggaling yung source ng eruption ng volcano last time) and if the water in Taal’s crater was more green this one was blue-green, as in striking blue-green. Ang sarap titigan, coz you wouldn’t believe it was in the Philippines. We were resting for a while when a group of Army men arrived, I asked for a photo with one of them and even got to hold an armalite (walang bala, of course)!
it begins with a step 