Philippines 2: The island in the lake on the island in the lake on the island...

During our time here in the Philippines we had the privilege to spend the first week with our very good friends Ragnar and Liz. For a while now we have simply referred to them as our third set of parents, and our kids' third set of grandparents. They are really, really cool people, and we are very thankful that they took time to come to Manila to hang out with us.

Since they know this area quite well, they offered to show us some of the sights in the area.
One really cool place they took us to see was the island in the lake on the island in the lake on the island. Let me explain real quick: We are now on the island of Luzon, which has a lake called Taal, in that lake there is a volcano, but the crater in that volcano is full of water, and in that lake there is a small island.

After about an hour and a half's drive from Manila we arrived at lake Taal. We stopped up on a ridge in a town called Tagaytay to look at the view of the lake. This is me and Alia with our third set of (grand)parents

After we drove down to the lake, we hired a boat to take us across to the volcano island

I have tried to stay away from this whole selfie hysteria, but... I guess this counts as one.

Alia enjoyed the waves.. at first at least

After arriving on the island we had the option of walking up to the crater, or riding horses. Because of a certain broken ankle because of a certain accident you might have read about a month ago we chose to ride the horses. Ragnar and Liz wanted to walk, and they were just as quick to the top as us

Ok... so the island in the crater lake is not huuuuuge, but it still is an island...

But, anyway, the sights up there were fantastic, and it was also really cool to look around the shoreline and see all the holes in the ground with the smoke pouring out of them. As you understand, the volcano is still active, and it is actually not legal to live on the island, but with all these tourist wanting to see the spectacular sights, a few people live there anyway.

So that's all for now.

Erlend