A Weekend Getaway

Since Monday was a holiday and we had no class, Hunter and I decided to pay a visit to our friends in Albay and have a little adventure.  We took the 2 hour van to Daraga, where Kathryn lives, and hung out in Legazpi for the night.  We went had dinner at "Vintage" and later met up with Chelsea's barkada (group of friends) for drinks.

The next day, we got up fairly early and jumped on another van to Sorsogon.  It took us two vans and about three hours to reach our hotel in Sorsogon City.  Upon reaching the hotel, we "took our snack".

Three jeeps and at least 90 minutes later, we finally arrived at our destination: 

Bulusan Volcano Natural Park!

We were supposed to be able to text a number and have a trike pick us up at this sign, but no one ever responded so we ended up walking the 2 km to the lake.

The lake was beautiful and completely surrounded by tropical rainforest!  They had canoes and kayaks for rent and we went out on the water for about an hour.  

This is easily one of the things I miss most in living here: being in nature.  There really aren't any 'nature spots' in my town or area so even our short time spent on the lake was fantastic.

After kayaking, we went to check out some hot springs near the lake and stayed there for an hour or so as well.  We were pretty sick of traveling at this point (jeeps are even worse for long trips than the crowded, jerky vans!), so we were ecstatic when the people Kathryn had been chatting with offered us a ride straight back to our hotel.  It was still a jeep, but it was only one instead of three.  I ended up falling asleep on it, if you can believe that, so it wasn't so bad.

We had heard good things about the pizza at the restaurant across from our hotel so we had to check it out.  The pizza was OK (of my options here in the Philippines, I still prefer Pizza Hut when I can get it), but the flour-less chocolate cake was AMAZINGGGGG.

Happy now, Mom?? ;)