[Bicol Trip Day 4-5]
We finished our whaleshark adventure early in Donsol so we thought of utilizing the remaining hours of the day to take a look at one final spot on the northeastern side of Albay -- Manito. The tourist spot market there is Balubagon Boiling Caves. It's supposed to be an area where you can see geysers shooting up steam from the ground. This is the last leg of our Bicol trip.
We started driving around 4:30pm and it was not so sunny anymore.
For me, this was the most scenic among the routes that we took in the Bicol area. It was the rockiest route for our whole Bicol trip, because plenty of landslides have destroyed some sections of the secondary roads there. About 10kms away from the central area of Manito, there's an excellent view of the mountainside, Poliqui Bay and Mayon Volcano. As we got closer to Manito, the road conditions were still getting worse (we tried to ask a government vehicle there what was going on and they said there was some project ongoing to fix the roads there), we also met a local couple riding a motorcycle on their way home. H
e told us that it wasn't a good time to go there because it was getting dark already. He was nice enough to guide us back down from the mountains, and offered to take us around the Balubagon area the next morning. This guy also mentioned that the water's heat there is enough to cook eggs, so we passed by some grocery to buy fresh eggs for testing.
We went back to Legaspi to find a place to sleep for the night (Reynaldo's, Washington Drive, Legaspi City). We went up again the next morning through the very rough roads and found our local guide waiting along the road (brothers Teddy/Jimmy Avion, I got their contact details).
After about 7-10 kilometers of driving we pulled in another young boy in the area to guide us to the geysers.
It was another short drive, bypassing the Manito seaport (you can go to Romblon from here) and ending in a small spring where a few people washed their clothes and took the kids for a bath (that water was cold). Maybe they brought us to another spot. We didn't see any caves, just a spring, and a lake formation beside it.
On this small lake we could see steam rising from the water. I was expecting something different like steam erupting from the ground, but there was none, except for a few small holes in the ground with either steam rising gently (you can also hear the bubbly sound of water deep from these holes) or water boiling at the surface... anyway, the water was still too hot it burns the skin.
The water formation as we walked further down was wonderful, surrounded by plenty of greens in spite of the extreme heat we felt from both the ground and the sun. There wasn't much to do here so we started our mad-scientist experiment. We brought out a couple of eggs and dipped them into the bubbling waters (they didn't look clean so we wrapped the eggs in cloth and tied them with dry branches). In less than 10 minutes, we got our hard-boiled eggs!
We brought in some more food for our breakfast... ate these geyser-cooked eggs, and nothing more. I know this whole idea of bringing up eggs all the way up to this nasty mountain to cook them is crazy, but we had fun anyway :)
We finished our whaleshark adventure early in Donsol so we thought of utilizing the remaining hours of the day to take a look at one final spot on the northeastern side of Albay -- Manito. The tourist spot market there is Balubagon Boiling Caves. It's supposed to be an area where you can see geysers shooting up steam from the ground. This is the last leg of our Bicol trip.
We started driving around 4:30pm and it was not so sunny anymore.
For me, this was the most scenic among the routes that we took in the Bicol area. It was the rockiest route for our whole Bicol trip, because plenty of landslides have destroyed some sections of the secondary roads there. About 10kms away from the central area of Manito, there's an excellent view of the mountainside, Poliqui Bay and Mayon Volcano. As we got closer to Manito, the road conditions were still getting worse (we tried to ask a government vehicle there what was going on and they said there was some project ongoing to fix the roads there), we also met a local couple riding a motorcycle on their way home. H
e told us that it wasn't a good time to go there because it was getting dark already. He was nice enough to guide us back down from the mountains, and offered to take us around the Balubagon area the next morning. This guy also mentioned that the water's heat there is enough to cook eggs, so we passed by some grocery to buy fresh eggs for testing.
We went back to Legaspi to find a place to sleep for the night (Reynaldo's, Washington Drive, Legaspi City). We went up again the next morning through the very rough roads and found our local guide waiting along the road (brothers Teddy/Jimmy Avion, I got their contact details).After about 7-10 kilometers of driving we pulled in another young boy in the area to guide us to the geysers.
It was another short drive, bypassing the Manito seaport (you can go to Romblon from here) and ending in a small spring where a few people washed their clothes and took the kids for a bath (that water was cold). Maybe they brought us to another spot. We didn't see any caves, just a spring, and a lake formation beside it.
On this small lake we could see steam rising from the water. I was expecting something different like steam erupting from the ground, but there was none, except for a few small holes in the ground with either steam rising gently (you can also hear the bubbly sound of water deep from these holes) or water boiling at the surface... anyway, the water was still too hot it burns the skin.The water formation as we walked further down was wonderful, surrounded by plenty of greens in spite of the extreme heat we felt from both the ground and the sun. There wasn't much to do here so we started our mad-scientist experiment. We brought out a couple of eggs and dipped them into the bubbling waters (they didn't look clean so we wrapped the eggs in cloth and tied them with dry branches). In less than 10 minutes, we got our hard-boiled eggs!
We brought in some more food for our breakfast... ate these geyser-cooked eggs, and nothing more. I know this whole idea of bringing up eggs all the way up to this nasty mountain to cook them is crazy, but we had fun anyway :)
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