Tagaytay, Philippines, 7-9 April 2006: Taal Vista Sleeping Volcano And Resort

I fly into Manila noon, Friday. The car ride to Tagaytay is a good 2 hours' battle through the notorious thick city traffic. It is made dizzyingly longer by the interminable bumps along the way. Relief, however, is sweet at journey's end.

Tagaytay is a resort town built on the rim of a volcanic crater that holds a lake with yet another sporadically active volcanic cone within. The latter is veiled by a pall of mist that appears to hang over the lake year-round, except during the driest of high summer months. The view of the lake from the terrace of the Taal Vista Hotel is stupendous.

Taking a short morning walk from the hotel, I find myself in a village. Zinc-roofed huts and narrow walking paths of well-trodden earth form a haphazard labyrinth, from which the occasional denizen emerges, sometimes with startled timidness, but mostly with studied indifference.

The tranquility is broken abruptly by a cacophony of multi-colour balloon-decorated jeepneys. They are a gay, glorious and godly Church-going procession. For today is Palm Sunday.