Climbing Mount Mayon on ATV's - Legazpi City, Philippines
Legazpi City, Philippines
Where I stayed
Mayon Backpackers Hostel
What I did
Mount Mayon Luzon
Day 38 - 14th May
Flying to Legaspi today for 2 nights. Our taxi driver from yesterday said he would pick us up at 9am and take us to the airport. He turned up right on time so we left Le Village for a second time and went to Mactan-Cebu airport. Shock our flight wasn't on time, I didn't think it would be Lol! An hour later we boarded a small propeller plane, 4 seats wide, this might be a little bumpy. The flight was only an hour and 10 mins and when you fly into Legaspi you can see the perfect cone shaped volcano - Mount Mayon! It's so green here, lots of palm trees and green grass! We got a trike to our hostel - Mount Mayon Backpackers and then chilled for an hour or so before we went for a walk around the city. We stopped off at a famous restaurant here called 'Small Talk Cafe' which was really cute and only a 10 minute walk from our hostel. For lunch/dinner we shared Marlin Belly with rice and a small side of the most famous dish here called Bicol Express. I wanted to order this as my meal but everyone said it was really spicy so I tried a bit first, spicy it wasn't but Jesus was it salty, gross!! I ordered beef cooked in tomato sauce with rice but was more of a beef stew and had bones it! We got free onion soup as a starter which was actually really nice! We shared blueberry cheesecake for desert, wasn't great either. We got a trike to Embarcadero which is supposed to be a kind of shopping mall by the waterfront with restaurants. It was awful, there were a few shops but the rest was just empty and no one was there, wasted visit. We got a trike back to the hostel and stopped off at the supermarket to get some fruit and snacks for our quad bike trip which we had booked for tomorrow. We just chilled at hostel tonight as there is nothing to do here in Legaspi. We had mango and watermelon for dinner yum!
Todays Budget - 8,468!
Taxi to the Airport - 100
Accommodation - 350
Flight - 7,368
Food - 350
Supermarket - 300
Day 39 - 15th May
Up at 5:30am as the trike was outside waiting to take us to the ATV Centre. We arrived at 6:30am and had a practice on the quad bikes. Charlotte didn't want to do it, she said she hated it and wanted to get off. But I made her go in front of me so I was at the back and the guide in front, it was only the 3 of us! We had to ride up the old lava flow from a previous explosion, it was really bumpy and parts of it were through a little stream. It was hard work as you couldn't take your eyes off the dirt track. Then we went through part forest until we got to 1800 foot which was the highest we could go! The view of the volcano was beautiful, the sky clear blue with a few clouds round the top. The volcano emits a constant stream of smoke as its a live volcano. We stayed here for a bit and took lots of photos before we rode back down to lava flow. I wanted to go faster as I love the speed on a quad bike and we went on the road for about 400 meters so I got a bit of speed before we got to Cagsawa Ruins. It's nothing spectacular here, just a tower, the history of the place is more interesting. We were finished by 9am so we got a free trike to the shopping mall and decided to kill some time and go to the cinema. We saw Mad Max: Fury Road with Tom Hardy! We had no idea what was going on, there was loads of action and omg did Tom Hardy look incredible, wow! The film was actually quite good but I needed to read up on it afterwards. Charlotte wanted to get her hair done.. Everyone here has brown hair so I'm not quite sure how good they will be at bleaching but she went for it anyway. We kept telling the guy what to do and we felt bad but it could have gone so wrong. They wanted to wash her hair first then dye it then wash again... Weird. But we told him to put the dye on first as it takes to the hair better. I had to show him a few times how to separate the hair as he only put a few foils in and then dyed big chunks of it, it would have looked really stripy otherwise. But it all turned ok! I needed to do something about my non-existent eyebrows so I got the guy to mix up some hair dye and tried that. The first colour was too light and they went ginger so I put a dark brown on and then a lady threaded them. Yay I have eyebrows again! We were starving by now as it was 4pm so we went to Shakeys for a pizza then got a trike back to the hostel and spent the evening sorting out our photos and I was trying to find somewhere to download films as we have a 12 hour bus journey coming up!
Today's Budget - 2,419!
Hotel - 350
Quad Biking - 1,550
Tip - 100
Trike - 20
Cagsawa Ruins - 20
Cinema - 150
Popcorn - 40
Eyebrows - 180