Inner Lake of Taal Volcano for less than Php1K Budget

Nope, I’m not selling anything. 🙂 Just bragging about the experience I had when I decided to push my adventurous mode on and join a bunch of Couchsurfers hike the mysterious Taal Volcano and reach its inner lake. This has been in my bucket list for a long time but finding equally adventurous friends to join me and share with the expenses has delayed me from checking it off. From looking at other blogposts, especially pertaining to the secret trail, the one that leads to the inner lake, it would take around Php 1500-2000 damage to your pocket. Being a resigned employee, I don’t have that much to spare but I had an intuition that the event organizer will manage to lower it down because he himself is a backpacker. 🙂

Credits to Georgian-Daniel Nedelcu, a Romanian traveling in the Philippines for 2 weeks who created the event in Couchsurfing for being diligent yet adventurous in organizing the hike and leading the team of multicultural people representing Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, USA, and France. Of course the group was dominated by Filipinos. 🙂 Our actual date was April 17, 2016.

Here are some pictures.

Budget:

House in PQ to DLTB Buendia – Php 30

DLTB Buendia to Olivarez Tagaytay – Php 83

Tagaytay to Talisay – P27 (We actually carpooled and this amount covers the the fare of those who had to take the tricycle)

2-way boat ride – 6500 for 3 boats / 15 pax = Php450

Ice cold softdrink upon reaching the volcano summit viewing deck = P50

Bottled water while in the crater  = P50

Dinner with the gang = Php 340

Tagaytay to Dasma = Free (Thanks to Rasher for letting me and Hannah hitch!)

Dasma to Alabang = Php30

Alabang to house in PQ = 23

Total = Php 1083 but had I brought enough water, I would’ve reduced it to Php 983 only. 🙂

All other fees such as environmental fee, tour guide and horse ride were eliminated because of Daniel’s skills! Haha.

Now of course this is not a redoable budget unless you will have someone like Daniel in your group. 🙂