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Posts and tidbits about my life, my travels and experiences. I’ll post my videos here. Perhaps I’ll even share a personal revelation at some point.

Going to Mount Mayon while it’s erupting

Over the last few weeks I’ve been travelling around the Philippines again. Currently I’m on Luzon, near Naga city. We’re driving my our motorcycles all over the place. We originally planned to go via Masbate Island to reach Cebu Island.

However, news of Mount Mayon and it’s “imminent and violent eruptions” kept coming in. So we decided to change course for this probably once in a lifetime experience. We drove to Legaspi City via the up-wind route, avoiding the major ash and dust clouds spewing to the east.

The city is right next to the volcano, just outside the actual danger zone which was evacuated several weeks ago. This basically meant we had a good view of the goings on.

I had filmed part of the drive going there. And when I was close to Legaspi City got caught off-guard with a larger eruption of ash.

I’ve made a bit of a video about the route going there where you can see the mountain smoking in the distance. Later I filmed the mountain stationary for a few hours. But not much came of that, just a lot of clouds and ash coming out.

My quest for a refreshing drink

Today I felt like going for a drive but I was also thirsty… Often I then drive to a random place to find said drink. This time my adventure took me way out in the bushes to some super poor town. Foreigners, let alone tourists, rarely go to places like this.

This sometimes leads to many suspicious looks from the natives. But often times they seem happy to see someone else than their neighbour for a change. And in those events I feel like I’m the star of a parade, waving and smiling at everyone.

Today the weather was not so good, a bit of rain, many clouds. The roads and paths were slippery, muddy and flooded. But I found a refreshing drink at the end…

Driving to Calapan after Urduja

Storm Urduja was a bad one, half the province got flooded apparently. And as usual the Philippines was wholly unprepared or simply didn’t care too much. People sought higher grounds until the floods subsided. Or were just wandering around trying to go about their day.

Around the Baco area, near Calapan City, a bunch of rivers flooded most farmlands, towns and everything in between. Some areas were more than waist deep. Luckily not over the road, which was only covered in about 30cm deep water at the worst point.
Still, the whole of Baco town was flooded in some places with a strong current.

A week later people had wiped down what little of their belongings survived the floods and life went on as if nothing had ever happened. Remember I wrote they didn’t care too much?

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