Pinatubo 4WD ride & Lake

Pinatubo Volcano is an active volcano situated 100km north of Manila, and east of Angeles on Luzon Island in The Philippines.

From Singapore, This trek is easily done in a weekend. Tiger Airways and Cebu Pacific have flights on friday evening to CLARKS Airport, and back to Singapore on Sunday evening. From Clarks, it is possible to organize the trip, however, it is recomendable to book in advance by internet. In order to be sure to do the trek during the weekend!

I personaly used the services of Paul (info@philippineadventures.com as of Jan 2012) for 2500 Pesos per person, all in, with pick up at the arrival at Clarks Airport.

Once at the entrance to the reserve, a 1-hour jeep ride through desert - lunar landscape takes the visitor to the begining of the caldeira, where the trek beguins. The 4x4 ride is quite sportive and is really enjoyable, the scenery being truly unique.

The trek takes approximately 3 hours trough amazing scenary, ending at the lake formed in the volcano's crater. It is not a hard trek, constant gradient to the "top" with rocks all the way.

Here are some facts on the Pinatubo Volcano (summarised from various Internet sources of course ;p): Home of the Aetas Tribe, this volcano is still Active today. Pinatubo Erupted on the 15th of June 1991, and was the second largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century. The eruption was such that it actually affected the whole earth's atmosphere, and global temperature dropped by 0.5C. 847 People were reported killed.

NOTE: During the raining season, access to the caldeira is restricted because of the large quantity of water in the dozens of rivers that have to be crossed.

The trip starts early morning with a jeep ride through Lunar landscape to the start of the trek. The jeeps are left-overs from the USA-era, when 10,000 marines stayed at the Angeles Airbase.

After the 4WD jeep drive, the 2-3h trek through the unique landscape starts, all the way to the lake.