7 Lakes of San Pablo

Last weekend we decided to treat ourselves to a little getaway, and we headed down to the 7 lakes of San Pablo.  We had heard about these lakes during our orientation week and were craving a little bit of nature, so decided to take a chance.  It turned out to be an amazing trip.

The drive down to San Pablo only took about an hour and a half, and we were immediately pleased with our hotel of choice.  We stayed at the Casa San Pablo located just before the PureGold and about 10 minutes from Lake Sampacloc.  Upon arrival, they sat us down for a 4 course lunch including: grilled tilapia, beef stew(caldereta?), a delicious eggplant salad (ensaladang talong), fried pork (lechon kawali), rice, and a purple yam dessert (ube halay).  Each dish was excellent, but our favorites were the tilapia and ensaladan talong.  They served a fresh comote tea along with lunch.

Lunch

Junk garden at the hotel

  

Once we'd finished our lunch, we headed out to find some lakes.  We really had no idea where we were going as the maps that we were using were pretty lousy, but we thought we'd be able to find them.  We assumed (wrongly) that the lakes would be marked...we should've known better.

Lake Palakpakin

I love the matching trike.

A little church on the rim of Palakpakin

Anyway, the drive out of San Pablo was easy and we eventually saw a sign for Bunot Lake. After driving to the end of a dirt road and catching only a glimpse of the lake with no seeming public access we turned around and decided to look for the next lake.  We came upon signs pointing towards Palakpakin Lake and Mojicap Lake so we turned and hoped for the best.  The first lake that we came to as Palakpakin and we found a little pull-out overlooking the lake to enjoy the view from.  We ended up following a path down to the lake shore, but it ran into someone's home so we didn't stay for long.  Palakpakin is pretty enough, but there doesn't seem to be any access and it heavily farmed. 

  Mohicap Lake was our favorite by far.  While looking for a good viewpoint, a very nice unsuspecting women who was preparing supper for her family offered up her husband/friend to walk us down to the water's edge.  Once there, he hailed another gentleman and the next thing we knew we were on a  banca, a small bamboo raft, touring a pristine lake filled with herons, gulls, and egrets, and surrounded by beautifully lush mountains.  It was the most peaceful scene we'd been a part of since our move to the Philippines.  Despite the language barrier, we had fun and garnered some information with our guides, and Rosemary was completely content dragging her toes in the water.

As we returned back to shore, Rosemary was a hit with the local family...The kids just kept coming out of this small home.  There were at least 7 kids that greeted us upon our return from the lake tour.

 

Rosemary Enjoying our ride on Mojicap Lake. This was our favorite.  

After seeing 3 of the lakes (I count Bunot even though we just got a glimpse from the road), we headed back to our place.  We were greeted with a very nice dinner, consisting of: fish soup (not great), chicken curry (delicious), BBQ Pork (good), rice, and flan (I could've had 12) for dessert.  We sat in our room with the windows open and listened to the heavy rainfall as we drank a glass of wine to finish off a very pleasant day.

The following day began with a free breakfast including: garlic rice, chorizo, heavily salted and fried whole fish, eggs and bananas.  Of course, there was coffee and juice as well.  The fish was a little too much to handle, but everything else was good enough to fuel us for the day.

On day 2, we headed to the twin lakes of Pandin and Yambo.  Pandin is the most touristy lake and the women running the rafts along the shoreline know it.  It's about a 30 minute walk from the parking area to Pandin, and I chose to hire a guide (50 pesos) to help support the local kids. A torrential downpour joined us about 10 minutes into our walk, and we decided to wait it out under a falling down steel fence.  After about 5 minutes of waiting and seeing a small river form on our trail, we decided to forge ahead despite the rain.  Once you got used to the rain, it was quite refreshing and added to our trip.  As we approached the lake, a women greeted us offering some shelter and a boat ride.  They tried to charge us 500 pesos for a ride, compared with our 140 from the night before, but it didn't seem worth it.   This would be an excellent activity with a group of family or friends, but not for just the three of us.  If you are with a group, you have the option to purchase a meal with your boat ride, which would make the whole thing very enjoyable.  Pandin Lake is clean and swimmable and the surrounding area is beautiful.

View of Yambo

On our way back from Yambo - Pandin in the background

In lieu of the boat ride, we chose to hike to the next lake, Yambo Lake.  We asked our guide to take us, and it was an easy 15 minutes walk up the crater rim to a nice little overlook.  Yambo might be the most pristine of the lakes that we saw, simply because there is little access and few fisherman.  We weren't able to walk to water's edge, but the view from the rim was beautiful.  I highly suggested this short side trip to anyone visiting the area.

The last lake that we saw was the largest, most polluted, closest to town, and hardest to get to lake.  I'm not sure why, but finding Sampoloc Lake was extremely difficult despite it being only 10 minutes from our hotel.  Four u-turns and a few swear words later, we eventually made it to the advertised boardwalk.  According to the map, the boardwalk surrounded the lake, but in reality it was about 100 meters long with a road going the rest of the way.  After some bird watching and lunch eating (snack provided by the hotel: vegetarian pancit and fried bananas) we decided to drive around the lake.  This proved to be a great decision as we passed by local fisherman, using rod and reel none-the-less, karaoke singers with an empty hand of Jose Cuervo, chickens darting across the road, and fallen trees.  The opposite end of the lake provided a nice view of the terribly out-of-place mosque.

All in all, our trip to the 7 Lakes  of San Pablo was well worth the time and money.  Not only did we see some of the Philippine's natural beauty, we also got a good dose of culture as we passed through each village.