IF THE WATER FEELS PLEASANT, RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!
It’s another hot and humid day in the Northern Philippines, and we’re all sweating profusely. No big surprise, having spent the previous two hours
trekking up our way through the thick bush. But it was worth it. A beautiful Emerald lake – clear, cool and inviting, is lying straight below us. It didn’t take long for us to leave our sticky clothes behind, and take a plunge into the chilly, slightly acidic water.
But this is no ordinary lake.
In fact, this is the flooded caldera of an active volcano. And not just any volcano, this particular one recently exploded in the world’s most cataclysmic eruption recorded in the last 100 years.
Our Philippino guide yells at us, “if the water gets bathtub-like pleasant, run for your life!”
Was he kidding?
The Pinatubo winter
The winter of 1991/2 was unforgettable. It was the hardest ever recorded since late 19th century meteorologists started registering weather statistics in the Eastern Mediterranean basin. My hometown, Tel Aviv, was flooded three times, my car drowned, all the hills around us were covered with 
snow, and Israel’s only ski resort was still opened in early May.
By the time it ended, three years worth of rains all came down within a single season.
20 years later, we’re splashing inside the reason for that unusual winter – Mt. Pinatubo. When it exploded in early summer of 1991 the volcano shot so much ash, so high into the stratosphere that it circled the Earth about seven times before finally coming down. By the time it did, the average global temperature had gone down almost a full degree, and the following winter went completely berserk.
There were two silver linings though:
- Late summer sunsets were spectacular. Full of red, purple and orange, the result of massive amounts of volcanic ash in the high atmosphere.
- Frankly, a particularly rainy winter in a semi-dry Mediterranean country is actually a blessing, not a curse.
Getting there is part of the fun
We left before dawn. The ride from the semi-abandoned Clark Airbase took almost two hours. The installation used to be America’s largest base overseas. The massive 1991 eruption and the subsequent looting erased it almost entirely. Now, a shadow of its former self, it serves for an assortment of uses including a location for our somewhat dilapidated hotel.
Our car stopped near a vast flood plane where we boarded a rugged local jeep. As we drove up the dusty path, the first sun rays, started to reveal the desolation around us. We were now in the destruction zone, a vast area covered with dense, powdery volcanic ash. As we climbed up from the plains towards the mountain, the grind thickened. The bleakness of it all was overwhelming – like a piece of Afghanistan smack in the middle of a tropical Jungle. When we finally stopped – about an hour later – we were surrounded by 50 meter-high walls of dense ash, cut across – like a knife through butter – by a crystal clear stream.
We came to the last leg of our journey. It was time for us to climb on foot.
And climbed we did. Taking the stream as our guiding path, we made our way through the thick brush which by now looked more like a green oasis in the middle of a volcanic desert.
The force of nature
Whatever made this vast desert scar in the middle of Luzon Island must have been massive. Of course, you know it was colossal because you read about the Pinatubo explosion and witnessed its effect on global weather, first hand. But only when you’re in the smack of it do you begin to REALIZE it for the enormity it truly is.
When the trek ended, we stood mouth-gapped at the wide crater beneath us. It was nothing like a desert. Instead, it was a shiny emerald crater lake, several kilometers wide.
Monson-drenched Philippines might have many lakes, yet this specific one was, at the time, only 20 years old. Created solely by rainwater accumulating at the base of the Giant Pinatubo.
The rim around us was already covered by thick jungle greenery that looks like it was there forever but really only started growing in the mid Nineties.
If there’s any proof needed of nature’s ability to quickly destroy and rebuilt, Pinatubo crater must be it.
For those curious, the water was still cold and slightly acidic when we got out. It still is today. For how long?
That’s for anyone to guess.