seahorse tours and souvenirs

i have always wanted to climb up mt. pinatubo, but didn't know how to go about it. i don't know where it is exactly, and i don't know how you go about arranging 4x4s to take you up the volcano. with my current health status (which is completely unhealthy), it never entered my mind to do the three-hour trek up the volcano.

thankfully, we modern folk have the internet to help us along. since the batanes trip was cancelled indefinitely, i decided to do the pinatubo adventure for my birthday instead.

susie and i found seahorse tours and souvenirs while trawling the net. based in subic, seahorse offers a number of tours for adventurers of all ages. even with such a messy website in need of a design and editing makeover (they misspelled excitement), we decided to sign up for the pinatubo spa and trek adventure, so we can get a good pampering after the tiring climb.

seahorse tours provides a request form on their site, where you can send inquiries on tours that you're interested in. i first tried to inquire through this form, but wasn't able to get a quick reply. so i gave their office a call, and was given all the information i needed. jhas, the seahorse tours agent, wasn't extraordinarily accommodating, but she was nice enough. she sent me the details of our tour, and provided me with the payment details.

in order to reserve a place in your chosen tour, seahorse requires that you pay half the cost of your tour by depositing in their banco de oro account. after that, you just need to fax them your deposit slip, and they'll send you a confirmation letter.

everything went pretty easy, which had me a bit worried. i got the confirmation letter weeks before our trip, and having things so easily within my reach really scares me a little at times. like they say, "if it's too good to be true, it probably is."

thankfully, everything went off without a hitch when we reached subic on the day of our tour. the people of seahorse were about 15 minutes late for the agreed pick-up time, but everything else went on schedule.

we were picked up at the seorabeol hotel (accommodations were also arranged by seahorse!) at 615am by two ladies. it's quite a treat to be driven by a lady who knows her way around a place that confuses me, and the delica that they used to drive us to the PDC spa town was pretty spacious and comfortable, that i slept the entire way to capas.

bernardine, if i remember correctly, was our lady chauffeur, and she was accompanied by elvie, who was to accompany us up the mountain, along with an aeta guide and the 4x4 driver. bernardine stayed behind at the spa, while we went off on our trekking adventure.

after the trek, we had our spa treatments, which finished quite late, so we got to our hotel an hour late. but everything went smoothly as far as our arrangement with seahorse tours were concerned.

i'm thinking of booking another tour with them, this time for the bratty sister and myself. :)

contact details
seahorse tours and souvenirs
address: times square cinema complex, subic bay freeport zone
website: http://www.seahorsetours.com/
tel. no.: (047) 2525617
mobile no.: 0917-5789482
fax no.: (02) 8572133
email: reservations@seahorsetours.com