From Basco, one may take the jeepney to Ivana where a wooden motorized boat supposedly holding up to 25 passengers with cargo, makes the 30 minute crossing to Sabtang, at 10 pesos per head. Sometimes a bigger boat is used. The first trip leaves as early as 6:00, or when there are enough passengers. The next boat leaves at about 11:00, or waits for the flight from Manila, or, again, for enough passengers. If the number of passengers justifies it, the boat will continue to the other side of Sabtang, to the barrio of Sumnanga. Except during April and May, one can expect to get wet on these boat trips. Locals often carry umbrellas, against the sea spray; and the absence of piers means beach landings, which can be rough and wet.


You don’t ever really leave Batanes By Karla Vizcarra
ON my last day in Basco, I rose before the sun did, and almost bawled as this soft, orange orb swelled over the landscape, revealing all that I would, in a few hours, leave behind. I’d leave behind the most beautiful splodge of earth I’d ever set foot in; a way of life I never thought could still exist. Even more astounding, aside from its beauty, is that Batanes rouses in you the ancient, forgotten life core—one free from modern excess, untroubled by the cold dictates of currency. Batanes, with its green fertile belly, fuming, fish-filled seas and massive cliffs, at once stuns and reminds people how the world once was—and how far from it we have gone. Of course. The island is 200 km away from Manila, separated by oceans, winds, legends and typhoons, so no people are perhaps as unfazed as the Ivatans are by capitalism, and its malls, money and Mickey Mouse. A hand-written sign on a small town’s wall reminds people that gasoline is sold at “P57/ liter,” and please, “exact amount only.” In Sabtang, a smaller island 45 minutes away from Ivana’s port, only a couple of stores sell cooked food—by request. After all, everyone grows and raises his own chickens, cows and crops for their own consumption. “Others still find it embarrassing to sell their vegetables; they find it strange to have to ask for money for what grew on their fields,” Auntie Cielo said as we dug into the escabeche she placed before us, minutes after we knocked on her door, lured by the sign that declared it a Food Hut. Her restaurant was not open, so she kindly set before us her family’s fish dinner. Even in the island of Batan (where capital Basco is the most citified in Batanes archipelago), people hardly grew crops for profit, so plots for each family remained just the right size. Livestock freely roamed the fields; the abundant fields make up a communal pasture owned by all. No fences There are no barbed-wire fences in Batanes, no gates prohibiting entry in any of the beaches. At the most, there are hedgerows: labyrinthian, shoulder-high shrubs that are more tourist attractions than property delineators. They also serve as windbreaks, habitat corridors and a means to prevent erosion. Centuries before sustainable development could become a buzzword, these people had been practicing it. My theory is that if the rest of the Philippines were as isolated and as regularly taunted by ferocious typhoons—hurtling at 200 km/ph or more—we’d be as civilized as the Ivatans. In the rural arteries of Basco, near the foot of Mt. Iraya, whose volcanic ashes once spewed into the island of Batan and turned it fertile and brilliant green, a neighbor discovered an old man squatting alone in a tiny hovel. She immediately assembled her own limited resources to build him a decent house, nothing, not even credit, asked for in return. However, the island’s perennially salty air had since then eaten through the roof. We went to visit the old man, and found out he was hard of hearing, and didn’t completely understand what was happening, except that for the second time in his latter life he was surrounded by strangers fixing up his home. We were about to introduce ourselves when we heard there was a yaru happening a few meters away. Yaru In these parts, whenever disaster strikes, people do not sit around blaming the government. People voluntarily get together and start rebuilding—a gracious Ivatan practice known as yaru. When the Spanish missionaries came to Batanes near the end of the 1600s and exchanged the Ivatans’ gods with theirs, they also replaced the Ivatans’ wooden and thick cogon houses with the famous lime and stone wall structures Batanes is famous for today. These houses were built, stone by stone, painstakingly carried from the sea, cooked and stacked and left to dry over extended periods. To this day, community works, without expecting something in return—just kinship, and perhaps a hearty meal of native chicken stewed in vegetables with steamed uvi (white kamote, the more common food staple before rice came along). Lust for money The Ivatans do not lust for money, hence they are uncorrupted by its effects. In Sabtang, the former mayor was wheeling around in an old, rusty bicycle—his burnt, robust face seeming content, with its full white moustache and a safari hat on his head. It was sent to him, he said, by his son working in a hotel in the Carribean. The provincial governor, we discovered, lives in a modest, unassuming house, absurd anywhere else in the Philippines. Public schooling and hospitalization are free. Student-teacher ratio is at 1:12. The people leave their doors open, their bicycles on the sides of the road. Gidgeon, a fellow traveler I met on the trip, told me he had lost his wallet on the streets the last time he was in Basco. The people announced it over Radyo ng Bayan, and within minutes, he had his wallet back, everything intact. One only needed to visit Honesty Café, a tiny store alongside the road in Ivana to understand the tremendous faith the Ivatans had in their fellowman. Here, there are no storekeepers. Instead, there is a cheerful sign on the wall telling people to simply take what they wanted and drop the prescribed amount in the cash box. The owners worked in the fields, and did not have the time to man their store. Now that direct flights have opened up Batanes to the mainland, it is disquieting to think of what full-blown tourism could do to upset this balance. “You must be careful of tourists,” Señor Lacoma, a Spanish painter traveling with us, warned Sabtang’s mayor. “They are not always good for a place.” Robert Bastillo, himself a proud Ivatan, is doing what he can as Batanes Eco-Cultural Tourism consultant to preserve the island’s harmony. “The trick is to get the right tourists. Those who will come to respect Batanes’ heritage, its deep cultural roots and how nature has shaped these people to become what they are—people who will marvel not only at its astounding landscape, but at the Ivatan way of life.” Their best project is the concept of homestays: apart from checking in a hotel, a tourist lives in a traditional Ivatan house, the centuries-old limestone abodes built in the Spanish era, and be deep into the genuine, beating heart of Batanes. But modernism has set in many parts. Already, more people are abandoning their 18th century limestones and tough cogon grass for cement and paint and galvanized iron roofs that the harsh sea would inevitably corrode in three years. The idea is to build a tourism industry that would strengthen the Ivatan culture instead of obliterating it. Lola Fiorestida, 88, understands this well. She is the occupant of the oldest stone house in Batanes, the “House of Dakay.” Her relatives now live in concrete houses beside hers. I asked her if she’d ever want to move in with them. “No,” she said, her gracefully-lined face resolute. “These walls keep me warm during cold days and cool during hot days. I wouldn’t change anything.” She welcomes visitors to her humble, little home, speaking to us in Filipino, English and Ivatan. I had decided to spend a night in Sabtang, where a good portion of the houses remained impervious to the more contemporary designs of their neighbors. I sat down on a low, stone wall and watched the sun slowly set over the stone streets and hedges, the dark grays and blacks contrasting sharply among the lush green of the grass. Chickens strutted everywhere and children played unmindful of strangers, wearing tiny sweaters, coats and caps to ward off the late afternoon chill. Fathers pedaled by, their little ones hugging them from behind. The colors, the wind, the ancient windows, the voices. I must have stayed there for hours just watching, in awe of how everything just was. And I knew, the next time I come, I would never leave again.


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