Batanes on the rise
By Bibsy M. Carballo

Rugged cliff of Naidi Hill, Basco Bay (photo by Michael Adalla)

ONE SUMMER WAY BACK IN THE '70S, WE MUST HAVE been among the few intrepid souls who ventured into yet uncharted seas and unexplored lands when we took off on a whim for Basco, Batanes.

Armed with nothing but our sense of adventure, we boarded a PAL plane, then the only carrier servicing the island weekly. With us was the late great director Lino Brocka and two of his friends, as he was then interested in scouring the country for locations for his movies.

After an hour-and-a-half flight, we caught sight of what appeared to be the dirt runway, a couple of carabaos lazing about, and a group of grade school children running around, clapping their hands in welcome of the aircraft. The plane made several circles around the runway as we glimpsed the children shooing away the carabaos before we made our historic landing.

Upon deplaning, the kids were still there crowding us with silent curiosity. Who were these strangers, their eyes seemed to ask, and why were they here? This served as our unique introduction to the island, and what was to follow.

We boarded a jeepney, which we were later told was the only one on the island, and asked the driver to take us to the church in town. The Filipino parish priest, whose name we have already forgotten, was surprised to see us. Immediately, he offered to house us even before we asked and serve as our unofficial tour guide during the week-long visit.

Smallest province

We were told Batanes is the smallest Philippine province in terms of population and land area (209 sq km, half of which are hills and mountains). The population then all over the province was a little over 11,000, with 40 percent concentrated in the capital Basco.

Ten small volcanic islands make up the province, only three of them inhabited-Sabtang, Itbayat and Batan with the capital Basco, plus Ivana, Uyugan, and Mahatao which we visited.
The islands of Sabtang and Itbayat were supposedly interesting locations, but we were not that adventurous as to venture out after hearing stories that one had to jump from the boat to the cliff at Itbayat, which didn't have a pier at that time. We also heard of people getting stranded in Sabtang due to bad weather and having to stay for months on the island.

Valugan beach Mahatao viewed from Charatayan hills (Photo by Ace Meriel)

Batan was sufficient for us at the moment. Taking the only jeep on the island, we toured the rolling hills that could only remind one of the Scottish highlands with similar small stone houses, except that the houses had thick cogon roofing, with carabaos and cattle grazing in the rolling hills. The entire scenario was of another country. There were no nipa huts to remind us that we were in the Philippines, and the radio blasted away with broadcasts from Taiwan.

We found women in the fields garbed in the vacul, a traditional woven headgear of grass that kept the wearer cool during the day and warm during the rainy season. We never found this particular headgear in any other province.

Batanes is the northernmost cluster of islands in the Philippines, home of the typhoons, closer to Taiwan than to the Philippine mainland (190 km south of Taiwan, and 280 km from Aparri). It is said that one could hear the cock crow all the way from Taiwan in Batanes, and it is the only province with winter from November to February, summer from March to May, the rainy season from June to October, and a two-week Indian summer sometime between September and October.

Apart from the weekly flight, with erratic schedules depending on the weather, a navy boat came once a year with supplies from Manila. Batanes was therefore as remote from the mainland as it was in culture and language. Anthropologists described Ivatan as an Austronesian language (not a dialect, but a language, the residents constantly emphasized).

30 years later

The Batanes of today is totally different from our memories of 30 years ago. Although still ravaged by typhoons, still small in population (only over 16,000 province-wide), still our only province with "winter" as a season, still blessed with unpolluted air, waters and picture-pretty rolling hills and natural rock formations, we can count on our fingers the number of traditional stone houses and can no longer find women wearing the vacul.

Instead, the homes are of cement, especially in town centers, and the vacul is found for sale in the marketplace as tourist mementos, and in the new Globe commercial. Technology has obviously arrived in the form of Internet cafés, and the cell phone and ukay-ukay from Manila litter the many small shops in Basco.

The rolling hills are still as attractive as they were in "Hihintayin Ka Sa Langit" which beat Brocka to being the first to do a film on the islands. But today some of the hills are dubbed "Marlboro Country" and pretty soon, perhaps we will find there a "Brokeback Mountain."

The Department of Tourism has listed the province as an "emerging destination." There are various inns, led by the Batanes Resort with its six duplex-type cottages perched on a hill overlooking the rocky beach, and the Ivatan Lodge in town with its modest rates, both operated by the provincial government.

Just before San Vicente, a town before Ivana during low tide (Photo by Ace Meriel)

There are now more forms of transport-at least 50 jeepneys in Basco and 30 more in the other municipalities, and tricycles all over Basco. However, there is still no moviehouse in Basco, and fastfood chains are unknown in this province.

Asian Spirit operates a twice-weekly direct flight from Manila, its other flights of the week include a stop-over in Tuguegarao. Batanes' roads are paved, and carabaos no longer roam the runway. Package tours are becoming popular with domestic and foreign travelers. Apart from its natural attractions, the province's other tourist stops include vestiges of the Dominican presence in churches all over the islands, lighthouses that are always a photographic delight, and the house of the late international Ivatan artist Pacita Abad that now stands against the landscape and the skies as a loving tribute to the artist who has finally come home to rest.

The crime rate is low with most crimes committed by transients, mostly Taiwanese who find it so easy to get to the islands. Along with crime and the tourists come the threat of destruction of the environment and cultural heritage. And this is what this "emerging destination" has to face now.

Protected zone

In 2001, Congress passed a law declaring the province as a permanently protected zone. That same year, the province also applied to be included in the Unesco World Cultural Heritage list. According the elders in the province, there are 539 cultural sites and 138 natural sites in the province up for consideration.

The unique wildlife of the province qualifies Batanes as a landscape and seascape deserving of protection due to its importance to migratory birds from Northeast Asia and Japan. The valichit, a small brown bird found only in Batanes every September, has of late diminished in numbers, a fate similarly suffered by the kuyab or grey-faced buzzard.

Valugan beach in Mahatao a fishing village featuring a traditional house. (Photo by Ace Meriel)

The traditional stone dwellings of limestone, reeds and grass roofs are also disappearing, although there are some to be found in Ivana and Uyugan, and on the island of Sabtang.

The median age in Batanes is 22. It is obviously a young population even if a good percentage leave for the mainland to pursue a career. However, there are quite a number who acquire education in Manila and return home to practice what they have learned. Like the young and articulate OIC of Batanes Resort, Tess Delatado. After graduating with a degree in Hotel and Restaurant Management at Arellano University in Manila, she quickly returned to Basco and now is one of the more vocal advocates of responsible tourism in the area.

She tells us stories of how foreigners have been showing such interest in the place that they have offered to buy the resort as well as portions of the province, with promises of helping the islanders protect their natural resources. But she is not easily swayed by their glib tongues. Perhaps her education in Manila has taught her that-not to be too trusting and too naïve.

Tess is caught in a dilemma that faces many of the young residents of this island paradise. Would they succumb to the temptation of letting in the moneyed investors who will develop the islands for commercial tourism and ultimately destroy its natural beauty? Or will they hang on to what they have and be content with being the backward province it still is today?

Or is there a middle ground, a way for responsible progress and eco-tourism? Only time and the next decade will tell.


(Published with permission from INQ7 Global Nation - http://www.inq7.net/globalnation/sec_phe/2006/apr/05-01.htm)