Batanes Islands
Lands Apart
By M.D. dela Cruz Tan
PHOTOS BY GEORGE TAPAN, COURTESY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF TOURISM
PUBLISHED: MAY 2009

NATURAL APPEAL. The islands of Batanes attract because they remain largely untouched.

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"Kuha lang, kuha lang (Just get what you can),” the old Ivatan woman said, wide smile baring tiny, almost mouse-like, yet perfect teeth that easily contrasted with her sun burnt skin, appearing like coconut flesh pressed against dried husks.  Hands on hips while sweating profusely, the salty water of her skin cascading, as if like rivers, from her face to her neck before disappearing under the collar of her blouse, she signaled towards some baskets lining the road in front of her, many filled to the brim with crops still coated in dried mud, and fruits still attached to branches teeming with black ants. 

“Magkano (How much)?” I asked, face already voraciously pressed against a juicy kaimito (star apple), sucking the milky juices while eating the fibrous flesh, even more famished instead of feeling full with every bite.  In between spitting seeds, I looked at her askance, trying to look cute for whatever it’s worth to get a fair price, though feeling the fruit’s juices escaping my mouth to embarrassingly flow down my chin.

Once again signaling towards the food on display, the old woman repeated, “Kuha lang, kuha lang.”  Everything was for free. 

Embarrassed, my companion offered her a bagful of choc chips, what was left of our food, thus our stopping by her place in the first place, which she took, immediately pocketing it in the wide mud-stained apron wrapped around her scrawny waist.  Then, waving at us dismissively, she turned and walked away, heading towards a group of women braving the scorching heat of the sun to till the land, their only protection the vakul (cape) over their heads.  Like the kanayi (vest), the headgear is made of combed dried voyavuy (palm leaves), normally used for protection from the pounding rain, though also used to protect them from the harmful rays of the sun.

It was a peculiar experience, this bartering, like harking back in the olden times, a scene straight out of old movies – a common occurrence, they say, locally, since people grow their own crops, with the extras displayed for those who may need them. 

But this is Batanes, after all, the islands left by time.  Fortunately.

ALREADY ELSEWHERE…

“At night you can even see the lights from Taiwan.  Vice versa, the Taiwanese who visit us say that they can hear our roosters crow at daybreak,” a tourist guide provided me by the local government once told me, seated somewhere near the shores of Valugan Bay, at the foot of the 1,008-meter tall Iraya Volcano.  “The tendency to exaggerate is there, of course, but you get the concept.”

I nodded, didn’t know what to say,  the landscape before me taking every word out of my mouth.  We were overlooking the forested area of Mt. Iraya – a picture-perfect scene straight out of a postcard, I remembered thinking then – which is not far from the truth, though not a postcard of the Philippines.  More like New Zealand in the fresh milk TV commercials.  Or Texas in the Marlboro advertisements.  Or anything else to this strain, though definitely not the Philippines.

“We are closer to Taiwan than to mainland Luzon,” he added, his eyes squinting as he looked in the distance.  “They’re that way,” he pointed at distant islands mostly covered in mists so they could be hardly made out, like the mythical Avalon coming and then going from view.

The Ivatans, of course, trace their roots to the Taiwanese immigrants who inter-married with the Spaniards who went to the islands in the 16th century – a combination most obvious in their peculiar dialect that is “pidgin Spanish, spoken with the rhythm of the Chinese language.”  Seemingly isolated in their own world, most of the things never changed in Itbayat, Batan and Sabtang, the three main islands of Batanes, and its only over 15,000 inhabitants.  In fact, fast forward to another time, when the sky was still amazingly clear, as if mocking the rain said to frequent the island to arrive, everything looked unreal, even surreal, though the distinction between the two is hard to find there.  From the mountains seemingly trying to overlap each other, occasionally giving way to cascading bodies of water, at times hardly making any noise as they placidly flow though some suddenly merging with wild rivers that crush at everything on their way, to the largely untouched still lush forests, divided here and there by prairies, wild flowers swaying with the tall grasses when the wind blew, and then everything abruptly ends when the view is shortly cut by cliffs that plunge to the seas below.  Nothing looked as foreign to me, especially knowing I was right at home.

Standing atop one of the hills of Payaman (a.k.a. Marlboro Country, supposedly because the area is said to be any rancher’s idea of a paradise), my companion started singing on top of his voice, without a care since no one else was around except for the horses running free, mingling with cows and some kalabaw (water buffalo) with their calves, that the hills are alive.  And maybe they were, with memories as old as time, though are now exposed with the long-overdue interest in Batanes (and yet legally protected from abuse by virtue of Presidential Proclamation No. 335 (under former Pres. Fidel V. Ramos) that recognizes Batanes as a Protected Area).

Seated on a blanket, trying to enjoy the tough flesh of pating (shark) that still managed to look menacing even when already dead and wholly cooked, a feeling of dislocation came over me – like not knowing where one exactly is, though, in this case, I did know where I was: atop one of Batanes’ hills, enjoying the warmth of the sun as it kissed my naked torso, immediately tanning at its smallest provocations, while savoring the best that the place has to offer, peculiar food that are delectable ulam (viand) that add to the impression that one is elsewhere but locally located.  And it never felt as good feeling lost.

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