The paradise islands of Batanes

MANILA, Philippines -- Green rolling hills, massive boulders and cliffs, black or white sand beaches, exuberant flora and fauna, flourishing marine life—unspoiled and preserved by the friendly Ivatans.

Little is known to the outside world of the untamed frontier of Batanes. But since the entry of Smart Communications Inc. in 2001, as stated by Batanes provincial Governor Vicente S. Gato, it improved the impression that Batanes is no longer isolated from the rest of the Philippines and in fact, gradually become known all over the world. And there has been an influx of foreign tourists since then.

I thought a co-player of mine at the triathlon club was being hyperbolic when he used to tell me that the Batanes island group is the most beautiful place in the Philippines. When I recently joined some close friends to tour Basco and other towns in Batan island as well as the island of Sabtang, what I beheld exceeded my expectations. Now it’s my turn to wax lyrical about Batanes: every Filipino citizen must make sure to visit this paradise place at least once in his or her lifetime.

Even assuming that today, only 10 percent of our population have sufficient income to be able to afford domestic tourism, there are already seven million potential visitors to the Batanes group of islands. We don’t even have to depend on foreign tourists. For a Filipino, visiting Batanes is a unique experience because its scenery and people are by far different from those in the rest of the Philippines.

All the theories about sustainable development that I teach to my Economics students seemed to come to life in front of our eyes as we went from village to village and talked to islanders from all walks of life. And the tourism brochure was not exaggerating when it wrote that “beyond the gorgeous and breathtaking landscapes for which the islands are known, Batanes has much to contribute in promoting a development process that puts a high premium on respect for nature and the environment, indigenous wisdom, cultural integrity, civic responsibility, voluntary cooperative and deep religiosity.”

We confirmed the fact that the Ivatans, the natives of Batanes, are among the friendliest people in the world. Everyone you meet in the street has a smile, a friendly greeting and a gesture of wanting to be of help. In Basco, we stayed in a lodge with Spartan facilities but we hardly missed city life. A well crafted brochure published by the Office of Northern Cultural Communities and the Katutubong Filipino Foundation, Inc., aptly described the province: “For those who seek life’s modern conveniences, Batanes can be described as drab or poor. For those in search of the human spirit lost in the din of modernization, it is an oasis.” There are no prostitution houses, no organized gambling, no beggars and squatters. Rebellious activities are unheard of and its crime rate is the lowest in the country. Jails are virtually empty because the people try to settle matters at the barangay level.

In the islands of Sabtang and Itbayat for instance, windows and doors are left open the whole day and nothing gets lost. The only time the Ivatan bolts his windows and doors is during a typhoon.

In the island of Sabtang, we had a really close look at the admirable spirit of solidarity of Ivatans especially in the enchanting town of Chavayan where the most authentic Ivatan culture is preserved. There we met an energetic Ivatan in his 80s who is known as Mr. Yaru. As the brochure on Batanes explained in great detail, yaru is an occasional self-help cooperative which calls on the whole community to help in work projects like road repair, chapel construction or even sprucing up the cemetery. After a typhoon for instance, community leaders call an assembly to estimate damages to roads, fix schedules and assignments in the spirit of yaru. Every family is expected to send at least one member to the work at hand; families with more than five members may be asked to send two representatives. Through the yaru, an Ivatan can count on the community to help him build or fix his house.

In fact, the spirit of this voluntary communal labor is so pervasive among the Ivatans, it has spawned a number of words in their dialect, each pertaining to a specific variation.

The kayvayvanan, for one, is used mainly to refer to house building, clearing of agricultural land and planting. As such, volunteers to a kayvayvanan are necessarily able-bodied men or women. The elected leaders work out a schedule and the members take turns using the services of this group.

The payuhuan operates on the same principle as the kayvayvanan but applies to smaller-scale farm jobs as well as everyday tasks like weeding and planting. Members of the payuhuan are usually close friends and relatives giving it a more intimate social closeness than the kayvayvanan. The kayvayvanan may also be contracted for paid labor, which is not true of the payuhuan.

The spirit of yaru seems to be the more developed and enduring version of the Tagalog’s bayanihan. It disproves any myth that Filipinos are inherently uncooperative and that they have the so-called “crab mentality.” Visiting Batanes could be a way for Filipinos to rediscover that we may have the capacity to work together in the spirit of solidarity.

Another striking feature of the Ivatans is their high rate of literacy, which at 95 percent is above the national average of 93 percent. Everyone we met could speak to us in both English and Tagalog. This means that every adult in Batanes is at least trilingual because Ivatan is spoken in the islands of Batan and Sabtang while Ichbayaten is spoken in Itbayat, the largest island. Governor Gato has focused a great deal of his efforts on improving and maintaining the quality of basic education.

Batanes deserves more attention from the national government, especially in the area of infrastructure development. The most pressing need is for an all-weather port costing an estimated R100 million to be constructed in the town of Makatao. This will improve the access to the province by modern fast boats (e.g. supercats and waterjets from Aparri and other parts in Northern Luzon).

Families looking for a unique place to visit in the coming months of April and May (relatively typhoon-free) should think of Batanes as a tourist destination. I’m sure the superlatives I have used in this article have not sufficiently described what the first timer will see in these paradise islands of the North.