nameabledays Archive One

And full of pictures! Digital and memory imprints of the last Philippine—Filipino—frontier, way out and up north, ‘above’ the Ilocos and Cagayan regions, beyond the Babuyan Islands (of which I know little)…beyond the usual notions of the Manila Filipino—pavement-pounder and gridlocked on Edsa, chaser of jeepney, taxi and MRT train. For that is Batanes. Far from what you’ve ever imagined of how it might look and feel beyond the solid earth of Luzon. When you look at the Southeast Asia part of the globe, perhaps by Google Earth, Batanes is barely there. But the Balintang Channel down south, which separates the islands from the the Babuyan archipelago of Cagayan province, and the Bashi Channel between Batanes’s farthest Y’ami Isle and Orchid Isle of Taiwan, are important waters. Taiwan is so near that the old cliché about hearing roosters crow there on a fine Ivatan morning is worth repeating.

Part of such waters divides Batan Island, where the capital Basco is and where we stayed, and exotic (for want of a better word) Sabtang, an hour’s sail by falua (a roundish wooden dinghy like those used by Nile fishermen in movies). And the current will tell you that this is no mean ditch but where, in fact, the China Sea and the vast Pacific meet and you don’t trifle with it, it will give you a piece of its mind (or the scare of your life). And that was what we had a taste of: on a perfectly warm and sunny summer afternoon, with no storm brewing, nor warnings from Pagasa in Manila, as we were sailing back from Sabtang Island, the waves became literally like houses in size and our falua tossed like cork on the turbulent tub. And the laughter of the Manila women near the stern stopped and everybody asked for the orange life vests hanging under the boat roof, except that some of us near the prow could see the waves coming and thus could brace for them better. Which didn't excempt me from the scare, for I couldn't suppress a shout when the last big one came and rocked our boat before we got nearer to shore. And the hardy Sabtang woman smiled beside me and said it's normal, usual, etc. And we decided not to proceed to Itbayat island, the other major island destination, because the plane had cancelled anyway and we didn't want to risk a three-hour falua ride, hello. Count us out, we said.

Batanes. Apart from being the favorite path of Pacific tai fungs, like the place down south (of Luzon) where I come from, it is perhaps like a Dapitan for Rizal or a Guam for Mabini, or like Sulu further down with the last island of Sitangkai. It resides there at the farthest borders of the Filipino mind. A lonely outpost for starship troopers, something different for the jaded terra-urbanite. All right, enough of words.

Feast your eyes on these initial images (from where I recently brought my tiny Fuji FinePix S5000), as I did mine.


● THE CLASSIC IVATAN HOUSE. Fast disappearing from the urbanizing capital, Basco. But Ivatans are working hard to secure a World Heritage Site declaration for their province, to preserve what's left of this architectural tradition

● BOUGAIN-VILLA arcade at the church in Mahatao, near Basco on Batan Island. It's not Mexico, folks, it's just our common colonial heritage







● DUNES. Biking—the main ride of the islands—on the dunes of Savidug







● A FISHER-MAN'S HUT in Diura







● MOUNTAIN-CUT ROAD (first photo above) to Chavayan barangay on the island of Sabtang. Without the jeep and the steel guard rail it could be a scene from Wang Wei






● SAVIDUG KIDS. Of course Savidug is a barangay or village on the island town of Sabtang. Where else in the good ol' Philippines can you find a name like that? Well, the v's and the f's actually exist in our languages, e.g., in the Ivatan of Batanes and in the Ibanag of some parts of Cagayan (where they say 'inaffi' for rice), and others I am not familiar with. So no matter the complaints of some parents about the change in the Filipino alphabet, we must include the v's and the f's, and the c's and the ch's, otherwise some our Hispanic surnames and first names (say, the Viratas and the Chavits) will have letters that do not exist in our writing, much less can legitimately be included in Filipino documents, and... in the Filipino consciousness.