Batanes beyond the photo op

The boulders of Valugan Beach glinted like steel under the sun, shades of blue, gray, and dark ash, already made familiar through the hundreds of pictures from camera buffs on photos safaris, travel bloggers and the increasing number of lifestyle articles about Batanes. But this was no time to wax lyrical about the rough-hewn beauty of boulders or ponder on the immensity of nature. We had to haul ass. My teammates — two Ivatan athletes and a jeepney driver named Anting — picked up steaming piles of rocks from the beach and dumped them at my feet, and I had to arrange the stones quickly in the shape of a boat, representing the burial markers of Ivatans thousands of years ago.

This was just one of the quirky challenges of the first Amazing Tour of Batanes, launched by the Batanes Eco-Cultural Tourism Industry. Part adventure race, part heritage trail, the tasks put the teams — composed of professional athletes, media and people from the community — to some physical or mental challenge that all had to do with local Ivatan practices. While there was a bit of racing involved, competition was friendly, and at the end of the day, we all rode or top-loaded together on the same jeepney. 

Running of the Cows

As someone who’s seen much of the world through the win-dows of a moving air-conditioned coach, activities like these, where you can get down and dirty, and yes, extremely sweaty, are a rejuvenating change. Instead of just distractedly listening to facts and figures, we were forced to take in the information, because this would form the basis of the challenges. The cogon relay race, for instance, wherein we had to run with huge bundles of the dry grass, symbolized the community effort it took to build the “vernacular houses” of Batanes, made of stone with cogon roofs and dating back to the Spanish period. Some still exist; the rest have fallen into disrepair.

The cow-herding challenge was also an experience straight out of a Western movie. Atop the rolling hills of Vayang, a team member had to lead a cow out to pasture. While it sounds bucolic and charming, in actuality the beasts took over and stampeded down the valley, with team members chasing after them, barely holding on to their ropes. Credit goes to Batanes tourism consultant Toby Martin, former editor of MetroActive and a Bataan Death March finisher, for coming up with the challenges and acting as ringleader to six rowdy teams.

It wasn’t all fun and games — we had plenty of down time to take photographs of ourselves jumping on the cliffs or acting out scenes from Batanes, the movie. Jason Luengo and Randell “Buko” Raymundo, paragliders and ardent adventurers, tried catching the wind in their wings, while overcharged athletes like Chock Martinez, a burly Ironman, ran up and down the cow-flecked hills like Maria Von Trapp on speed.

Northern Exposure

After the awarding of first prize to, ahem, my team, we got around to discussing the business of Batanes. Prof. Robert Bastillo, BECTI consultant, native son and a kind of conservation crusader with his Indiana Jones hat, has made it his mission to get his province listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site under the category of Cultural Landscape. “It’s the evidence of a way of life, of people interacting with nature and the environment to fashion out an existence that is unique and worthy,” he explains. His job is to write out the dossier documenting everything about Batanes that will convince the governing body that the place really does have the Outstanding Universal Value UNESCO is looking for. Batanes would be the sixth World Heritage Site of the Philippines, and the second under Cultural Landscape, after the Cordillera Rice Terraces.

Batanes is special for several reasons, and not just because it has amazing scenery. The people practice sustainable farming — they’ve been organic a thousand years before it became a trendy foodie thing (and organic veggies are cheap here, in contrast to the rest of the world), and only farm parcel by parcel, leaving time for land to regenerate and reforest. Hedgerows, usually seen in British gardens, line the sloping hills and act as windbreakers and prevent topsoil erosion as well as demarcate property areas. Sustainable fishing means they don’t overfish. There are also deeply rooted cooperative traditions, exemplified by the community building of the bahay na bato, which seem to be an ancient answer to global warming, as they keep cool during the summer and warm in winter, and are resistant to the many typhoons known to frequent Batanes.

“Nobody dies in typhoons here. They don’t die from calamities,” Bastillo says. “People here can read signs — they look at the changing color of the sky, they track the movements of the cows.” If the cows start heading to the lowlands, that’s a usual sign that a typhoon is coming in two days. “Horses are not as smart,” he adds. “They stay on the hilltops, and when the typhoon hits, they just fly.”

Native Son

Bastillo left his hometown at the age of 10 and eventually became a sought-after development consultant for many regions around the Philippines. He returned in 1993, only to realize that here already existed the kind of sustainable community he had long been talking about. At that time Batanes was one of the 20 poorest provinces in the country, and the government wanted to intervene. “Modernization was not the answer, nor industrialization or golf courses or annexation to Taiwan,” he says about the development master plan he presented then. “It’s keeping what the people have.”

Already a protected area, Batanes’ rugged landscape is not likely to be ruined by five-star resorts anytime soon — although there have been offers. It’s the little things that make up an identity of a people that are becoming endangered, like traditional house-building technology, which includes cogon-bundling and roofing. “Mastery of these skills should be systematically ingrained in the curriculum, so even when the old people are gone, they continue. The people can take pride, they can tell stories,” Bastillo says.

And hence the launch of the Amazing Tour, which is just one event in the multi-pronged effort to promote yet simultaneously preserve Batanes. Educating tourists on the Ivatan way of life will create appreciation for it, and in turn the Ivatans will want to maintain their uniqueness and take care of what they have. They might, for example, be encouraged to refurbish their stone houses and open them up to community stays. Bastillo concludes, “The local people shouldn’t change just because new people are coming in. They should understand that they represent a heritage that is not just for them, but for the entire humanity.”