Batanes- Part 2

Before I forget the beauty of Batanes... here's a photo journal of our New Year vacation...

It was a windy day when our guide, Manong Jun, took us to the fishing village. And since it was off-season, there wasn't much to see but we had a great lunch at Monica's catering on a hillside terrace overlooking the sea. The meal was an interesting mix of cuttle fish stir-fried in ginger and oyster sauce (not as rubbery as I expected), the Luniz (adobo Ivatan style), the sweet and sour fish and the piping hot Inasuyan a Dipao. Dipao is a seasonal lentil that is available from December to March and sells for about P30 per cup in the market. It tastes like monggo and pop beans and the soup is flavored with pork and salt. The banana, which the locals call Navaya, has a reddish tinge and itastes like a mixture of lakatan  (Cavendish) and saba (plantain).

The view from the terrace

Cuttlefish stir-fried in garlic and oyster sauce

Inasuyan a Dipao

Sweet and sour fish

Luniz

Navaya

On New Year's Eve, we got the chance to visit the wet market, which was contained in one 2-story building and extended to the street corner where the fishmongers had their communal stall.

The fishmonger's stall on the streetcorner

Inside the Basco wet market

Gabi, one of Basco's regular produce

Round chilies pickled in organic coconut vinegar

Plows, knives and machetes

Unlike well-developed tourist destinations, Basco inns did not have the requisite planned New Year's Eve dinners tourists find so convenient. So we decided to get ourselves some supplies for our own private party- rhum, coke and crisps. As it turned out, we didn't need so much since the chill and the exhaustion from touring took its toll on us as the relatively quiet town of Basco welcomed the year  2011.


On New Year's day, we found ourselves without any reservations for lunch. We thought that we'd still be drunk and passed out from our New Year's Eve revelries. We walked around and found this little cafeteria run by Domincan nuns. SDC. Don;t expect too much as the food is similar to your home-cooked carinderia fare.

The friendly servers of SDC

SDC lunch

One of the highlights of our trip was the visit to Sabtang, an inactive volcanic island which in the 50's ws ravaged by a tsunami, most of the famous stone houses were destroyed. Our initially scheduled trip was cancelled due to bad weather. three days after, Mang Jun drove us to the port of Ivana where we had a quick cup of coffee at the Honesty store and met a new friend.

Ivana port breakwater

Inside the Honesty Store

Our little friend whom I wanted to take home

We had to wait for the coastguard to sign-off  the permit to travel before we piled into the  30-seater tugboat. The sea was relatively calm but the wide waves that the boat captain sliced through did not look very friendly to me and the handful of caucasian tourists on board.

The tugboat captain

After almost half an hour,  the lightbhouse by the shores of Sabtang was in sight. We were ushered into one of the two jeepeneys in the island. It would serve as our transport for the whole day.

We had a quick visit to the tourism area for a quick registry and proceeded to a house of one of the locals to have breakfast.

Sabtang Lighthouse

By lunchtime we were at Nakabuang beach, where the same couple who served us breakfast were already preparing our meal.

Nakabuang beach

Lunch was seaweed soup (seaweed boiled with garlic, onions and ginger), Luniz, minced pork with string beans, cuttlefish and fish fillet and lobster in lemon butter sauce.

Seaweed soup

Luniz

Minced pork and string beans

Fish and cuttlefish fillet

Oohlalobsters!

After lunch, a few more hours was spent exploring the island. When it was time to go back to the port, our jeepney trip was stopped short by a throng of locals celebrating the feast of Sto. Niño.

As we were waiting for the coastguard to sign the permit to sail, we witnessed a young brave fisherman swimming in the Sabtang port breakwater, trying to catch some fish.

And on the boat, our guide and one of the younger assistants of the captain decided to do some line fishing and caught one grouper who spent its last remaining breath twisting and flipping at Mang Jun's feet.

On our last night at Sabtang, we decided to have dinner at Fundacion Pacita Batanes Nature Lodge.

The place itself is a dream. the two-story stone house is nestled on top of a hill with terraces overlooking the sea. Surprisingly, the food did not live up to the beauty of the place, it was just so-so.

But if you do get the chance to go to Batanes, visiting this lovely place is a must.

Batanes Food Trip- Part 1

As per usual, A. and I  didn't get any sleep prior to our New Year trip.  As of 3 PM, I was still working on a sample script while A. was checking scripts. We had one hour to pack, get dressed and call a cab. All work duties submitted, all familial duties fulfilled, we rushed to the airport for a very quiet New Year in Batanes,

Our first meal in Batanes was technically the breakfast they served us upon check-in at the DDD Habitat, a relatively new and modest inn near in the periphery of idyllic Basco. But since we were served the  standard "silog" breakfast platter, it doesn't count.

Before leaving for the afternoon tour, we had a simple meal of sinigang na baboy...

Pako (fern) salad...

 and sizzling Dibang (flying fish)...

 which looks like this before it hit the frying pan---

Starting the meal with the  hot and sour sinigang soup was very welcome as the chill of Taiwan winter crept its way down to my bones. The Pako salad, which is very hard to come by in Manila, was refreshing because the meaty fern was soaked in organic sugarcane vinegar and topped with chopped native tomatoes and red onion. it was also a good match for the flying fish, which had a piquant hint of the sea hidden in its dense flesh.

This meal had us ready for the afternoon ahead- scaling hills and doing the rounds of all the pretty places you wish you grew up in.

By the end of the day we were pretty tired and ready for another Batanes meal. We were taken by our kindly guide, Manong Jun, to Pension Ivatan, one of the older inns which prides itself in being the "home of Ivatan cuisine." Meals had to be pre-ordered as it was the low season and the kitchen staff had to be advised to purchase the ingredients. 

It was there that I tasted the yellow rice, colored and flavored with turmeric (and traditionally sprinkled with limestone to give the grains more luster)...

Upon the recommendation of the attending staff, we paired this with Uved balls, the fried variety. According to Mang Jun, home-cooked uved are not really made into balls, just sauteed. But some locals will make it into balls and steam it. I know some people might think they look like animal dung, but it's really made of banana ubod (banana tree palm), minced pork and pork blood (which gives it the earthy color).

We were also served an Ivatan salad platter, which was mainly a mix of uncooked and blanched fresh vegetables served with bagoong (shrimp paste).

We also had the Lunyis or Ivatan version of pork adobo. This is a dry kind of adobo where only salt is used and the meat pieces are fried in its own lard.

 We were also served the Mixed Seafood, which was like a creamy version of pinakbet.

On our first day, it was obvious that the people of Batanes have a culture of self-sustenance and that its people take pride in that. I do hope that this doesn't change once more tourists discover the beauty of this volcanic group of islands.