Last year was a memorable year because it finally happened: I finally got to go to Batanes – a place thatI’ve been dreaming of going to since I basically started working. During my birthday week, no less! Since Batanes is a notoriously expensive place to visit, I had few takers when I sent out the general invite to my friends. Luckily C was available so it was a mini-ICU bonding kind of experience.
When I was planning the trip, I read up on itineraries from fellow bloggers online and somehow they always manage to pack all of the activities in a three-day trip. I guess because the flights into Basco airport arrive at around seven in the morning, it is very much doable to do all of the tours in three days. But because the flights were so freakin’ expensive and because Batanes was a dream destination, we decided to extend our stay in the island to five days. And since we were done with the normal tours after three days, we were left with an awkward fourth day that we didn’t know what to do with. Fortunately, our guide Kuya Darwin (0920-518-2529) suggested that we go to the Diura Fishing Village in Mahatao to catch the sunrise. The only catch was that since Mahatao is half an hour away from our lodge in Basco, we had to get up really early to get there in time.
I managed to journal tiny bits during our trip and here’s my entry for that day:
May 7, 2016 – 11:51 AM.
So we’re now just chilling here in our room, waiting for the heat to die down…again. We woke up extremely early – at 3 in the morning! – because we left the lodge at 4:15 for Diura Fishing Village to catch the sunrise at the beach. I managed to get a lot of beautiful photos; I even caught the whole thing on a time-lapse video.
After our photo shoot session, which weirdly had been a very solitary activity, we trekked up from Diura beach to what was called the Fountain of Youth. It’s pretty much the most gorgeous pool I’ve ever seen and the best part was that we were the first ones there. We literally had the place all to ourselves. The pool itself was man-made but the view was just wow. It was overlooking the ocean so it actually was an infinity pool. We just hung out and chilled, enjoying the early morning sunshine.
Unfortunately it wasn’t long before a bunch of unruly local teens arrived and took over the pool. It wasn’t too bad; we’ve had our fill anyways. We contented ourselves with drying ourselves off on a nearby bench and having fruit for breakfast – fresh buko and papaya that Kuya got from the random trees nearby. Free breakfast, yay! That definitely prevented my notorious hypoglycemia from rearing its ugly had during the climb back up.
We got back to the lodge at around 9 in the morning and just ate the leftovers from last night for brunch. We gave Kuya Darwn a 1,000php tip since we did kind of bust out his rear tire and he had been extremely nice. He actually offered the money back, which just shows how congenial the Batans are.
So now it’s just chill time, catch an early dinner later and just wait for our masseuses. I’m already kind of packed; it’s just a matter of waiting for the wet stuff to dry since we totally free-balled it and went home in our wet clothes.
It had been such a nice experience that I might actually even say that it was my favorite part of the whole trip. The peacefulness and calmness of the dawn breaking on that beach as I tried to capture photos using the manual settings of my camera will probably forever be the Batanes memory imprinted on my brain.
If it’s not yet obvious, I highly recommend Kuya Darwin as a tour guide. You can contact him through this number – 0920-518-2529.
