Last modified: 2025-09-13 by 
zachary harden
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![[Batanes, Philippines]](../images/p/ph-btn.gif)
located by Zachary Harden, 11 September 2025
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The seal of the province is placed on a maroon background. There are two versions of the flag; one where the seal is in English and one where the seal is in Tagalog.
Zachary Harden, 11 September 2025
![[Batanes, Philippines]](../images/p/ph-btn_f.gif)
by Jaume Ollé,
12 January 2001
Batanes, the northernmost, is in fact the northernmost part of the whole
republic, consisting of a string of small and weather-beaten islands extending
from Luzon to about two hundred kilometers from Taiwan. Its total land area is
209 sq.km., which makes it the smallest province in the country. It is also the
least populous, at sixteen thousand, in six towns. Basco, the capital, was named
for the first Spanish governor. The aboriginal population, called Ivatan, came
from Taiwan, and the Ivatan language is of the Formosan family. There has
apparently been some admixture of Spanish genetic material, but no mixing with
the many other ethnic groups in the rest of the Philippines. The Ivatan live in
houses built of stone, and shaped so that even typhoon winds can't get a grip on
them. When high winds threaten, the Ivatan throw rope nets over their crops to
protect them. They make their living by fishing and subsistence farming, growing
root crops, vegetables, and fruits, and raising cattle, pigs, and poultry for
sale. They have no radio station, no newspaper, no movie house. There is a
single inn--"spartan but cheap." They say they have the rarest corals in the
world, but advise against swimming in the sea--it's "too frisky." Some islands
are difficult to reach even by boat. Access by air is "weather permitting." All
in all, Batanes puts me in mind of accounts of visits to the Shetlands and
Orkneys in the nineteenth century. One sight for the venturesome is a ghost
town, drowned by a tsunami in the 1950s.
John Ayer, 28 March 2001
![[Batanes, Philippines]](../images/p/ph-btn_pol.gif)
source, image by Zachary Harden, 11 September 2025
