Ironwulf.net Ver 6: En Route - Philippines, Travel, Photography

I noticed that when searching for Batanes Maps, there wasn’t much information on the internet or even printed books or guides. So the idea suddenly struck me to create a visual, photographic landmark map of each of the Batanes Islands.

Itbayat Island is actually a giant uplifted coral reef, and research claims it’s one of the world’s largest. Knowing this first time around made me think how this was possible. I guess that explains how the island doesn’t have a shoreline and the texture of the cliffs does resemble a giant coral. Interesting isn’t it? So how is it like living on a giant coral reef?

Batanes is made up of 3 major islands, Batan, Sabtang and Itbayat. Batan, the easier and safer place to go around Batanes has the main city of Basco, the gateway to the region. Sabtang, the island we were supposed to go to earlier but was put on hold because of the weather is one of the closer islands to Batan and can be reached in less than an hour from the port of Ivana. The other island, Itbayat is one of the farther islands up north and can be reached by boat in 3-4 hours or by a small plane in an hour. Since the plane’s schedule is unpredictable and fare is very expensive we opted to take a boat. No this isn’t a big boat but a tug cargo boat and I can’t imagine we’re crossing the seas where the Pacific Ocean and the China Seas meet on it.