Trip to Batanes, Day 3

So on Monday I had to get up around 3:30 to get to the domestic airport to catch my flight to Batanes. I got a driver to take me there for an absurd price of 500 pesos ($15). It was like a 15 minute trip. But it was early in the morning. So I got to the airport and waited and waited to check in. I never knew so many people to domestic flights in the Philippines.

Finally, I got checked in and waited for my flight. In between I got some bfast. My plane finally took off and I was on my way to Batanes. The flight is about an hour and 10 minute flight almost directly north. It was in a nice aircraft that can land on like a 1500 meter runway or something crazy like that. It's a jet type aircraft, but somehow lands on really short runways. So we make our decent and land in Batanes. As I look outside it looks like something from Jurassic Park. It's green everywhere, hilly, and theres a big mtn that dominates the horizon. This airport is small. You get out and you have to wait for them to bring all the luggage out to you. Then they just lay it all on the ground in piles and you pick up your piece. Then you just go to where you find transportation. Out front there are people greeting each other and I quickly realize I'm one of the very few tourists here. I felt very alone at that moment. Anyway, I knew where I was staying, but I didn't know the location. So I ask a guy how I can get to Shanedel's, and he says he can get a trike driver to take me there and that he knows the owners daughter. So I got in the trike he recommended and after a few minutes, got to my lodge. Driving through the streets I notice all the houses there are made of stone and concrete. It's a small town with a beautiful, peaceful feel to it.

I pay the trike driver and try to check in. Turns out that I didn't really have a reservation even though I thought I did. So then the lady shows me a room and she's like "here, this is our only one. We just have a double with aircon". I'm like, um, okay. Then she says that it would be 1200 pesos a night. At that, I ask, is there no single, fan room? She then says "oh yeah." She sounded surprised that I, a tourist, would want a fan room. The nice thing about the fan room is, that it was 350 pesos ($10 a night). So I checked in, and then asked the owner if I could rent a bicycle and get a map of the island. She said a previous guest left a bike I could rent for the day and she gave me a map. With that I made my first day quite an adventure. I got started with all this around 7:30am. I first went up to the north part of the island checking out a lighthouse and the coast. After doing this and passing my lodge again, I thought "hey, that's not that long, I'm going to bike the whole island!". That was my first mistake. I biked and biked and biked. Up hills, and down hills. I was on a nice paved road and it was pretty easy to start. I was checking out all these sweet places I had seen online.

I went through a couple towns and found the honesty coffeeshop. This place, you just go in and buy what you want and leave the money on the counter. No one is there to man it. If you don't have change, just come back later and pay. So I got a coke there as I was terribly thirsty by this moment. So I was about 1/2 the way there. From this point on was just plain hard. I got to a town where I thought I could continue my journey and found that I needed to backtrack to find the right road. The "right road" was actually a path. On part of the path there was a gate that said I was about to enter a free roaming zone for livestock and that they weren't domesticated. I was a litte nervous, but knew there was no other way to get to my lodge. So I went through and only encountered one bull and he was nice. Have the rest of the trip back to my lodge though I was walking my bike instead of riding it. I got to one town before the town my lodge was in and walked into a sari sari (convenience mart) and asked for C2(my favorite drink in the philippines). It's a flavored green tea drink. They had 2 and must have seen my excited look on my face as by this time I was very sweaty, exhausted, and about to pass out. So I quickly drank those two and had enough energy to get back to my lodge. After about 7 hrs after I started I got into my lodge, showered and hung out by the seating area overlooking the ocean.

The lodge lady came over and asked if I wanted dinner there that night and I said yes. I'm so glad I did, as I had a delicious fish fillet. No clue what type of fish it was, but it was grand.

I then took the rest of the night to rest and sleep for my next day. The next day I'd be going to Sabtang. A small island to the West of Batan. You have to get the boat around 6:30 is my lodge owner said.