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A group of islands in the northernmost region of the Philippines is so far away that it is actually closer to Taiwan than most parts of the Philippines.

The islands are 100 miles north of Luzon, the largest and most populous island in the country and home to the capital, Manila. However, you couldn’t be further from the stereotypical tropical scene of swaying palm trees and white sand beaches associated with the Philippine archipelago.

Imagine windswept emerald hills dotted with cattle, quaint stone towns with flower-lined paths, rugged cliffs plunging into a deep sea of ​​crashing white-tipped waves, and lighthouses steadfast and strong, much like that Locals themselves.

This is Batanes – a fascinating and magical place that feels more like the historical drama “Outlander” than “The Beach”.

Pastoral landscapes, peaceful people

Batanes is made up of three main islands – Batan, Sabtang, and Itbayat – that lie between the North Pacific and the South China Seas. Often times, Batanes is hit by implacable typhoons that form on both waters.

It is also located on the Circum-Pacific Belt, better known as the Ring of Fire, and is prone to the frequent earthquakes that damaged Itbayat Island in July 2019.

The pastoral landscape of Naidi Hills near the Basco Lighthouse.

Scott A. Woodward

Here the land is forged by the elements and, in many ways, by the people too.

There is a mysterious atmosphere that shrouds the indigenous people of Batanes, the Ivatans. Due to their isolation, challenging climate and difficult landscape, the locals have built a society that values ​​trust and real connection.

In contrast to the exuberant and charmingly chaotic landscapes of the Philippines, which feel more like karaoke than an idyllic paradise, Batanes and its residents are calm, thoughtful, orderly and peaceful. The Ivatans are warm and sincere and strive to be honest with visitors who want to learn more about their culture.

A fisherman in the village of Diura.

Scott A. Woodward

The Ivatans live in symbiosis with nature and maintain their natural heritage with an almost spiritual passion. They recognize the country as a source of their wellbeing and wellbeing and are committed to sustainability.

The best example would be the lack of markets in the province; Agricultural practices aim to produce just enough food for the population, with very little excess.

Here Christian faith and spirituality permeate everyday life. The word “Dius” or God is used in many expressions: “Dius mamajes!” – or God will repay you, is their way of saying thank you; “Dius machivan!” – May God go with you, is their parting; or just “Dius?” asking if anyone is home. There the visitors often hear “Dius mavidin!” or may God be with you, they greet guests.

Where to sleep

Unlike most of the Philippines, Batanes is sparsely populated.

The 2015 census counted only 17,246 people, which is roughly 205 people per mile.

Strict measures are being taken to prevent overtourism, such as limiting the number of flights to the islands. The area is also subject to the Batanes Responsible Tourism Act, according to which the Philippine government declared the province a “Responsible, Community-Based Cultural Heritage and Ecotourism Zone” in 2016.

As a result, travelers can expect to find host families and small inns rather than branded hotels.

The Bed & Breakfast Fundacion Pacita.

Scott A. Woodward

One facility really stands out.

Fundacion Pacita, the former residence of the late artist Pacita Abad, is a charming bed and breakfast on a lush grass slope overlooking the sea.

Built in traditional stone fashion paired with whitewashed adobe walls, it’s quirky decorated with brightly colored tiles, repurposed furniture, and Abad’s vibrant artwork.

Food from the Cafe du Tukon; Patsy, the niece of the late artist Pacita Abad.

Scott A. Woodward

Her niece Patsy, who often walks through the premises with a happy smile and a glass of wine, now runs the inn. She recently opened the fabulous Café du Tukon, which serves delicious contemporary interpretations of local delicacies like carbonara pasta with salted dolphin fish called arayu instead of bacon or guanciale.

What should I do

Batan is the main island of Batanes. Due to the choppy water and unpredictable weather, it can be difficult to cross the Batanes Islands. Fortunately, Batan has a lot to offer and is easy to get to via commercial flights.

It is imperative to work with an accredited travel agency such as IBS Tours and Travels before organizing any trip. The agency can coordinate a car and guide to navigate the stunning coastal road that circles the island.

The Tayid Lighthouse on Batan Island.

Scott A. Woodward

Agencies can also arrange stops at notable locations like the famous Basco Lighthouse and Tayid Lighthouse, the sloping hills of Rakuh a Payaman, and the colorful waters of the Homoron Blue Lagoon.

It’s also worth stopping at small, peaceful towns like Mahatao and Ivana, known for their churches and Spanish bridges, as well as Diura, home of the Mataw caste of mystical fishermen.

A woman in Chavayan wears a hand-sewn palm frond vakul.

Scott A. Woodward

If the weather is nice, Sabtang Island can be reached by a 40-minute ferry ride. The breathtaking views from the cliffs of Chamantad Tiñan are well worth it, as is the stone village of Chavayan, where vakul are made. These are traditional headgear made from stripped palm fronds that protect field workers from the elements.

Arrival to Batanes

The only real way to get there is by flying. Flights can take anywhere from 80 to 100 minutes and can be booked with Skyjet, Cebu Pacific and Philippine Airlines before the pandemic.

Homoron Blue Lagoon.

Scott A. Woodward

A trip to Batanes must be planned in advance and booked through accredited tour operators. The local government is very focused on sustainable tourism and the preservation of the province’s natural and cultural heritage. There are a number of rules and guidelines – such as no bikinis on the beach – that tourists must understand and adhere to while traveling.

When should i go

While the Philippines is currently closed to international tourism, officials last month expressed an interest in establishing “international travel bubbles” or travel corridors with strict health protocols with neighboring countries.

Basco lighthouse.

Scott A. Woodward

Batanes, which registered its third Covid-19 case in December 2020, is currently even closed to local tourists. Local authorities are looking for ways to safely reopen with 14-day quarantines and meet other health requirements.

Batanes’ “good season” runs from November to May. June to October is typhoon time and should be avoided. Travelers are advised to bring a light rain jacket for spontaneous downpours and a light sweater for cool nights on the cool mountain tops.

The residents line up in their vehicles to enter a thermal center and shelter after record-breaking winter temperatures. As reported by local media, most Galveston, Texas residents will be without power on February 17, 2021.

Adrees Latif | Reuters

The Texas blackout, which left millions struggling with no power in freezing conditions, sparked a feud between Democrats and the GOP over decades of Republicans’ control of the energy industry and calls for a system that is more resilient to extreme weather conditions.

Texas avoided federal regulation by building its own power grid, almost cut off from the rest of the country – an isolated system long lauded by conservatives in power.

But the system collapsed this week due to a surge in energy demands associated with frozen utilities during a brutal winter storm that then raised energy prices and triggered the state’s worst blackouts in decades.

Former MP Beto O’Rourke, D-TX, accused Texas Republican leaders of prioritizing “stupid culture wars”, such as efforts to make Texas a “protective state,” rather than protecting residents from extreme weather events have been made worse by climate change.

“So much of it was preventable,” O’Rourke said in an interview with MSNBC this week. “Back to the deregulation of our power grid in Texas, which has created an incentive not to actually weather or protect against these events.”

“The energy capital of North America cannot provide enough energy to heat and power people’s homes,” O’Rourke continued. “We are approaching a failed state in Texas. And it has nothing to do with God or natural disasters. It has everything to do with those in positions of public trust who have failed us.”

Fifty-nine-year-old David Mudge wipes a tear off after record-breaking winter temperatures in Galveston, Texas on February 18, 2021 while seeking refuge at a shelter.

Adrees Latif | Reuters

The outages led to widespread public criticism of lawmakers and government agencies for apparently ignoring warnings about the network’s inability to deal with extreme weather conditions. Energy experts said the collapse was partly due to the state’s decision not to require equipment upgrades for a more resilient system.

House spokeswoman Nancy Pelosi said Thursday she expected the House of Representatives’ energy and trade committee to investigate energy issues in Texas.

Jennifer Granholm, President Joe Biden’s candidate for energy minister, said the US had to upgrade its grid infrastructure as soon as possible. “One thing is certain: America’s power grid is simply unable to handle extreme weather events,” she wrote in a tweet on Wednesday.

Although the GOP has overseen the state’s energy sector for decades, Republican Governor Greg Abbott, along with other Conservative heads of state, has mistakenly attributed the outages to renewable energy sources like wind and solar, which make up only a small fraction of the state’s energy.

Abbott alleged in a Fox news interview earlier this week that reliance on wind and solar power “put Texas in a nationwide power shortage situation,” an argument his own energy department contradicted.

Continue reading:
Blackouts in Texas show how vulnerable the power grid is to climate change
How the grid failed and what could stop it from happening again
Outages in Texas have impacted water supplies as thousands struggle without electricity for a fourth day

Julian Castro, a former mayor of San Antonio, Texas, tweeted, “Governor Abbott did not prepare for this storm, was too slow to react, and is now blaming everyone but himself for the mess.”

“He’s neglected the state’s outdated and deregulated power grid,” said Castro, who also served as secretary for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Rick Perry, former Texas Governor and Secretary of Energy for the Trump administration, said Wednesday that Texans would prefer to endure even longer outages “to keep the federal government out of its business” and prevent Democrats from regulating the Implement the fight against climate change.

However, the vast majority of outages this week were due to issues with limited natural gas production and frozen supplies from natural gas, coal and nuclear power plants – not solar and wind outages.

Empty shelves in the meat aisle at a grocery store in McKinney, Texas, the United States, on Wednesday, February 17, 2021.

Cooper Neill | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Although the sun and wind went offline because frozen leaves made wind turbines inoperable, these technologies only make up a small fraction of Texas’s electricity. The state has ramped up wind power in recent years, but only relies on wind for 25% of its electricity generation, according to the Texas Electric Reliability Council.

Texas Republican lawmakers, who poked fun at Democratic-led blackouts during California’s extreme heatwaves, were also criticized this week after the power grid collapse resulted in blackouts in their home state.

Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in August accused Biden and Kamala Harris, who were running for president and vice president at the time, of trying to make California’s “failed energy policy the national standard.”

Photos on Thursday’s social media reportedly showed Cruz flew to Mexico despite millions of Texans still without heat in historically low temperatures.

Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., Wrote in a tweet this week that the problems with the Texas power grid should be a message to lawmakers to watch their words in emergencies.

“I hope this will teach Texan politicians not to immerse themselves in other states when they are going through disasters,” wrote Gallego. “All Americans deserve help and empathy from other Americans, regardless of whether it is a blue or a red state.”

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TO UPDATE: NASA successful landed his Perseverance rover on the surface of Mars. Read more about it here.

NASA is hours away from its most ambitious Mars mission to date. The US space agency will attempt to land the Perseverance rover after a journey of more than six months on the red planet.

Perseverance was built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and is the fifth and most technologically advanced rover the agency plans to deploy on the surface of Mars for nearly two years. The rover and its spaceship are equipped with two dozen cameras to capture its expedition. The robot is full of scientific instruments to measure the geology of the planet – and hopefully collect samples that NASA hopes to return to Earth one day.

“Mars stimulates our imaginations and has been part of our dreams for many decades. The persistence balances the long history of systematic science-driven exploration of Mars,” said Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen, Deputy Administrator of NASA’s Directorate for Scientific Missions, in a briefing before landing.

The rover is scheduled to touch the surface at around 3:55 p.m. ET.

Since launching on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket on July 30, Perseverance has traveled 293 million miles to reach Mars. The rover is about the size of a small car, weighs about a ton in total, and is 10 feet long by 9 feet wide by seven feet tall. It has a robotic arm that is about 7 feet long, the end of which has a robotic hand that has a camera, chemical analyzer, and rock drill.

“We want to land on Mars … and with the cameras turned on so that the whole world is inspired by us,” said Zurbuchen.

The landing will include what NASA engineers call the “Seven Minutes of Terror”. This is the time it takes to enter the Martian atmosphere and descend to the surface. It is known as such because it takes 11 minutes for communication to occur from the rover back to Earth. This means that the spacecraft and the rover have to land autonomously for the time delay.

An animation of the Mars rover Perseverance entering the atmosphere of the red planet in a protective spaceship.

NASA / JPL-Caltech

Erisa Stilley, co-head of entry, descent and landing systems at NASA’s JPL, explained how the landing process is carefully coordinated after the rover has come through the atmosphere.

“Once the persistence on the parachute drops, we can now let go of the heat shield that protected us on entering and for the first time. [autonomously] Turn on the radar and look at the ground, “Stilley said in a pre-landing briefing.

Perseverance then uses a map on board and searches an area of ​​property worth about 120 soccer fields on the surface to find the safest place to land.

“That happens in the 2.4 seconds it takes endurance to send commands to separate from the rear hull and free fall,” said Stilley.

“When we have this knowledge and we are done with our free fall, we will fire the missiles,” added Stilley. “We’re going from 170 mph to about two at this point [miles per hour] while we slow down and prepare for the ‘sky crane’ maneuver. “

Persistence will take photos in entry time, which Stilley said NASA is hoping to “produce some images we’ve never seen before”.

This illustration shows the events in the final minutes of the nearly seven-month journey NASA’s Perseverance rover makes to Mars

NASA / JPL-Caltech

The rover wants to land in the Jezero crater, a 45 km wide basin in the northern hemisphere of Mars. It’s a place NASA believes a body of water the size of Lake Tahoe was flowing. NASA’s science team is hoping that the ancient river delta may have received organic molecules and other potential signs of microbial life that Perseverance will attempt to detect with its instruments.

NASA invested around $ 2.4 billion to build and launch the Perseverance mission. Another 300 million US dollars are to land and operate the rover on the surface of Mars.

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NASA successfully landed its fifth robotic rover, Perseverance, on the surface of Mars on Thursday after its six-month journey from Earth.

“Touchdown confirmed,” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory mission control said at 3:55 p.m. ET. “Perseverance safe on the surface of Mars, ready to seek the sands of past life.”

The rover is the most technologically advanced robot NASA has ever sent to Mars. The agency plans to spend almost two years exploring the surface. NASA spent around $ 2.4 billion to build and launch the Perseverance mission. Another US $ 300 million is expected to land and operate the rover on the surface of Mars.

Based on its predecessor Curiosity, which reached Mars in August 2012 and is still in operation, the Perseverance rover was built by NASA JPL in California. Several companies have contributed to parts of the spacecraft, including the Lockheed Martin-built heat shield, the Aerojet Rocketdyne-built rocket engines, and the robotic arm built by Maxar Technologies.

Perseverance also has a small helicopter called Ingenuity with which NASA plans to attempt the first flight on another planet.

Engineers observe the first test drive for NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover in a clean room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California on December 17, 2019.

NASA / JPL-Caltech

The rover, about the size of a small car, weighs about 1 ton and is 10 feet long, 9 feet wide, and 7 feet high. It has a robotic arm that reaches about 7 feet, the end of which has a robotic hand that has a camera, chemical analyzer, and rock drilling machine. Perseverance is powered by nuclear power. A plutonium generator is provided by the US Department of Energy to generate power for its pair of lithium-ion batteries.

Perseverance traveled 293 million miles over a period of more than six months to reach Mars after being launched on July 30 by a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.

Hold the landing

This illustration shows the events in the final minutes of the nearly seven-month journey NASA’s Perseverance rover makes to Mars

NASA / JPL-Caltech

The landing of the rover showed the typical “seven minutes of terror” that NASA engineers describe every time a spacecraft attempts to land on Mars. This is the time it takes to enter the Martian atmosphere and descend to the surface. It is known as such because it takes 11 minutes for communication to occur from the rover back to Earth. This means that the spaceship and the rover must perform the time delay and land autonomously.

Persistence entered the Martian atmosphere in a capsule that protected the rover as it moved at a speed of approximately 12,100 miles per hour. The spacecraft then parachuted to slow down before the capsule and heat shield were dropped, and then fired its rocket engines to slow down from about 170 mph to about 2 mph.

An animation of the spacecraft with the Mars rover Perseverance firing its engines to slow the landing.

NASA / JPL-Caltech

Next, the spaceship deployed its “sky crane”, which lowered the rover the remaining few meters to the surface.

An animation of the Mars rover Perserverance, which is being lowered onto the surface of Mars by the “sky crane”.

NASA / JPL-Caltech

Perseverance landed in Jezero Crater, a 45 km wide basin in the northern hemisphere of Mars. It’s a place NASA believes a body of water the size of Lake Tahoe used to flow. NASA’s science team is hoping that the ancient river delta may have received organic molecules and other potential signs of microbial life that Perseverance will attempt to detect with its instruments.

The target landing area of ​​NASA’s Perseverance rover is superimposed on this image of the landing site on Mars, the Jezero crater.

ESA / DLR / FU-Berlin / NASA / JPL-Caltech

In addition to its scientific instruments, the rover carries a plaque to honor Covid-19 health workers and to recognize the effects of the pandemic.

The rover also has the names of 10.9 million people written in morse code on three silicon chips on the rover with the words “Explore as one”.

Perseverance mission

The rover is packed with cameras to capture its expedition and full of scientific instruments to measure the geology of the planet and collect samples that NASA plans to return to Earth one day.

NASA plans to push persistence to the surface for a Martian year, equivalent to 687 days on Earth.

It has seven main instruments for a variety of purposes: the Mastcam-Z; the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer or MEDA; the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Experiment on Resource Use, or MOXIE; the planetary instrument for X-ray lithochemistry or PIXL; the Radar Imager for Mars Subsurface Experiment or RIMFAX; scanning of habitable environments with Raman & Luminescence for organic matter & chemicals or SHERLOC and the SuperCam.

The rover also has a sample caching system with nine different drills and many sample collection tubes to capture parts of the Martian surface.

“Perseverance is the first rover to bring a sample caching system to Mars that packs promising samples for return to Earth on a future mission,” NASA said in a press release. “Instead of pulverizing rock like the Curiosity drill does, the Perseverance drill cuts intact rock cores about the size of a piece of chalk and places them in sample tubes that are stored until the rover reaches a convenient drop off point on Mars.”

NASA hopes to return the samples in the future as part of a campaign in collaboration with the European Space Agency.

The rover is designed to cover more ground than any other robot previously sent to Mars. NASA designed Perseverance to travel an average of 650 feet per Mars day. This roughly equates to the longest trip the NASA Opportunity Rover completed at 702 feet in a day.

The goal is the first flight on another planet

The Perseverance rover with the Ingenuity helicopter visible underneath was preparing for takeoff.

NASA / JPL-Caltech

Perseverance also carries the Ingenuity helicopter. NASA plans to use the helicopter in a flat area a few months after landing under Perseverance. The rover then drives about 100 meters away to record the attempted flight with the rover’s cameras.

An animation of the Perseverance rover using the Ingenuity helicopter.

NASA / JPL-Caltech

If all goes well, Ingenuity’s flight will be the first powered controlled flight on another planet in what NASA calls the “Wright Brothers Moment” on Mars.

An animation of the Ingenuity helicopter making its first flight on Mars.

NASA / JPL-Caltech

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