Friday 25 July – happy, happy news!

The morning started with the happiest news, with a call from Han and Noah. Noah proposed to Han in Sri Lanka. He had spoken to us a while back so we have been waiting with eager anticipation! Such lovely news, we are thrilled for them. It really was a brief call as they were rushing out for another adventure in Sri Lanka. In case some of you don’t know, Noah was filming for the BBC in Sri Lanka last year, he developed a cult status as the leopard camera man on the Netflix film Living with Leopards, that Han and Noah filmed and produced in Botswana. If you haven’t watched it, please do, it has brilliant reviews and is nominated for 4 Emmy awards! Anyhow the Sri Lankans are so taken with their skills that they paid to send them out to Sri Lanka (business class no less!) for 2 weeks to do a roadshow of conferences and talks about filming leopards, with lots of safaris along the way. It has been a whirlwind trip for them with amazing experiences and an engagement on top of it all!

The happy couple

The morning started with the normal armada of canoes with kids in them, circling round and round us. Loads of laughter, and derring-do paddling underneath us between the hulls! The funniest one was a lad wanting to trade eggs with us, so Rowan traded with him, he rejected all the clothes Rowan offered, and accepted a tin of meat in the end. We decided to have them for breakfast and when I saw them I immediately realised they weren’t chicken’s eggs. Very white like duck eggs, we spotted a couple of Muscovy ducks yesterday. Luckily I broke the first one into a cup and nearly vomited, it was runny with a blood sack, ugh I chucked it overboard quickly. Rowan has been teaching the kids not to beg, saying please can I, instead of I want. The next unsuspecting ‘I want choc-a-let’ canoe, we handed over the remaining duck eggs to them. They seemed suitably happy!

We went to the beach as we had promised Chief John we would come back with our boat card to stick in the log book we had signed. We also had a pair of sunglasses for him, which he was very chuffed with. It is a lovely happy village, so many kids playing about. We were impressed watching them doing what we used to call French Elastic. They were jumping in and out of string that had been retied a hundred times, singing….England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, inside, outside like a monkey’s tail. So funny!

Three young girls volunteered to be our guide up to the fresh water lake. We walked along the beach road leaving town, there was a big coral/limestone cliff eroded at ground level, making suitable caves for keeping their pigs in. We passed the smart house with the fancy broken jetty, typically it belongs to the priest, they tend to be the wealthiest people in the village! He is currently away, it looked a bit abandoned. We then climbed up the limestone ridge, quite tricky in flip flops, two of the girls were barefoot so I couldn’t complain. Beautiful dense forest we walked through and got to the enormous lake. Totally unspoilt, no cultivation up there. The noticeable thing about the Solomon Islands is the increase in bird life, there were so few birds in Vanuatu. When we arrived yesterday there were two Solomon eagles circling on the ridge, sadly we were anchoring so I didn’t get a good look at them. There is a tree in the village full of grassy nests and hundreds of birds that look like Starlings, very noisy. Loads of Frigate birds about, and up at the lake it looked like a wagtail of sorts. We can hear so much birdlife from the boat. The girls told us we could not swim in the lake as there is a crocodile. We have heard that the salt water crocs from PNG are about here in the islands. I’ve just googled the lake while writing this and it collaborates what one of the young lads told us in the village. There were two crocs up at the lake, pigs and dogs were going missing and then a boy was attacked, flown to hospital and survived. So the police came and killed one croc, as recently as 13 July! The other croc is still at large, the girls were right. We had a lovely walk back through the village, down the little side paths, thoroughly charming.

Rowan went for a snorkel on the reef but it wasn’t very good, so he did not stay long. Judging by the amount of fishermen out at night and their tiny catches, the place is very over fished. I finally had calm enough waters to do a mountain of laundry. Late afternoon the beach emptied and the village was silent, and then exploded with thunderous applause. We discovered from a fisherman later in the evening, that it was the Solomon’s Football cup being played and their province won 3 nil! Big celebrations.

Slightly eerie having the silent fishing boats around us at night, Chief John had warned us we might get surrounded because our lights attract the fish. Sitting out in the balmy night air I could smell them long before hearing them.

Tiny kids all coming for a look, hoping for sweets

Rowan dishing out Haribo sweets one at a time

Very brave cute kids with every variety of hair

Low tide and the coral out the water

PolePole the only boat in the bay

Nice beach front homes on stilts, to catch the breeze and provide shade underneath

Jumping in and out the elastic, exactly what we used to do at Junior school

Chief John happy with his new sunglasses

Fantastic trees on the beach

Oh dear and then I spotted this turtle shell in the fork of the tree

Kids enjoying the water

The pig’s home in the cliff caves

Off on our walk with our young guides, the limestone cliffs on our right

Path up to the lake

The fresh water lake, very little on google about it – created by volcanoes but apparently not a crater

The girls at the lake, we could not swim because of the crocodile. In hindsight we realise that the girls started making a lot of noise as we approached the lake, I bet it was to tell the crocodile to get out the way

No development up here, just an old boat

The girls did a little performance for us at the end of the priest’s broken jetty

Walk back through the village

Amazing pandanus walls with a few bits of corrugated iron

Prime real estate!

The muscovy drake, I grew up with these ugly bastards on our farm in SA

I like the tree trunks supporting the house, look at all the sawn timber stored underneath

A modern house with a very smart pathway

A lawn of yellow flowers

The trees are gardens in their own rights

I think everyone has gone to listen to the football

The swallows have enjoyed our boat as much as the kids, every now and then swooping right inside, full of chatter sitting on our lines all day long, and making a horrible mess!