Sunday 19 October – going up the fjordlike Mayalibit river

It was not a comfortable night as there was a lot of swell, plus noise, Rowan was definitely not spending another night here. We had a few chores to do in town, we thought we would visit the market, a new one has been built out of town that we can dinghy to. Claudette joined us, she also did not have a very comfy night. It was good to have a bit of a walk in town, first stop was to the dive shop to get Rowan’s two regulators fixed. It was closed when we arrived so we were just arranging to leave it with a sweet lady running a stall next door, when a scooter arrived and it was the lady from the dive shop. That was a lucky sort out, she also spoke good english which helped solve our next chore. We discovered we needed a second Raja Amat park entry permit, we bought one online but there is another we have to get and present on request. The internet is full of scam sites so it was hard to work out what we needed. This lady got us in touch with the right park person who gave us the correct site for the second permit. We did not have to visit the Park office, which is a relief, we can do it all online. We decided to skip the market as it was low tide and looked like it may be difficult to access. So we said our goodbyes to Claudette, she is heading to a resort nearby and we are heading to the peace and jungle of the Mayalibit river. We have such wonderful memories of being up the Chagres river in Panama, that we were very optimistic about this river trip.

We got the anchor up around midday and made our way to the river, it was spectacular jungle on both sides with the occasional little fishing houses on the shore. We went passed a village and it wasn’t long before a boat was out directing us to the anchorage. Rowan knew exactly where he was going, but the guy insisted on coming with us, he clearly had more he wanted to sell us! The anchorage is in a stunning little bay off the river, totally surrounded by jungle and limestone cliffs, really idyllic. There is such a strong flow of water in the main channel of the river, Rowan says it gets up to 4 knots, we had about a knot against us. Tucked up in our anchorage we could see the water rushing by. Our sunset drinks were serenaded by incredible bird sounds, lots of cockatoos and hornbills. My Merlin app can’t identify the birds by the sounds which is a shame, the App says they only have 11% of the bird noises recorded for where we are. It was a lovely evening, even though we got invaded by tiny flying ants, they seem to die as soon as they land, we have a lot of tidying up to do as a result. No point until we leave, I hope our little gecko doesn’t explode from such easy pickings! What a blissful evening after the hustle and bustle of Waisai town.