Tuesday 2 December – Clint & Xavi’s abortive departure

Everyone was up and ready for Clint & Xavi’s 6:30am pick up from PolePole. Rowan had organised a boat to take them to Sorong, with the Homestay here, but Clint was concerned about it being an uncomfortable journey so had found someone else. Yesterday they cancelled the Homestay lift as they confirmed with Clint’s boat that all was good, it gave them a couple of spare hours to get to their flight to Jakarta and then onto Rome. 6:30am came and went and we all started getting twitchy, by 7am the boat crowd had blocked Clint’s phone number. By 7:30am they realised they were not going to get to Sorong in time for their flight. The Homestay boat had left at 5am so there was no chance of getting that. It transpired the boat had a problem, the whole thing was rather dubious as Clint had already paid in full, it wasn’t obvious how they were going to get their money back. Clint started rebooking flights and found the flights from Sorong to Jakarta are all full until Thursday. They resigned themselves to staying another night, beds had to be remade and bags unpacked! Rowan found a resort further east on Batanta that can take them to Sorong tomorrow where they will stay over and make the flight to Jakarta on Thursday. Poor things it all took a lot of phone calling and flight changes, which took the whole morning.

We got the anchor up and made our way to the resort at the eastern end of Batanta, it took us a couple of hours of motoring, no wind and very hot. The anchorage was in a little bay around the corner from the resort, with 3 abandoned Homestays in it. We had the place to ourselves, surrounded by lush jungle. The colour of the water was fantastic however the water was not too inviting, plenty of rubbish and with loads of mangroves around there must be crocs! Once settled we went to the resort to confirm in person the lift tomorrow. Amazingly the resort was managed by South Africans, and they had some South African guests too! The lift was confirmed, we planned to have a snorkel but a wind had whipped up quite big waves which were drenching us in the dinghy, we retreated hastily to our bay. We decided to go to the lovely white beach in front of us to have a relax and read. Xavi and I did a lot of beach combing, the shells were incredible, we had to restrain ourselves to just a few. The tide came in and our beach disappeared so it was back to PolePole. The evening bird noises were fantastic, including a few splashing noises that had our imaginations whirring.

We had a very good last dinner with Clint & Xavi who leave at 7am tomorrow. Rowan cooked a bean and pork loin dish that was very tasty with some BBQ’s aubergines, my contribution was a salad with lots of avocado and feta, followed by a deliciously ripe pawpaw. It was early to bed for another early morning.