Monday 15 September – exploring the waterways

There were a couple of canoes visiting very early, that Rowan persuaded to leave us until later. While Judith and I got sorted Rowan and Grant went to see the chief to pay our fees he had talked about. He had a handwritten invoice all ready, and charged us K50 each. We were happy to pay, but it was most probably a good wheeze for him. We set off and had a snorkel which was pretty depressing, in this pristine colour water the coral was in a really bad way, the water was also incredibly hot, really unpleasant as I’ve mentioned before. There were a few fish, I saw one little clam and a few pieces of soft coral being guarded by clown fish. We drifted down a large area, surprisingly there is a lot of current.

We dinghied over to an idyllic island surrounded by white beaches. It was good to get out and have a good walk all the way around the island. The shells on the beach were amazing. I couldn’t resist picking up a few pieces for my jewellery collection. We then went into the island lagoon and made our way slowly through it, we didn’t know if we could come out the other end. After a bit of rowing through the weeds we came to the exit over a sandy spit, the water got very shallow we all hopped out to pull it over the shallow waters over about 5ms. A local guy came and helped us, he had spotted PolePole, and obviously knew all about us. The water had been horribly stagnant and full of weeds, we kept having to clear the propeller, and as we were heading out the other side, we got a huge bit of fabric tightly wound around the propeller, the old guy waded out to help us, which wasn’t necessary but very sweet of him. He was very tickled we had come all the way through the lagoon. It was lovely and wild in parts of the lagoon with lots of birdlife, quite a few homesteads too.

On our way back we popped into the Guesthouse owned by Abraham that the Nusa Resort people had recommended to us. Rowan had tried to contact Abraham via WhatsApp and email, but had no joy. We found his wife, and their kids, she said Abraham was in Kavieng and would be sad to miss us, but as they have no cell phone reception unless they go to Kavieng, 2 hour boat trip away, its impossible to reach him. She said we should have anchored near them as they don’t charge anything and obviously have had a bit of a run in with the Chief’s clan. We enquired about the 50th anniversary independence celebrations that start tomorrow, she said there is a day of activities at the school. We asked if we could go with her, she was very happy to take us. She said she would find out timings and then paddle out to PolePole to make arrangements.

We got back to PolePole just as the heavens opened again with another huge squall, luckily it mainly skirted us. Mulling over a cup of tea we came to the decision to skip the celebrations tomorrow as it could be a lot of speeches, like we had at Nissan Island when the political candidate visited. Rowan packed a bag of goodies to take to Abraham’s wife to tell her our latest plan. Of course she wasn’t there and he left the goody bag with her sister in law. Around 4pm Abraham’s wife and two young nephews arrived in a tiny canoe. She had got most of the goods from her sister in law, minus the dress we had put in for her! She was obviously very curious to see the boat and thrilled to get onto wifi. Very cute kids, who had collected us an enormous amount of coconuts. Bizarrely by total coincidence Abraham had finally got signal in Kavieng and called Rowan. He suddenly changed his plans and said he wanted to meet us, and would return from Kavieng to come and meet us tonight. We did warn his wife we go to bed by 9pm.

We were just finishing our last mouthful of supper when we heard a canoe arrive. It was Abraham and his wife and their two tiny kids and a friend. Abraham was very engaging, he looked like he might be a bit of a rogue, long manicured nails always makes me feel a little uneasy. He was very chatty, he lost both parents as a child and was brought up by random members of his family, he has obviously learnt to strive for the things he wants. He is desperately trying to set up some tourism on the island, but is being hamstrung by the Chief’s clan. It was quite difficult to follow the ins and outs of it all. He was also thrilled to be on wifi and was delighted to call his surrogate mama in Cairns, who was very intrigued about our boat and travels. We finally had to give the hint as 9pm approached that we needed to go to bed. They all departed in this tiny thin little outrigger, with the little baby asleep in her arms, heading back in the dark. They did not seem at all phased by paddling out into the dark with such tiny kids! I admired the friend’s homemade straw hat which they kindly gave to me, which I really did not want to take as it appears that the locals have a lot of nits in their hair. They seem to de-nit each other like the baboons de-fleaing each other! They insisted and I’m now the proud owner of a locally made hat.