The drama continued with Rowan getting the money back from the people who had been paid to pick Clint up, but never turned up. It was most probably subcontracted and not entirely their fault, but not letting us know the boat was cancelled and then blocking Clint and Rowan on their phones was outrageous. Rowan was determined to get the $300 back, he left them a scathing review on Google calling them scammers. This provoked a huge reaction, that they were going to the police to sue us. Luckily Rowan had contacted the Raja Ampat Tourism guy a while ago, so called him to ask how to get our money back. He negotiated with the Homestay and called everyone to the Ferry building near us in Waisai at 9am. That was chaos as the Tourism guy did not turn up. Finally he arrived and they all went to the Police station, she finally handed the money over after a lot of prevarication, and Rowan said he would take the review down. The woman had her husband and son with her, so as a measure of good will and so that there were no recriminations, Rowan handed over a chunk of money and said it was for her son’s education, at which she burst into tears. It all ended well but took a lot of steamy effort on Rowan’s part. Meanwhile Gary, Kim and I went into town to do a bit of provision shopping, they hadn’t found the new fresh produce market out of town. Great to stock up on lots of fresh stuff, always looking for a few new things to try. We bought local nuts which I am hoping will replace our lack of pumpkin and sunflower seeds. The poor kids are being loaded with things to bring out, crossing fingers there is not a mutiny! We met Rowan back in town for a local Padang lunch at a little roadside place Gary and Kim had found. Very tasty, but way too much food so soon after our big breakfast.
We took our purchases back to the boat and returned to the resort hotel to meet our bird guide who had taken us to the Red Bird of Paradise nearly a month ago. The Wilson’s Bird of Paradise does his courtship dance in the afternoon, sparing us the 4am wake up we had last time. The most amazing thing about these two birds is that they are totally endemic to this island Waigeo, Waisai being the main town of it. It is not that big, just amazing they should have two such extraordinary Birds of Paradise. Kim came with us, Gary wasn’t interested. Marlin our same guide with the same driver took us out of town in the same direction as last time. We suddenly turned down a nondescript track that got more and more rutted from the wet weather. Luckily it was a Toyota, as he managed to get it through the roughest and wettest of tracks. We came to a wooden barricade, we thought that might be the end of it, but Marlin said it was to stop illegal hunters and promptly took it all down. We went a few kms further and came to a stop, a path became visible as we walked about 100ms down a slope, there was a hide with a bench and about 6 holes for people to look through, we were the only ones there and it was not long before this iridescent jewel of a bird appeared. My iPhone kept identifying it as a bug, which I’m not too surprised by, it is such incredible colours. We had to be really quiet and still, fairly challenging in the humid heat with mozzies swirling around, but it was so worthwhile. It was like watching a David Attenborough show, and I’m sure I’ve seen him in one of his series filming this bird. The male appeared first and did lots of house keeping, he moved endless twigs and leaves out of the way, this whole courtship takes place on the ground unlike the Red Bird of Paradise which is all up in the trees. We had quite a lot of breaks of not seeing him, although we could hear him and another bird answering him. He finally after a little rain shower started doing his very energetic courtship dance, fascinating how he did something to his two curled tail feathers that turned them a blueish colour. Then his lady friend appeared and he did this clasp onto an upright branch with his chest facing us which was iridescent emerald green, his final flourish is to puff out his emerald feathers making him look like he had enormous shoulder pads. Of course she just flies off and he has to start the whole thing over again. Absolutely mind blowing, we arrived at 3pm and by 5:30 it was all wrapped up, the poor bird had had enough. Goodness how somebody found this spot in thick jungle under a whole lot of vines. Marlin resurrected the anti poaching gate when we left. He took some great footage of the bird on his iPhone using his binoculars and included us. They are a very sweet earnest young couple of men. He knows all his birds so well, we had a lovely time with a Frilled Monarch bird that did a nice display in front of us, it has lovely light blue feathers around its eye making it look twice the size. Marlin identified the beautiful kingfisher we saw on the way to the waterfall yesterday, a Collared Kingfisher, really beautiful, Merlin says it does not exist here, but ChatGPT says it is found in the Mangroves here, which is where we saw it!! It does say there are lots of subspecies of Collared Kingfishers.
After refreshing back at PolePole we went to Gary and Kim’s yacht for a drink before heading back to the restaurant for supper. It feels such a luxury and is so incredibly cheap it is crazy not to take advantage of the restaurant, especially as the food is pretty good.
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