Unlike the two-day sail to Malaulalo, this time, we crawled along in barely enough wind to fill the spinnaker, particularly when it was soaking wet, which was most of the time.
Dolphins on passage are ALWAYS a delight
On my first night watch, I decided to stop worrying about tracking water into the boat and to just stay outside and be wet. The rain was heavy enough that the noise drowned out all the other sounds, but it wasn't cold, and it was kinda refreshing to get a thorough rinse.
The rain stopped about half an hour before Maryanne's watch. Since I had only been wearing a pair of quick-drying running shorts, I was completely dry by the time she emerged to a bright sunrise in a very partly cloudy sky. She had slept through the din earlier and assumed I had spent my night watch enjoying warm breezes and stargazing.
As we approached the Sealark Channel, between Guadalcanal and the Florida Islands, all the forecasts said we would lose the wind completely. That would make our last few miles to Savo take a whole night to traverse, with the current doing most of the work.
Instead, the wind actually increased a bit. Maryanne woke me for my night watch and told me that she had just gone down to bare poles for the remainder, which she estimated should get us to Savo right at sunrise.
She was right. Savo has a steep approach with no hazards, so all I had to do was turn beam to the wind to hold us off until it was light out enough to approach the beach. We dropped anchor on a steep slope of black sand and volcanic ash, just off the village of Koela.
Savo was another one of those places where we were told to be vigilant about locking the boat at night and when we are gone and not leaving anything visible that we didn't want taken. We also read that occasionally somebody might come out and demand an ‘anchoring fee' because it might work every now and then, which makes it pretty easy money.
For our part, we saw none of that. While there seemed to be a lot of boat traffic going by, mostly dugout canoes being paddled, shuttling people between coastal villages, most seemed too focused on their commute to be interested in anything other than a quick wave to us from their route. The only boat that did come over to visit, late on our first day, was an outboard motor-powered shuttle full of people going from one village to another. The captain, who was wearing some sort of official-looking shirt that said something like “council representative" or “village committee", I can't honestly remember, but it seemed legitimate, asked us a few questions about our plans. We told him we were hoping to do the hike up the volcano tomorrow. He explained that was fine, but it is customary to give something to the village in return for permission.
We said that was absolutely fair and expected, and told him we were planning on going ashore to talk to Patrick, Koela's chief, in the morning to introduce ourselves and make the arrangements. He seemed to think that was an unnecessary inconvenience for us (Koela was the opposite direction to the volcano trail from Begonia) and that we could just handle the transaction now, with him. We countered that we would prefer to deal with Patrick directly, since it is ultimately his permission we would need and we didn't want any misunderstandings that could get anyone in trouble.
He knew we had him there. He then leaned over to me and lowered his voice so far I had to ask him to repeat what he was saying three times. Eventually, I surmised he was asking if we had any alcohol or tobacco on board. I whispered back that Maryanne and I don't like fun, so we had nothing like that - terribly sorry. He looked equal parts annoyed and amused, then bid us a good evening and sped off. We never did see him again.
Early the next morning, eager to start our volcano climb before the day got too hot. We rowed ashore and joined the queue of children commuting along the beach to school in Koela from the village of Reko, just the other side of the lava flow. Once we got into the village, several of them pointed out Patrick to us and wished us a good day.
When we told him we wanted to hike up the volcano, he told us we would need a guide and that there was a cash fee. (As far as we can tell, from subsequent investigation, Maryanne and I were the first people to be subject to this new policy.) We apologized, and explained that we have not yet managed to obtain any Solomon Island Dollars, as we had yet to arrive in any place that had a bank or an ATM, but that we DID HAVE a whole backpack full of quality/useful items to trade for the fee.
Patrick was adamant. It was cash only – no exceptions, he didn't even want to see what we had to offer.
"So then there's nothing we can do but leave?" Maryanne asked.
"Good" he said, and then turned to walk away.
Maryanne and I decided to be charitable and assume this was some sort of language/cultural misunderstanding and that Patrick wasn't trying to be as rude as his response seemed to us. We were disappointed, but decided to console ourselves with a 5k beach walk instead. Upon crossing the mouth of the lava bed, we even managed to convince ourselves that we were glad we didn't go. It was already getting hot and the steep lava bed did not offer any shade. We decided to go home after our walk and admire it from our sun-protected cabin. Despite not being able to complete our mission, we had to admit that the anchorage at Savo is really beautiful.
The beach walk, a friendly family that did trade for some veggies, and the view from the anchorage
The lava trail we never got to ascend
Anchorage location >> On google maps
No comments:
Post a Comment