The only real complication was the charts. All nautical charts of the area we were passing through are covered with crosshatching and magenta boxes warning of unsurveyed areas and unknown depths. Then, for simplicity, I guess, they mark the entire area as being in the depth range of 0-0.5 meters. Looking at good satellite imagery of the area shows that this is clearly not true. The deep water here is really, really deep, so navigating through, preferably in good sunlight, is easily done by positioning the boat over the darkest blue water you can see. Most of those areas have depths of twenty to fifty meters. Still, it is a little disconcerting to deliberately transit what is marked on the chart as drying mudflats or reefs; those charts were surveyed well before satellite photography.
We anchored well off a sandy beach on the eastern side of Ulukoro Island at the gap between it and smaller Koe Island. There is a family that lives on the other end of Ulukoro, which was a bit too far for us to consider it within reasonable dinghy range, so we never got to meet them.
That said, after an hour or so, an older man paddled over to us from the beach and introduced himself. Walter said he had been out fishing, but mostly just getting some exercise, and had taken a short break on the beach. When we were done talking, he bid us a good day and paddled home, towards Vangunu's enormous summit, which was definitely farther than Ulukoro is long. We've seen so many Solomon Islanders who getting in their dugouts and paddling over the horizon with them.
From Begonia's position at anchor, we couldn't help but notice that the adjacent islands were teeming with lots of different birds. I could hear at least four different parrot species alone. With an aim to getting some exercise ourselves, and also hoping to spot a few, we took the dinghy out for an extended paddle of the mangrove areas between the islands. At places where we could land the dinghy, we would tie it to a tree and spend a few minutes picking our way over the difficult, spiky coral terrain, before returning to the dinghy to repeat the process again at the next inlet and the one after that.
The birds, for the most part, were immensely skittish and would generally fly off before we could zoom in on them. The windward side of the reef was very interesting, though, with its twisting tidal channels, and views of Mount Mariu in the distance.
There was also a lot of interesting coral in the area. Crocodiles are reputed to be in the area, but after a day of watching locals stand in waist-deep water fishing for hours on end, we thought, "Crocs, schmocs!" and donned our snorkel gear.
Snorkelling on the coral reef and walls off Koe Island was great fun - we spent hours in the water
Kyle was followed by a remora (Suckerfish) for some time; the poor fish looking for a new taxi-ride/home and confused why he his sucker mechanism wasn't working on Kyle's stinger suit. At times the little fella became a little too intimate!
The areas by Begonia and the beach were a bit silted over and average-looking. The farther we got from the island, on the steep wall that drops off into deep water, the more variety we saw of all kinds of sea life.
We had another dinghy excursion just before sunset, where we once again saw a lot of birds trying as hard as they can to get away from us. It seems funny to us that they are worried about people crawling around way down on the jungle floor. On the other hand, it's also possible they encounter quite a few people who are good with a slingshot.
Ashore via a dinghy ride through the mangroves led us to a dramatic windward shore, with its spiky coral surface to hike over and explore
Maryanne is keen to snap some parrot pictures to properly ID them, but they remain evasive once the camera is around; thankfully there are plenty of other birds to photograph
Anchorage location >> On google maps
No comments:
Post a Comment