Star trails and aurora in the frozen North

CLICK HERE for Slideshow

I have always wanted to see the northern lights but living in Southern Arizona and cruising in the equatorial Pacific do not lend themselves to frequent aurora borealis sightings. And I always worried that making a special trip to the frozen North, fingers crossed to see the phenomena, could be a recipe for disappointment.

But earlier this year a post showed up in my RSS feed promoting an aurora borealis photography workshop operating under the following conditions: 2013-14 was to be the peak of an 11 year cycle of solar sunspot activity which generates solar flares which in turn generates auroral activity; the selected workshop location, on the edge of the Arctic in Churchill, Winnipeg, Canada, is one of the world’s best locales for observing the aurora – averaging approximately 300 nights per year with some degree of activity; March is the preferred month for viewing as it offers the best chance of combined clear skies and dark nights, as opposed to summer when the nights are warmer but dramatically shorter, or polar bear migration season in October/November when overcast skies are more prevalent and hungry predators are added to the mix of hazards.

The Northern Lights Photography Workshop was to be led by +David Marx, a landscape photographer and Adobe Lightroom educator (also, as it turns out, a Google+ aficionado), and +Jim Halfpenny PhD, a naturalist with decades of mileage guiding groups to extreme locales around the world including the Antarctic, Arctic, the Galapagos, and his own backyard in Yellowstone National Park. Our group was small, only five participants and two leaders. We all, organizers included, were brimming with anticipation for the adventure to come.

So I asked Mike if he was game and we both signed up for a week in the Arctic chasing the northern lights. Our first order of business was to acquire a new wardrobe suitable for subzero temps; online research soon pointed the way to Canada Goose Arctic expedition parkas and Sorel boots rated to withstand a cold factor of -40º Fahrenheit. Assorted layers of silk underwear, socks, scarves, hats, gloves, face masks and mittens completed our outfits. Fully clothed, we had to turn our bodies sideways to squeeze in and out of our tour bus doors.

So as soon as we arrived home from our Indonesia trip we stowed the swimsuits and snorkels, shorts and sandals, and proceeded to stuff our suitcases to overflowing with our new extreme-cold gear and flew north to the Arctic.

Wind chill factor minus 40º F

It was seriously chilly with night temps dropping to -25º Fahrenheit with ‘feels like’ temps of -40º F,  although sunny afternoons warmed up to a balmy -13º F!  Night photography offers its own set of challenges regardless, but to throw in extended sessions in life-threatening temperatures gives a whole new meaning to the word ‘challenge’. Among other things we learned that the tape we needed to lock down the focus barrel on the camera lens lost all stickiness at such cold temps. Also that it is not possible to operate crucial camera controls (like the shutter button) wearing bulky mittens stuffed with handwarmers. The result was several frostbitten fingers that are just now sloughing off the dead skin, and a frostbitten nose tip acquired by squashing it against the camera viewfinder in an effort to compose an attractive image while operating in almost pitch black conditions. The flexible cable on my Nikon intervalometer froze stiff and snapped in two at a crucial moment…fortunately I had a wireless backup in my bag of accessories. Of course the nights were moonless, a deliberate scheduling choice on the part of our leaders, although starlight and red headlamps provided some degree of night vision.

Churchill is also the self-proclaimed polar bear capital of the world where the white bears congregate by the dozens during the fall months in anticipation of Hudson Bay waters freezing over, enabling the bears to strike off across the pack ice in pursuit of their preferred food, ringed seals. Theoretically this time of year the bears were all out hunting and not lurking nearby stalking tourists packaged in goosedown for their next meal. But our guides kept a close eye on us anyway. Another risk factor for a lone photographer would be injury sustained in a fall on icy footing in the dark and freezing to death before being missed.

CNSC under a starry sky

Home base was a modern (only 2 years old) facility known as the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, a base for assorted working scientists studying the aurora, tagging bears, evaluating climate change and otherwise researching the Arctic environment. But the CNSC also takes in groups for educational ecotourism and is impressively designed and operated to offer a uniquely engaging experience. Lodging is provided in dorm rooms, each containing four bunk beds, two hanging closets, a desk countertop stretching wall to wall, a couple of chairs – and nothing else. Bathrooms are communal with composting toilets and showers that dispense precious water on timers. Community lounges, classrooms, media rooms, a library and a gift shop expand the amenities. There is even decent wifi! Meals are shared in the cafeteria and everyone, from paid staff to paying guest, pitches in to help wash the dishes. The cooking is appetizing and filling, plentiful homestyle fare that includes a plethora of treats (like warm-from-the-oven cookies) available not only after meals but at all hours of the night for aurora watchers to snack on during late night vigils. It’s tempting to assume exposure to cold burned off those extra calories, but I suspect that is only wishful thinking!

Night igloo photography!

At night the facility enforces a lights-out protocol to prevent light pollution from interfering with the view of the night sky. Scientists, volunteer staff members and tourists roam the hallways at all hours, alert for the next light show, banging on dorm room doors to rouse sleepers to the call for action. Residents pass the wee hours chatting, strumming the guitar, playing board games by candlelight in the cafeteria, or watching the sky from the windows and glass dome in the cozily warm observation room. But we photographers toughed it out outdoors, negotiating slippery footing in the dark with tripods and expensive fragile cameras, frosty with ice crystals, balanced precariously on our shoulders. Batteries failed prematurely due to the extreme cold, condensation fogged up the lenses each time we returned indoors, and of course the sticky tape was non-sticky!

Tracks on the ice lead to aurora

Luckily for us, each night the auroral light show was better than the night before. Our first night – nothing except cloudy overcast skies that fostered a faint sense of panic that the weather might not cooperate with our limited time table. But on the second night around 1 a.m. a faint misty veil glowed in the distance and our camera lenses captured it as a rainbow of light. One night we concentrated on lighting up the centre’s demonstration igloos with glow sticks and ventured out onto the ice of a frozen pond in hopes of capturing reflections. Another evening, after a day trip to town and dinner at the local favorite hangout, we set up our gear on the snow-covered beach fronting the shores of frozen solid Hudson Bay for a night shot of an aboriginal stone cairn called an Inuksuk. No sooner had we completed our preparations than the aurora kicked in with an impressive storm reminiscent of the genie escaping from Aladdin’s lamp.

Aurora over Inuksuk on the shores of Hudson Bay

And on our final night we were treated to the best show of all. Curtains of color danced over our heads filling the sky with light. By this time we had suffered through the worst of our setup woes and were prepped and ready to photograph the awesome display.

Curtains of light dance in the Arctic

The Churchill River frozen over

Of course those were just the nights and, no, we didn’t get much sleep! By daylight we benefited from classroom lectures, worked on our photos, and explored the Churchill environs as a group. We went out on the pack ice of the frozen Churchill River, 8-10 feet thick with ice and contorted into a fantastical landscape of ice sculpture eruptions created by the pressure of the ice expanding and contracting.

Sled dogs waiting their turn

Polar bear prevention

We enjoyed an introduction to dog sledding with Wapusk Adventures and received our very own certificate for completing the ‘Ididamile’ only a few days after the real Iditarod race was won by its ‘most senior’ victor ever. We saw local residences barricaded with window grates and nail-studded plywood planks designed to discourage marauding polar bears, and we dropped by the polar bear jail where errant bears are locked up and treated to spartan conditions designed to discourage further forays into town.

Nike rocket

We toured the Eskimo Museum, filled with a fascinating collection of Inuit carvings collected over the years by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Churchill, and we were entertained by the reminiscences of Myrtle, the Métis village elder, and purchased her copyrighted caribou hair sculptures as souvenirs.  We missed out on a scheduled trip to visit the Churchill County Museum due to vehicle failure caused by extreme cold. The museum describes itself as ‘The Best Little Museum on Highway 50, America’s Loneliest Road’. Presumably this references the fact that Churchill has some 25 miles of paved road within the town environs, but the next closest paved road is hundreds of miles distant. Access to Churchill is by plane, train or (during the brief summer months) boat. Churchill attractions even include a now defunct rocket launch site that operated periodically in an assortment of capacities from the mid-50s until its final closure in the late 90s, and an historic stone fort (Fort Prince of Wales) that dates back to the early 1700s.

In all it was an amazing experience. Now that we possess suitably tested cold weather clothing, we’ll be looking for more winter extreme adventures in the future!

photo of Carol by Farshid Ariz

After scuba diving three times a day for five days in a row at Sorido Bay Resort, Mike and I were pretty well saturated.  We were rather relieved to learn that Saturdays are no-dive days at the resort, but as a substitute they offer a land & sea expedition to nearby Gam Island to observe the courtship display of the male red bird of paradise. In all there are 39 different species of birds of paradise throughout Papua New Guinea and nearby Indonesia, and they are wildly different from each other and outrageously decked out in fancy feathers. From an evolutionary standpoint, since they had no natural predators in this part of the world, their development skewed in the direction of elaborate courtship dress and dance.

For a real treat, round up the December 2012 issue of National Geographic Magazine.  Better yet, download it on an iPad. Over a period of eight years Cornell ornithologist Edwin Scholes and photographer/biologist Tim Laman went on 18 expeditions and shot 39,000 images to document every single one of the 39 species. Tim is some 6’7” tall and spent an uncountable number of hours during those eight years bushwhacking through wild jungle, climbing very tall trees (in excess of 150 feet), and sitting in blinds for hours on end, cameras camouflaged in leaves, to capture his wonderful photographs.  The iPad version offers sound and video to accompany the images. And the two men have published a coffee table book titled Birds of Paradise, Revealing the World’s Most Extraordinary Birds.

Video Bird-of-Paradise project introduction (2,000,000+ views on YouTube!)

Video of Tim setting up a blind to capture his dream shot.

Video Bird-of-Paradise project by the numbers

After learning a bit about these exotic creatures (which originally I thought were either mythical or extinct), I was gung ho to join the resort’s slightly more tame version of an expedition to see just one of these species in the flesh.  Unhappily we soon learned this involved setting the alarm clock for 4 a.m. for departure from the jetty by boat at 4:30 a.m. as the birds reserve their display for the crack of dawn.

On Friday night that timetable didn’t sound so appealing, but the pre dawn trip turned out to be a pleasure.  Eight of us piled into the resort’s open boat and set off on a balmy night under a moonless cloudless starlit sky.  It was about a 20-minute ride, the boat racing along at 20-30 knots powered by twin 50hp Yamaha outboards. The hull kicked up a significant bow wave and wake that sparkled with phosphorescence against the black water.

The fiberglass boat is built so that at speed its bow rises high out of the water. The helmsman in back can’t see where he’s going so a spotter perches up front and guides him with arm signals to zigzag around hazards like coral shallows and floating debris in the water.  They seem quite confident; although at that speed hitting a floating log in the water would be a disaster.

We landed on the dock at the village of Yenwaupnor on the far shore, still by dark of night.  There we were met a guide hired to lead us through the rainforest to the designated bird-watching location.  Armed with flashlights, backpacks, water bottles and bug spray in addition to our cameras, we followed him single-file in the dark along a narrow dirt path up hills and through the bush.

After a lengthy uphill trek, we finally arrived at our destination where three reclining benches constructed out of sticks sat at the base of a very tall tree, apparently the preferred stage for the red birds.  We took our places and settled in to wait, keeping quiet and only whispering amongst ourselves occasionally.  And we were all aware that recent previous bird-watching expeditions to this same spot had been a bust with the birds staging a no-show.

Our group was lucky though – as the night sky barely started to lighten, the first bird appeared high in the branches.  I had lugged a big telephoto (200-400mm) lens with me all the way from Arizona just for this purpose but even with that, looking through the viewfinder, he was just a small black spot high, 100 feet or more, in the black branches silhouetted against the sky. Soon more birds appeared – the grand total for the morning was seven according to our guide although I only counted five – but I was handicapped by the fact I was laying practically on my back with about twelve pounds of camera and lens squashed against my eyeball for the next forty-five minutes.

As the sun rose, the male birds put on quite the show to impress the girls – wings spread, feathers fluffed, head bobbing, singing and flitting from branch to branch. It turns out that the females nest in December/January during which timeframe they don’t show up to join the party. With no audience, the males give up in discouragement.  That’s why the bird-watching outings earlier in the month failed.  But nesting season had ended and the males were courting with renewed enthusiasm.

As soon as the sun rose in the sky, the show was over and we all hiked back to the village single file again. It seemed much shorter by daylight! We were back at the resort in time for breakfast and a day of leisure except for the packing required to prepare for our departure back to the US via Singapore on Sunday.

It took a lot of work on my computer to coax these photos out of the tiny black shadows captured by the camera so that you can have an idea of how glamorous these exotic creatures are. Do at least check out the links just to get an idea of how special these extraordinary birds are.

When we first arrived a few days ago we came upon a helicopter circling overhead, its crew frantically waving us off. They were shooting film for an upcoming IMAX movie and didn’t want AVATAR sailing into the scene! Their subject was the MV Kalabia, a wonderful Indonesian boat that serves as a floating classroom, visiting all the 97 villages in RA by turn to educate the children about the ocean environment and conservancy. The boat’s colorful exterior is charmingly painted with Papuan sea motifs. I had seen the boat’s photograph in our guidebook and fell in love with it – it was a treat to see it for real.

To get our own aerial view we took an adventurous hike up Mount Pindito following a steep, in some places nearly vertical, path that ascends one of the jagged limestone domes. We followed Rod’s rock climbing instructions, maintaining three points of contact at all times and making sure that our hand and footholds, whether rock outcropping or tree root, were sturdy before trusting our weight to them. We were rewarded with a 360-degree view of the entire island group, on a sunny day no less!

By the time we made our descent back to the beach Mike and I were hot and sweaty enough to wade into the lagoon fully clothed and swim back to AVATAR.

Every couple of nights we change anchorages to better enjoy Wayag’s varied scenery. We’ve had a lot of hazy gray overcast this trip, it being the rainy season here, but the other evening before moonrise we were treated to a brightly starlit night sky silhouetting the dramatic limestone formations that loomed black and forbidding – except where clusters of fireflies sparkled in the forest.

And the following evening a light mist at sunset produced a horizon-filling rainbow that arced across the lagoon for our viewing pleasure.

Per usual the diving has been routinely awesome, as we dinghy out of the lagoon to the pinnacles dotting the entrance. Out in the strong currents, these islets teem with life – both fish and coral. Of course we are careful to time our dives around slack tide to avoid the freight train effect of speeding currents. Unhappily my dive computer failed yesterday. A dive computer is an essential bit of equipment that tracks depth, air in the tank, and time remaining before requiring decompression. Luckily I had bought a spare dive computer in Tucson before this trip. It is a quickly learned lesson to always have a spare of any crucial item of equipment this far from civilization.

We had visitors today from one of the liveaboard ships, the Matahari Ku, that arrived in the lagoons this morning. A group of military veterans from the Netherlands are on a 45 day tour of Indonesia, and were curious to see our boat. Their captain,  Eric,  brought them over by dinghy and we had a pleasant visit. Eric tells us he will see us again in the Komodos next June/July when we return for our next Indonesian visit.

Today is our last day in the Wayag. Tomorrow we set sail for Cape Kri where we are booked into the Sorido Bay dive resort. Indonesian visitor permits are expiring for AVATAR, Rod and May combined and it is time for them to depart. As soon as they drop us off at the resort they will head back to Sorong to fill out the paperwork required to clear out of the country. Then they will embark on a 400-mile passage to Mindanao in the southern Philippines where AVATAR will layover for a few months while Rod and May head home for a well-deserved vacation. They have been aboard for nine months straight now in relatively remote environs – Vanuatu, the Solomons, and Indonesia. Rod is definitely displaying some nostalgia for city lights and modern conveniences!

Mike and I still have a week to go on our 30-day visitor’s visa, so we plan to enjoy even more diving based at the resort. Sorido Bay’s literature says they offer Internet (which has been sadly lacking for the duration of this trip) so I expect I may actually be able to post these blogs, which have been accumulating, along with a portfolio of photographs, on my computer.

We have been plying the waters of Raja Ampat with little interaction amongst the locals but the few encounters we have had have been memorable.

First off, Indonesians seem quite fond of paperwork. When AVATAR first cleared into the country last November we used the services of a yacht agency to smooth the way. This, we have learned over the years, offers a multitude of benefits in navigating the intricacies of bureaucracy in foreign countries where we have little knowledge of the customs, culture and language. Generally yacht agents cater to the super yachts and we are small fry to their real business model, but so far all have been willing to take us on for which we are continually grateful.

Rod tells us the paperwork he filled out on entry easily made up a file a few inches thick. Each document had to be signed in multiples of eight or ten copies. I believe it took him some three days to wade through all the formalities, signing and stamping as directed by the agent. The customs officers even went through the contents of our emergency medical kit item by item, pointing out everything with an expired date – but putting all back in place at the end. The majority of the documentation went ashore with the customs officials, but we still have a thick file of paperwork aboard AVATAR to prove our legitimacy.

Even the Indonesian entry stamps in our passports are elaborate full-page stickers adorned with glitz and emblems, unlike the simple ink stamps most countries slap onto the pages.

We have a cruising permit specific to Raja Ampat as well as individual diving permit tags for each of the four of us (the fees collected for these tags support conservation efforts for Raja Ampat).  Even so, when we entered a dive site named Melissa’s Garden, our planned destination for an afternoon’s entertainment, an open boat approached us with three representatives from a nearby village. One man, in full uniform, introduced himself as the harbormaster and wanted us to come ashore to clear in to his village port. Knowing this would involve multiple hours of paperwork, additional fees (on top of the fees we had already paid in Sorong), and more of the same the next day to clear out again, we declined and moved on. However it was noteworthy that his main interest seemed to be in posing for photos that he and his crew took (with his point-and-shoot camera) of the three of them sitting next to us on the bridge. The youngest (and cutest) of the trio wanted to know if Mayflor was a ‘Miss’ or a ‘Mrs.’.  Before departing they requested liquid refreshments, preferably beer. We compromised by sending them on their way with cokes and cans of Fijian peanuts.

Locals in their canoes have approached us only a couple of times, both times offering fresh fish for sale. In this way we acquired a big Spanish mackerel good for several meals, and a couple of fresh (still flopping) trevally. One of my more unpleasant encounters happened early one morning as I was kayaking The Passage, a mile long narrow waterway winding between the islands of Gam and Waigeo. Several local boats passed by without incident, but two men in one of the boats shouted at me to get my attention, and when I looked their way and gave out a friendly wave one of them deliberately urinated in my general direction. They then revved off down the river like teenagers in a hot rod instead of a jury-rigged houseboat and I picked up my pace paddling back to AVATAR. They returned shortly thereafter, shouting again, but this time I ignored them and kept paddling determinedly towards the safety of home.

Just a couple of nights ago we had another adrenalin-inducing encounter. We had anchored in a secluded bay not far from the Cendana Indo Pearls farm, a huge enterprise with nearly a million giant pearl oysters under cultivation and some 200 employees. We anchored in peace and quiet most of the day; a few curious local boats circled us and took a look but went on their way. At night we enjoyed dinner and a photo slideshow for our evening entertainment. Then, in the dark of night, a boat approached shining a spotlight in our direction. A gunshot was fired to get our attention (it worked) and then the open boat filled with military types flourishing guns pulled alongside to board AVATAR. They made us leave our anchorage and follow them into the pearl farm waters where we hooked to a mooring, and then they took Rod ashore to the office to sort things out. Turns out AVATAR’s militaristic appearance had set off alarm bells in their heads and they were afraid we were pirates lurking around the corner to rip off a load of pearls by cover of nightfall. Once they determined we were innocent American dive tourists (with a big American flag hanging off our stern in plain sight) they were all smiles and slaps on the back as they returned Rod back to the yacht, guns now nicely stowed out of sight.

Of course the majority of people we have met here have been friendly and courteous. This is the fourth most populous country in the world with some 240 million inhabitants and climbing.

Mike and I went diving later in the day in the same general location, unsurprisingly known as The Equator Islands, and with any luck we swam over the equator a second time. Without GPS underwater it’s much harder to verify our exact position, but in the interest of a good story we’ll say we pulled it off. The dive site was well worth it regardless, hard corals flourishing and teeming with fish.

Diving Raja Ampat is more challenging than what we are used to. The same strong currents that bring so much life to these seas need to be taken into consideration when diving. As a result we have added a new piece of gear to our dive kit called a reef hook. It consists of a length of cord line with a snap hook on one end for attaching to the diver’s BCD vest, and tied on the other end is a large fishhook, the pointy end blunted to avoid inadvertent mishaps involving sharp objects in close proximity to inflatable BCDs, inflatable dinghies, and of course fingers and other body parts.

The idea being, as the current sweeps one along, to snag the hook into the reef, thus snagging the diver as well, putting on the brakes and offering a respite to catch a breath and view the scenery and the fish schooling where (naturally) the current is strongest. Of course everyone in the dive party needs to be on the same page strategy wise or some will be hooked in place while the rest sweep past on a drift dive.

My BCD, the only one on AVATAR without pockets, handicaps me. Two hands are required to manage the camera in its bulky underwater housing, leaving zero hands free for managing extras like reef hooks and dive lights. Trying to take a photograph is also a challenge as I am swept past my subject while trying to hold focus and composition in the viewfinder.

I have worn out two of my oldest bathing suits, and usually three or four more are drying at one time, as we are in and out of the water so frequently between diving, snorkeling and kayaking. I’ve dropped a couple of extra pounds as well. Somewhere I read that scuba diving burns about 400 calories per hour, a good weight-loss technique!

After nine years (!) of cruising the South Pacific, we have moved into new territory. The Solomon Islands marked our entry into the Coral Triangle of the equatorial Pacific, which includes the Philippines, Borneo, eastern Indonesia, and all territory eastward to the Solomon Islands. AVATAR has traveled through the Coral Sea, the Solomon Sea, the Bismarck Sea, and is now aimed towards the Indian Ocean or possibly the South China Sea depending on what we decide on for future cruising destinations. Currently, and for the duration of 2013, we are in Indonesia.

This is a dive-oriented trip and I am downright waterlogged from the many hours we have been spending in the water. A typical day might start with me rising earlier than everyone else at 6 a.m. just before dawn, and quietly slipping off in my kayak for a couple hours of peaceful paddling through limestone island studded lagoons, placidly calm, reflecting the sunrise.

Bird song is rampant but mostly its makers fly high above me from treetop to treetop, distant black silhouettes. All are foreign species to me, except for the pet store varieties. I have seen flocks of noisy cockatoos squawking in ragged flight, big green parrots, small red lorikeets, hornbills flapping noisily with a sound like sawing wood, small grey reef herons, giant white bellied sea eagles, flocks of 100 or more frigates wheeling high in the sky or descending upon the ocean’s surface in a feeding frenzy, imposing grey Imperial pigeons. One particular unknown (to us) bird here makes a squealing whistle just like the whine of radio feedback when the microphone is too close to the source. The 39 species of Bird of Paradise are a whole other topic until itself – and as yet I have not seen one.

Once the rest of the crew is up and about, the generator fires up and Rod starts topping off our dive tanks with the dive compressor. Then we are off to explore a new dive site, followed by lunch and a short break, then on to another dive site. In a few spots the snorkeling opportunities beckon as well and I am tempted into another couple of hours enchanted by the mysterious microcosm of sea life in the roots of the mangroves near our anchorage. A dugong cruised nearby a couple of mornings ago. I slipped into the water, camera in hand, in hopes he would approach within range of my lens, but no luck.

We are in an area named Raja Ampat (“The Four Kings”, a name that comes from legend surrounding the four large islands of the area), a 4.5 million hectare (50,000 square kilometer) marine wilderness and paradise for divers. RA is the sweet spot of the Coral Triangle. The currents of three oceans meet here swirling with nutrients, and the biodiversity of marine life is unequaled anywhere else on earth. More than 1,320 species of reef fish have been identified here and still counting. More than half of the world’s soft corals and seventy percent of the world’s hard corals thrive here. The entire area functions as an incubator for marine life, seeding the entire Coral Triangle. The reefs are carpeted with colorful soft corals and huge schools of fish swarm around them. Strange exotic forms of sea life thrive here as well; mollusks, sponges, shrimp and crabs in all kinds of bizarre and wonderful shapes and colors.

A large part of the area has been protected as a marine conservancy. Liveaboard dive boats, beautiful charismatic wooden ships of Indonesian design and character, ply the waters from dive site to dive site, ferrying their passengers to reef after reef of diving heaven. There are a handful of resorts scattered through the area. We anchored off Raja 4 Divers Resort last night and enjoyed the facilities, a spot of Internet, and dinner at the restaurant sharing a table with the resort guests – 2 from London, 3 from Germany, and 1 from Idaho. Adding our New Zealand, Philippine and Arizona credentials to the mix created quite an international group.

Getting here was the least of our fun however. The nonstop flight from Los Angeles to Singapore was 18 hours. Mike didn’t even know they made jetliners that could fly 18 hours without refueling! Then a 4 hour layover in Singapore’s awesome Changi Airport before continuing on a regional flight for several more hours to Manado where we had to overnight two nights because the flight into our destination airport, Sorong, flies only a few days a week. We chose a modest dive resort in Manado for our layover, charmingly shabby but friendly, and used the time to try to reregulate our internal clocks after a net 36 hours in transit and a nine-hour difference in time zones. This is probably close to as far away from home as it is possible to get.

Photos this trip will be predominately underwater scenes. A coral reef is a bit like a florist shop gone crazy – a riot of color, shapes and movement.

We are aboard a Boeing 737 en route from Guadalcanal to Nadi, Fiji – a day late because yesterday’s flight turned back due to bad weather at its scheduled stop in Port Vila. Fortunately Air Pacific (soon to be rebranded Fiji Airways in 2013) sent the plane to fetch us the next day; otherwise due to non-daily flights in sold out status it might have taken us a week or more to struggle home.

This blog is a catch-up and hodge podge of memories and overall impressions of our Solomon Islands adventure, with a play on the word reflections. First off, the literal interpretation. The waters were placid and calm the entire trip, sometimes so tranquil that they transformed into a giant mirror. Sky, clouds, rainbows, islands, boats, even flying fish were reflected upside down in the sea, creating some rare photo ops. The morning we sailed away from Mbaeroko Harbor was the most memorable, even to the point of being able to photograph flying fish in flight.

Everywhere we anchored we were approached by canoes looking for a sale, up to six at a time. Sometimes we were offered fruit and vegetables from the gardens, or a bag of cowrie shells (complete with unwanted cockroaches), or WWII relics including Coca Cola bottles. We learned yesterday from a WWII collector in Honiara that these bottles could be worth as much as $30, even though they look almost exactly the same as the classic green bottles still available today. But mainly we were offered carvings.

Solomon Islanders are accomplished carvers. Working primarily in kerosene wood, rosewood and rare ebony, embedded with pearly nautilus shell in intricate designs, the carvers skillfully create a variety of sophisticated works. Subjects range from towers of intertwining sea creatures called Spirit of the Solomons, stylized god heads called nguzu nguzus that originally adorned the war canoes of yesteryear (if the nguzu nguzu held a bird, the canoe was on a mission of peace; if it held a head, the war party was on a head hunting expedition), and utilitarian objects such as bowls, serving spoons, and so forth.

We accumulated several of these carvings over the weeks, more precious because we met and interacted with the artists. In Roviana we bought an impressive rosewood bowl with lid from Gordon, who spent four months carving it. In Uepi I bought a Spirit of the Solomons from Lamae, one of the PADI divemasters. From Rocky in Telina Village I acquired an ebony carving of a pod of dolphins. Rocky especially loves dolphins and was interested in DVDs of natural history. We were out of cash due to a multitude of prior purchases so I traded him a DVD set of Blue Planet as well as some of my used clothing for his wife (dresses, t-shirts, etc.) the only time a woman was present in a trading canoe. She was reticent and glum until Rocky ok’d the trade (my last chance, he informed me) at which point she blossomed into smiles as she tried on my cast-offs for size. John Trevor in Nono Lagoon came early one morning to fetch me when I paddled my kayak inadvertently into crocodile land. He carves small sharks and dolphins from sago palm nuts, successfully circumventing my protests regarding limited space and weight in my luggage for the trip home.

Solomon Islanders in the outskirts have minimal opportunites for income. Often they charge a fee to anchor overnight, or to dive, snorkel, or visit something of interest. Generally a couple of AVATAR t-shirts or S$20 will cover it. Sometimes there is no fee at all. But in one locale in the Marovo Lagoon we had a disagreement over the proposed charge…a host of canoes and carvers had spread their creations across our deck but then told us their village chief had set a price of S$1,000 (equivalent to US$143) to anchor overnight and dive on the reef. We told the multiple carvers in their canoes to remove their wares and we would move on to a less extortionate anchorage, at which point they whipped out their cellphones to call the village chief and negotiate a more reasonable price.

We learned the origin of the name Solomon Islands. The first European to arrive here was a Spaniard sailing from Peru in the late 1500s. He found gold and thought he had discovered the lost mines of King Solomon. The islands soon were named Islas de Solomon.

We had an insight into global warming. Today the Solomons consist of nearly 1,000 islands of which some 350 are inhabited and six are considered to be major islands. 10,000 years ago, during the last ice age, the sea level was 100 meters (328 feet) lower than it is today. The now multiple major Solomon Islands were then one solid land mass, allowing cultures to easily migrate and populate new areas.

We gained a new appreciation of the importance of the Solomon Islands during WWII where the tide of the war in the Pacific finally turned in favor of the Allied Forces after months of deadly fighting. We traipsed through slimy mangrove swamps, crocodiles in the back of our minds, to see the crash site of an Allied plane near the Diamond Narrows. We scuba dived on several sunken ships including a Japanese freighter in Mbaeroko Harbor, bombed by the Allied forces as it was in the process of loading a jeep onboard by crane. The island is still pitted with massive bomb craters some 20-30 feet in diameter. We dived on the Toa Maru near Gizo, a Japanese transport ship that was reported to the Allies by coastwatchers and sunk in shallow water as it attempted a run down the Tokyo Express supply line. The massive sunken ship is 440′ in length and still contains a multitude of items including unbroken sake bottles. We snorkeled on a crashed Japanese Zero in Gizo’s town harbor right next to the market, and scuba dived on a more remote US Hellcat navy fighter plane. We sailed past Kennedy Island where the surviving crew of PT-109, including future president John F. Kennedy, swam to shore after their PT boat was cut in half by a Japanese destroyer. They were rescued through the efforts of Solomon Islander coastwatchers. In Honiara a WWII collector told us he still finds human remains on a regular basis as he digs up relics in the swamps and creeks; the Japanese government collects the bones from him and sends them back home to Japan.

The remainder of our diving and snorkeling took place on beautiful healthy diverse reefs, some of the best we have ever seen. As we move closer to the equator we are seeing new species of fish, in addition to sharks, rays, turtles, cuttlefish, nudibranches (sea slugs), lion fish, sea fans and wildly varied coral.

That’s it for now; I’ll be posting photo slideshows when I get home and sort through the best. The slideshow below contains additional images.

We have been exploring Nono Lagoon for a few days. The official significance of its name is unknown to us but for AVATAR it stood for no rain and no wind! The high pressure pump on our watermaker has failed and we have been reduced to collecting rainwater to refill the fresh water tanks. This is not really a dire situation; AVATAR holds some 1,800 gallons of fresh water (the average cruising sailboat carries only a few hundred gallons). The net effect is that we have cut back on laundry and shortened our showers. However a good rain squall can add hundreds of liters to the tanks in a relatively short time. Rod waits until the rain has rinsed the deck of salt and dirt, then opens the port and starboard intakes and lets the rivulets of water running along the gunnels top off the tanks. We’ve seen our fair share of rain this trip but of course as soon as we actually want it to rain, all the visible squalls seem to pass us by on either side, or fizzle out just before a direct hit.

And today, as we aspire to depart Nono and head back to Marovo Lagoon, the wind is non existent as well. The sea surface is glassy, reflective as a mirror, displaying sky and clouds to perfection but completely wiping out our coral spotting capabilities. A local freighter was cruising through the lagoon in our general direction so we waited until it passed us by, then fell in behind to follow his track. Unfortunately this didn’t last long as it stopped at a small island to load lumber. We coasted on a bit further, following the arm gestures of crew members on the ship, and finally gave up and anchored for a snack break (pineapple and papaya) while we waited for a ruffle of breeze to fill in.

However Nono did offer us one of our finest dive/snorkel adventures ever. There is a shortcut from the lagoon to the nearby open sea that we read about in a book but without specifics. On our first day of exploration we took the dinghy and went on a wide-ranging search through the maze of islets asking directions from passing canoeists, and finally found as torturous meandering shallow channel that wound through the mangroves, passed by a homestead whose waterway was signposted ‘Slow Down’, flowed under a bridge of indeterminate age buttressed withy massive felled rainforest logs, and eventuallyl opened up to an awesome blue water chasm paved withy colorful corals under the overhang of a 50 foot limestone cliff draped with heavy stalactites.

We worked our way back to AVATAR along the same shallow waterway at dead low tide, barely scraping clear of the sandy bottom and watching for sunken logs lying in wait to snag the outboard motor. Next day we returned, this time on a rising tide and with foreknowledge of all the ‘gotchas’ along the route. We made much better time and beelined to our dive destination.

From the dinghy Rod dropped Mike and me into the water outside the reef alongside a mind-boggling sheer wall that dropped straight down into the deep blue with no hint of a bottom. We had to keep a close eye on the depth reading on our dive computers because we had no meaningful visual reference. We followed the reef wall until it turned the corner into the channel, an awesome locale in its own right, and floated back to the waiting dinghy on the incoming current. Then, not having had enough of a glorious time, we shed our scuba gear and snorkeled the channel a second time! Without a local guide, it turns out we missed ‘the tunnel’ and the sunken Japanese ship, but even without those extras we still enjoyed one of our dives of a lifetime. After the fact, for any of you planning to follow in our wake, we learned the name of our underwater paradise was Rapichana Reef.

PS                                                                                                                                        The breeze finally filled in and we made our way confidently out of Nono Lagoon and into Marovo Lagoon. At dinner time multiple rain showers were visible on the horizon. They converged over the top of us and poured down buckets of rain. In four hours Rod collected three tons of rain water and our holding tanks were full to overflowing. It rained steadily all night and in the morning from scientific observation of our half full dinghy and formerly empty buckets on deck, we surmised that it rained some four inches overall. Today’s activity – laundry!

On the subject of skulls (last blog – crocodiles), from Lola Island we were given a tour of nearby tiny Skull Island. Solomon Islanders have a history of headhunting and cannibalism that dates back hundreds of years, continuing into the 1920s. War parties went raiding in highly decorated and carved war canoes each capable of carrying 30-40 fully armed men, bringing home the skulls (which they believed contained a person’s life force) with the belief that they would thus be enhanced by absorbing their victim’s personal power. Skull Island was a repository for these heads. The lesser warriors are tucked into rocky crevices, but the more powerful deceased chiefs are housed in the protection of a kind of triangular box, complete with door. Also on the tiny islet is a row of standing stones, good luck talismans for forays out to sea fishing or raiding. And lastly there are two stone crosses, the resting place of 20th century Christian converts, the prior owners of Skull Island.

Interestingly, in one province here the tradition of headhunting has created a matrilineal system of inheritance with land ownership passed down through the mother. Men victims of head hunters were generally killed but women, although captured and enslaved, generally were spared thus ensuring the survival of kastom ownership in the community.

The Solomons were a pretty hairy place until not very long ago, and as a result they were practically the last island group colonized in the world. A fair number of missionaries were cooked before making inroads with Christianity. I have been reading assorted books, including Jack London’s autobiographical The Cruise of the Snark which relates his meanders through the South Pacific on a 43′ sailboat, departing San Francisco in 1907 and voyaging to Hawaii, the Marquesas, Tahiti and Bora Bora, Samoa, Fiji, Vanuatu (then the New Hebrides) before finally abandoning the trip – done in by the Solomons. It was not the still murderous natives that discouraged him, but rather fever (malaria) and infection from the “poisonous airs” that finally forced him to head to Australia for six months of recuperation. And it is still certainly true that infection is easy to come by in the South Pacific where a small coral cut or a too vigorously scratched mosquito bite can turn into a raging staph infection (and I speak from personal prior experience).

I also read London’s South Sea Tales, a collection of fictional short stories. His chapter on our current location was titled The Terrible Solomons and written with tongue in cheek humor.

Written half a century later, Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific brings the World War II Pacific Theatre to life – that much more so as we travel to the locations mentioned in his short stores – Efate, Santo, Luganville, Munda, the Russells and more.

The most current read is The Last Wild Island by John Read, published in 2011, that chronicles a ten year struggle by Australian ecologists to enlist the local population to save the last uninhabited unspoiled island in the Solomons, Tetepare, from indiscriminate logging. We sailed AVATAR to take a look at this lush rain forest island but didn’t stop to visit as there was no suitable anchorage. The book is an entertaining read and gives great insight into current Solomon culture and ways.

The one big dampening factor for cruising in the Solomons is the man-eating salt water crocodiles (not kidding!) that live in the mangrove swamps, especially at the estuaries where the big rivers empty into the lagoons. Needless to say, I have given up mangrove-kayaking for the duration. Rod had been pooh-poohing their existence in any great numbers here in the belief they had been hunted to near extinction, but the traders who showed up by canoe with four skulls for sale (killed by spear last month on a croc hunting expedition) changed his mind. The government in power after the 2000 coup banned gun ownership for the general population so, except for the spear technique, the only way to get rid of the predators is to report them to the local police who contact the government who sends in a professional crocodile hunter with gun. The locals get to keep the meet, the croc hunter gets to keep the skin, and the villagers get to keep their children!

From Munda we moved to a protected little bay on the far side of Rendova Island. AVATAR was anchored uncomfortably close to a small river mouth but, with houses on either side within a hundred yards, I guessed the area might be crocodile-free. The usual welcoming committee of several local men in a small boat showed up astern shortly after our arrival so we asked them about any resident crocs. Oh, yes, there were several both small and big. At night they swim in the bay hunting but we were not to be concerned. They were good crocodiles, kastom crocodiles, and the villagers here are able to speak with them and ensure our safety.

A more practical approach by western standards was related to me by Trevor John in Nono Lagoon whom I met kayaking early one morning. He explained the logistics of surviving a crocodile attack such as the one that occurred a month or so ago at Seghe Point. A local man there was night diving for mollusks (night diving has definitely been scratched from our to-do list of activities here!) when a croc grabbed him by the head. This man was big and strong and possessed of a large head; he managed to pry open the jaws and escape. Fortunately he was swimming right offshore of the local clinic where he was temporarily patched up and then airlifted to Honiara. He nearly died of his wounds and blood loss but did survive. Trevor John explained for my edification that when a croc attacks in salt water it only intends to capture its prey, get a good grip and then drag the victim to shore where it will then finish the job. The proper frame of mind if grabbed is to keep this fact in mind and, rather than giving up under the assumption you are already dead, put up a good fight.

Speaking of Seghe, Mike and I were snorkeling there just a few days ago, happily unaware of the above crocodile that escaped and was not hunted down after the attack! There is a windsock marking a grass runway built by Seabees in only ten days during the war. A sunken crashed P38 Lightning, a twin engine twin tailed WWII fighter plane, is pancaked on the bottom in relatively shallow water, still intact 70 years later with a bent prop tip the most visible damage.