13th March

This 200km section of Indonesia is committing. The surf is around 1.5metres from the NE every day with not that many nooks and crannies offering a sheltered landing. We’re not always brave or stupid enough to land for lunch through the waves and we anxiously scan the horizon when arriving at a place that we’ve identified as hopefully a “dry hair” landing.

Yesterday we made great progress in light winds and reached Weios, the geography of which looked certain to offer nothing more than a splash on the deck. What the map didn’t reveal was the unbroken line of reef that guarded the entrance like a castle wall, revealing itself as an impenetrable black line every time a wave approched and sucked the water away. The waves then built up into their own white wall, rearing up and breaking down with a fierce boat-and-body busting crash.
Inside the calm bay, we could see a small house on stilts above the water and a couple of boats on the shore. The welcome oasis was so close but first we had to get past the angry guard. I approached a 1 metre wide gap in the fortifications as close as I dared as a set of big waves rolled through. Each wave swelled and puffed up is chest as it approached the shallower water but they didn’t break until they reared up on the reef with a heart stopping thump. It was intimidating to sit in this zone of flexing muscles, knowing the waves didn’t usually break here but also knowing there is always that extra big wave. I needed to be as close to the gap as possible so I could sprint through in the brief few seconds between sets. I sensed my moment and pulled hard on my paddle. I tried not to think about the confused white water surging and colliding and pushing after a wave breaks but concentrated on getting past the danger zone on a blue sea. As i powered forwards, I felt my kaya k get
pushed sideways slightly but I was through into deeper water. Just in time as another wave reared up onto the reef behind me and crashed down sending a breaking wave careering towards me. The wave didn’t die as I expected but caught me up and pushed me towards shore. A brief moment of panic but the wave petered out. I had run the gauntlet and survived.

It was Sandy’s turn. I couldn’t see her line very well as she kept disappearing behind the swell. I saw her powering towards the gap and the white foam of a wave in quick pursuit. A stern rudder set her straight, I think she made it through but then the breaking wall of water caught her up, her red kayak looking small on the face of it. A brace and a braking stroke and she handled it beautifully, skilfully surfing away from the danger. I asked if she heard me whooping. She asked if I heard her swearing!

The rain had been with us on and off all day and an hour before landing it started falling with a vengeance. This is the wet season and it rains at least every other day but usually for no more than a few hours at a time. Last night heavy drops fell incessantly and we were grateful that the two guys who lived in the bay let us organise our things under their shelter and cook on their fire. It’s great to see how self sufficient they are. They’ve dug a well for water and set up a system to filter it through gravel. Fish were being smoked above the fire while bananas lay on a bench and papayas grew on a few trees. They helped us clear an area for our tents and put mine up with me.

The rain stopped sometime in the night and today was overcast then sunny. Getting out through the reef was easier at a higher water level and we made pretty good progress towards a village where sandy identified a gap in the reef on Google earth. In the end we stopped a bit short of this as we found a really protected beach with an easy landing. As a bonus there are also rustic homemade wooden chairs and table. We’ve enjoyed a couple of hours of pottering about watching hundreds of hermit crabs of all shapes and sizes crawl over everything including each other, like a living carpet.

We’ve paddled the last 8 days, mostly getting up early in the dark so a rest day is due but we’re short on water so probably need to paddle to a village tomorrow. We’re both tired and I’m looking forward to sleeping as fireflies light up the night outside my tent.

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Our fresh water was running out so we moved from paradise Island to the village 2km away on the mainland. Before we could leave a man appeared paddling a wooden canoe. Come to my house in the village for a shower he said. We paddled back in convoy, our host impressed with the speed of our longer sleeker craft with twice the paddle blade. We were impressed with his skill in the cross wind and how he stopped every so often to bail out with his water jug. Kids ran around on the beach flying kites made of plastic bags strapped onto a bamboo frame, controlled by fishing line wrapped around a discarded water bottle. They all circled in on us as we landed through small surf. Strong hands grabbed my kayak and easily carried it to the top of the beach. Sandy's was next. Fifty people watched intently as we unpacked our valuables from the kayak and took off our spraydecks. Mostly children from age 2 to 15. Sandy gave a speech in basic Indonesian explaining her trip. They all followed us as we headed to our host's house and they snuck into the room after us. The rest of the day as we waked around the village, fetched something from the kayak, ate a coconut or drank tea, we had an entourage, a band of followers who watched our every move. I felt like the pied piper with a raggle taggle procession behind me. Sandy says this is a small crowd. She's had up to 200 people surrounding her, blocking the air flow, no escape from stares, questions, hands. I am enjoying it today and hope I'll continue to appreciate the curiosity.

I wonder how many people will watch us sleep for a few hours before we get up early to cross to mainland Papua tomorrow.

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11th March

I’m sticky in my tent. My body has become more used to the 30degree plus heat during the day but at night without a breeze or a shower, my skin is moist and sand sticks to everything. A wet wipe has helped but I long for some wind to cool my skin.

About 1 in 3 nights we tend to land in a village, partly because villages are in almost every sheltered bay along the coast, a small collection of mostly wooden houses behind a beach adorned with a row of dug out canoes with flimsy looking wooden outriggers. As we land, people appear from all directions and collect around us, watching our every move, fascinated by these white women in red kayaks. I wish I spoke more than a few words of Indonesian and could answer their questions and ask more about their lives. Grandmothers, Fathers and children all stare at us, it’s not intimidating, it’s healthy curiosity and it seems like they can all drop whatever work or play they were doing to spend an hour observing us. Only the very small babies get scared of the strange looking people. One small girl cried when her mother wanted to take a photo with us.

Usually someone offers to put us up in a house or tells us where we can camp. We always get offered a “mandi”, a shower where you pour a pot of water over yourself to wash, and we’re sometimes cooked for. Fried breadfruit, fried bananas in coconut oil or rice with fried fish. You can see the theme! Indonesian people are very kind.

This is our 2nd day camping without a mandi and I notice the difference. It’s calming to have a break from the hectic non stop people in the villages although people always find us anyway, it just takes longer sometimes!

Today we paddled alongside steep green hills covered in lush vegetation, with golden pocket beaches and rock gardens. Despite that, we landed in a logging operation. It was the most sheltered landing on a beautiful coastline battered by surf. An offshore reef protects the landing giving us an easy get out. The downside is that we are camped alongside piles of planks and logs on a flat wasteland. We moved the tents to slightly higher ground after some passing locals warned us that our chosen spot becomes a a river in heavy rain. The women were carrying bags of food on their heads and Sandy bought 5 sweet potatoes and a local fruit for about 50cents or 25pence.

We have avoided big surf every day apart from the one I wrote about. The next morning I was ready to push Sandy through the surf when 2 local fishermen turned up. They landed their canoes on the far end of the beach where the surf was much smaller, then walked the 10 minutes up the beach to help. They tried to tell us to move to their sheltered corner but we’d already checked it out and decided to try here first, put off by the immense effort to move the kayaks and kit so far. So they helped push us both out through the surf, and it was an easy launch when timed well with so much pushing power. We whooped our Thank yous from the comfort of deeper water!

The surf zone continues for another 7-10 days. We have identified possible sheltered landings and we hope to reach one every day. Tomorrow we have to paddle about 35km to a village where google earrh suggests the landing is protected by a reef. We’ll be up early as every day we have a NE headwind which when combined with the swell and sea state can slow our progress to a crawl.

A breeze had started and every breath of air is a delight. It’s time to sleep listening to the crash of waves onto the reef and the melodic chirp of crickets.

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I’m feeling humble this evening after underestimating the size of the surf that we landed through.

We had planned to avoid surf landings on this exposed North coast but our progress today was slow due to the wind and waves being against us and possibly the current ganging up against us as well. We weren’t going to make it to the village of Mega before dark despite seeing its telephone tower and the brown cut of a dirt road scaring the hill less than 10km ahead. We identified a few potential landing spots as we headed East towards Mega. Sandy beaches breaking up the steep craggy hills that rise sharply from the sea then dissappear into the mist. I liked the 2nd one, a small clearing in the thick green vegetation where we could put our tents and a man made wooden structure showing other people more familiar with this coastline had chosen it as a place to land. The surf looked gentle. There was one more possibility 3km further on, a village but with more dumping surf than our other options. Sandy wanted to go back to the earlier beaches. I thought I could handle the surf at the
village but agreed. Back at my favoured spot 80 minutes Street we’d first been there, something was different. Maybe the swell had picked up or the tide level had changed. It wasn’t gentle. Sandy went in to land but decided against it. I was filming her from a safe distance and the waves washing up the beach behind her looked a lot bigger than the 1metre forecast.

Back another km to our first option, it didn’t look any better. The campsite looked good, a rare clearing behind the beach but spray was loudly pounding down on the beach and the white wash surged up the steep sand. Sandy said if she was by herself she wouldn’t land. She’d carry on eastwards in the dark until she found somewhere without surf, paddling through the night if she had to. I didn’t much like the sound of that and said I thought I could land in between sets and pull my boat up quickly before the next wave.

I timed it quite well, paddling in on the back of a wave, not quite surfing it but reaching shore and jumping out before the next wave. As I grabbed the bow of my kayak to pull it up the beach, the receding wave sucked back powerfully and I saw rock appear below the kayak. The wave was breaking onto reef, not sand. The kayak got pulled back slightly onto the reef then the next breaking wave pushed it towards shore. I let go as it washed up the beach then grabbed on again to stop it revisiting the reef. As I looked back at the waves breaking powerfully and Sandy looking tiny behind the foaming wall, I felt guilty, arrogant and a bit foolish. Some of the breaking waves looked more like 2-3metres from this angle.

Sandy landed well a few metres down the beach where the waves were on average a bit smaller and breaking onto sand. I know she’s thinking she wishes we’d carried on.

Now we’re camped and hope we can launch safely and easily tomorrow. It’s one of those dumping breaks where we could be lucky and time it well so that it feels easy but there’s a lot of power there if we time it badly.

We’ll be up early to check out the surf at a similar state of tide to when we first saw it today.

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