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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