January 5, 2015

American Samoa

Samoa and American Samoa are part of the same island chain, with similar language, history and cultural traditions, but one is an American Territory, and independent Samoa is more closely connected to Australia and New Zealand. This makes them worlds apart, though they’re only a short ferry ride or plane ride away, with different cars driving on different sides of the road and noticeably less tourism in American Samoa. Even the International Date Line separates the Samoas, and the 1 day and 1 hour time difference is pretty confusing (especially when you’ve only travelled for 35 mins), but works great if you want to skip a day (like a dead quiet Sunday) or have a day twice (like New Years Eve).

My new years eve party deck

I actually did both, though my new years eve in American Samoa was much quieter than the one in Auckland. There were no fireworks, no music… not even a countdown or a crowd. It was like they were purposely ignoring this perfect time to celebrate, and instead every church in American Samoa was filled with people for their night services. But, they ended before midnight and people disappeared quietly back to their homes, and it seemed as if no one cared the year was ending and a new one just beginning. I ended up sitting on the balcony of my beach bungalow drinking half a glass of red wine alone, watching the time on my phone turn to 00:00 while a cloudy moon gently reflected off the oceans’ waves to add a little sparkle to the moment.

Tisa’s bar nestled in the trees on her private beach

I stayed at Tisa’s barefoot bar, and didn’t leave much in the 4 days I had there. The first 3 days were all holidays, and then it was a Saturday, so not much was open or happening… except a lot of church services and rainfall. I spent nearly half a day at the Pago Pago airport because the flight I was on had “too many big people” on it, so the luggage was too much excessive weight and they flew my bag over 3 hours later The taxi driver who took me to Tisa’s only wanted to talk about inappropriate, promiscuous subjects (like the naked Chinese girls who like to dance on boats and the Fijian customer he had sex with at the airport), and when I was just about ready to jump out of the truck, we finally got to Tisa’s and the owner himself was at my door before I even opened it. They only drive at 10-20 miles an hour (I’ve never seen people drive slower! The roads that weren’t even that bad), so I could have just dropped and rolled out the door, but I had all my luggage with me and it was dark, and he did just flat out ask me if I wanted sex and accepted my “no” without any persistence.

rainy Pago Pago

Besides that, most of my American Samoa visit was safe and peaceful. I lived in a wooden bungalow on a private beach, had breakfast cooked every morning for my by a man called Candyman, and drank a glass of wine with Tisa or the other guest each evening. Carolina was also staying there, an American who wanted to hike the national park trails on the island, but unfortunately she wasn’t much for new years parties.

January 1, 2015

Some Kiwi stories

I wonder if I should bother to write a blog about Auckland, since I should rather write ten or none, but here goes one (very) long one. I didn’t plan on going to New Zealand, since I’d already been there back when I lived in Australia, but I realized there was no way to get from the Cook Islands to neighbouring Niue… or Samoa, or Fiji, or anywhere else except through New Zealand. In Rarotonga, the main island of the Cooks, I met 2 people who pretty much set up my whole New Zealand experience. First was Bjorn, the British-Kiwi guy who has a super Icelandic name. He’s a dancer, a very good dancer, and had a very pretty friend named Amber, who was also an amazing dancer. She met up with me in Auckland for Sunday night salsa dancing, and we salsa’d, zouked and tangoed our little butts off.

that sand is hotter than it looks

I stayed with Amber and her family for a couple of nights, went beaching to some super-hot-black-sand beaches, and attended her friend’s house warming party where the focus of the night was watching the movie “Love Actually” and getting into the holiday spirit. An ever-abundant source of chocolate-dipped strawberries, Lindt chocolates, champagne, and cider helped too. On boxing day, I went to the races with my couchsurfer and his friends, and Auckland already started to feel smaller when I ran into the house-warming host at the Ellerslie race course, where she was Ms. Ellerslie (go figure, she was blonde and beautiful).

I couchsurfed with 4 or 5 nights with Wade, possibly the nicest 30 year old guy in New Zealand, with the friendliest mouthful of braces I ever saw. His front lawn and adjoining neighbours had become the rearing ground for some baby ducks, and my room had a little balcony looking over them. Wade and his friends also took me to some boiling-hot-black-sand beaches and accompanied me to the races (where we won lots of money…. well not lots, but some, and lost some money we won when our winning ticket blew away from the 3^rd storey stands).

The second important person I meet in the Cook Islands was Gaylene, a hostel neighbor who donated all her and her friends’ food and alcohol when they left a day earlier than I. The others still at the hostel feasted on eggs and bacon breakfast and vodka raspberry cocktails with me, and I decided I had to visit her and somehow return the karma. Instead of being able to repay any of her hospitality except cooking a few meals, she showered me with more beautiful surprises and Christmas gifts and the love of her whole family.

Raewyn on her competition horse Tahi

She lives on a small farm with her mom Raewyn, a handful of sheep and cows, and 4 horses. Yes, 4 horses! And one of them was a grey, purebred Arabian – I had hit the jackpot. When he didn’t buck me off and could keep up with Raewyn’s endurance competition horse, we decided to take him to his own competition. We placed third in the 20 km race, and Raewyn won first in her 50km. We rode some more trail rides in the forest and on the coast, and my last ride with her was a 30km day in the rain on a never-ending black sand beach. I was in heaven.

Franklin street christmas lights

I met some more ponies along the way – a 1 day old Friesian foal and Wade’s best friends’ girlfriend’s eventing horses. I was happy as. My allergies were not, but at least Auckland has pharmacies. It was just beginning to be full-on summer in the city, so there was tons of pollen floating around and freshly cut grass to tear up my eyes. The weirdest part of summer here is that Christmas marks the start of it, and the last thing I think of doing in summer is decorating pine trees or drinking eggnog. People still get into the holiday spirit, and there’s one famous street where nearly every house tries to out-do the next with bigger and brighter lights, nativity scenes, Santa Clauses and reindeers, and mistletoes to kiss under (complete with a candid camera).

Christmas lunch

My Christmas was spent with Gaylene and her family on the beach in Coromandel, a beautiful peninsula a couple hours drive from Auckland. On Christmas Eve, I had baileys and coffee for breakfast and Raewyn and I went riding on the beach. Then we set up our tents at the beach house where 12 others joined us, barbequed a feast fit for kings, and drank baileys for desert while playing card games. Christmas day was much the same, and we barbequed breakfast too. We opened our gifts in the morning, and I couldn’t believe the stack of presents with my name on it, in this family where I had just days before been a complete stranger. After a short break came champagne and chocolates and Christmas poppers for lunch, but then we ran out of room for dinner.

I had lots of good food while in New Zealand, and the lamb was nearly as good as Icelandic lamb, but the fish and chips were better. Apparently they say “fush’n’chups” but I finally started to pick out the difference between Aussie and Kiwi accents but I cant quite hear the “u” in fish or chips. Whittaker’s chocolate bars, in all their glorious flavours, were definitely a favourite, and I’ve never eaten more chocoloate in 3 weeks than I did in New Zealand over the holidays.

I did some solo-traveling up north Paihia and Russell, camping for a couple nights in a tent I bought in New Caledonia for 13 euros and a $400 feather-down sleeping bag that I found on the side of the road (I washed it, don’t worry). It probably fell off the back of someone’s’ motorcycle, and a little yellow snail had claimed it, but I figured I’d get more use out of it than him.

quaint little Russell, the first capital of New Zealand

New Years eve was spent in Auckland, and it was the only night in 3 weeks that I had to sleep in a hostel dorm bed. I only slept in it for 2 hours, so it was kind of a waste of $25, but I ended up wondering the streets, wharf, and bars all evening and night with a UBC alumni named David. At midnight, we drank pink champagne under an exploding sky tower and kissed, just for fun, and then we spent the rest of the night chasing down Tinder girls he had matched with since they were all at different bars and we wanted to bar hop. When he found one he liked, I snuck away to take my hostel power nap, and then dragged my feet to an 8 am flight to American Samoa… where I could do it all again.

December 19, 2014

Ever heard of Niue?

There are a couple of islands in the South Pacific that I knew I wouldn’t get to. Some of them are nearly impossible to reach, either because of location, geography, or just lack of travelers. They’re usually the islands you’ve never heard of, and survive off their colonial dependents. One of these is a country called Wallis & Futuna, a French territory that you can only fly in or out of through Noumea or Nadi a couple times a week. Another is Pitcairn Island, a British overseas territory in the South Pacific lost somewhere between Tahiti and Easter Island.

“the rock”

I never thought I’ make it to Niue, “the rock” island near Tonga and Samoa. It’s technically a self-governing state, but relies heavily on New Zealand for support and subsidies, and the only way in or out is a very expensive seat on the once or twice weekly flight from Auckland (at 3 hours flying time, it’s hardly the closest port but that’s really the only flight!). Its essentially big coral island, raised out of the sea and perched ontop of an extinct volcano. Top soil isn’t so bountiful, and it was strange to see graves scattered all around the roadside and front-lawns. It was eerily fitting with all the deserted houses, devastated by Cyclone Heta in 2004 and other big storms before then.

a common sight in Niue, houses half blown away

Niue’s 1500 Niueans live on an island that’s 64km around, but only have a couple beaches and no mountains (the highest point is 65m above sea level). Their official work week is only from Monday-Thursday, so its the first country I’ve ever been to with a 3-day weekend and that ain’t bad. The only thing I could complain about were the nasty looking yellow hornets that were always flying around everywhere… but they never got me so it’s all good. All around the islands’ cliff edge is pretty blue water, living coral and an abundance of fish and sea life. I went snorkeling with some spear-fishers, and after seeing a turtle, barracudas, parrot fish and dozens of striped sea snakes, they shot a parrot fish and a coronation trout that we had for dinner.

I stayed at Niue Backpackers, which is the upstairs apartment of the Niue Yacht Club. It only has 4 rooms, but I was the only guest, so for $25 a night, I had rented my own sea-view penthouse. I also adopted my own pets: Lucy the dog who followed me to the beach for protection, and Misty the cat who I gave milk to but stopped being my friend after she shit in the shower and I kicked her out of the penthouse for a night. One morning I woke up with a crab in my bed. I had the sensation that something was tickling down my back, but assumed it was my hair. Then when I rolled over, I felt a tickle run down the back of my leg, and when I threw the blanket off expecting the worst, I first saw a massive grey spider. But, with further inspection, it was only a small silver crab, looking lost and exposed from what he was hoping could have been a safe cave to hideout in.

the local beach and snorkel lagoon

The only radio station in Niue gave an interesting, unique blend of songs. The sound of gospel songs was replaced by offensive rap and old school hiphop, followed by poppy Christmas songs that were replaced by Polyensian hula-dance songs. Then the cycle would repeat itself, pulling my emotions along with it, not sure if I should be feeling reverent, gangster, festive or drink a pina colada.

The phone numbers are only 4 digits long, so I could easily reach the hostel owner Brian by dialing 4567. But he was always downstairs, so it was easier just to walk down and talk to him. He took me on an island tour, driving all the way around and stopping at a few caves and chasms and perhaps the only real beach. There was one sand patch down the sea-track path beside the hostel, but it was only exposed at low tide, which I managed to time perfectly for two days of beachside reading. I finished Dan Browns Inferno and learned a lot about Dante and Florence, and hung out with an old American hippy named Charles who loved to talk about the theory of ecotourism.

Niue’s sculpture garden, made of rubbish

There’s another island I’m not sure I’ll make it to, called Tuvalu. Its just a series of 3 tiny sand atolls between Samoa and Kiribati, and theres no piece of land big enough to make an air strip. The whole country is a less than 10 square miles, and probably shrinking with the rising sea levels. Since its surrounded by a coral lagoon, cruise ships cant come there either, so the crowded population of 10,000 people only get served by a twice-monthly cargo ship that sails from Samoa. Im going to Samoa next, so I’ll be the first lined up for a ticket on that cargo ship. I’ll hang my hammock on deck for the 5 day return trip, and hope the cyclone season won’t make the sea too rough.

December 10, 2014

The Cook Islands

French Polynesia and the Cook Islands are really far from everything, even eachother, but they’re the closest neighbours. Still, there’s only one (expensive) flight between them per week (Thursdays with Air Tahiti). I landed on the island of Rarotonga, a place I’d never heard of til now, and just started walking from the airport towards the bunches of hotels and hostels and resorts on the west coast. Its only 32km around, so you could almost walk around the whole thing in a day, but I was lucky enough to be picked up by a big Polynesian woman on her scooter, and we squished me and my backpack on behind her just in time for it to start POURING rain.

my only dry, visible sunset from Rarotonga backpackers’ beach

She dropped me off at Rarotonga backpackers, one of the nicest hostels I’ve ever stayed at. It had a pool, bungalows on the beach, and sea-view apartments where some crazy partying Kiwi birds (a.k.a. women form New Zealand) stayed. In my hostel was a mix of Americans, Kiwis, Brits, Canadians and Japanese, and we all became family after a few days, cooking dinner together, pairing up on our rental scooters and exploring the island and its nightlife together.

One night we creepily (and soberly) followed the Rarotonga party bus to 5 or 6 different night clubs, and I danced my hiny off with this British-Kiwi guy who you woulda thought was way to mature and serious to break out his moves like Jagger. He showed me up (and everyone else on the dance floor), and he instantly became my favourite person on the island.

The next day was pouring, thundering rain, all day long, and we ran around on the beach like crazies, wondering if the lightning could really electrocute us in the sea. We played games and cartwheeled around like noone was watching (noone was watching – the beach was empty for miles) and stayed soaked to the bone until finally the clouds broke and we could scooter down to a waterfall I wanted to see.

Muri beach

Polynesian dancers

Wigmore’s waterfall is uusally a trickling stream with a wading pool below it, but now it was an angry, brown, rushing flood screaming its way down the hillside. Other highlights were watching little Polynesian girls dance in their grass skirts at the market, getting lost and then finding the start of the hiking trail through the middle of the island, and wading in waist deep water to islands off Muri beach while avoiding stepping on one of the gazillion sea cucumbers on the way. The local people eat their guts, which apparently grow back, so I guess if I did accidentally step on one, it would just gush out all its guts and then grow it all back.

We barely saw the sun in the few days I was there, but when it did come out, it was hot hot hot, so I didnt mind the shade and rain. On my last night there, the clouds finally parted a bit and I finally saw the sunset, but that just made it harder to pack my bags and leave for windy, rainy, 15 degree Auckland.

December 5, 2014

Tahiti, the black pearl of French Polynesia

dreamy Tahiti …in real life at the Beachcomber

I carried on the French theme in Tahiti, a name synonymous with Polynesian paradise. Tahiti is just one island in the French Polynesian archipelago, the most populated one, and hosts the country’s capital Papeete. All the towns and islands have cute, alliterative names like that, and the Tahitian language was always entertaining to listen to. There are dozens of other (more scarcely) populated islands, but flying to them is almost as expensive as flying to Hawaii or the nearby Cook islands. The spaces are huge here, with the Polynesian islands scattered around a sea boundary nearly as big as Brazil, but each island is only a few kilometers wide. And just imagine that Polynesians used to cover these distances with manpower, rowing their canoes across the open sea, and happily and successfully settling the most remote, isolated islands along their way. I was happy to stick with planes and only explore 2 islands, but I did manage to couchsurf an anchored sailboat.

the Karaka sail boat

You can drive all the way around Tahiti in a day, including Tahiti iti, the little bubble of land on the southeast. The bottom right of that is the only part of the circle that’s not connected, and instead there’s more than 20 km of walking track through a totally wild, undeveloped area that probably looks the same as it did 300 years ago. Somehow this was my expectation of Tahiti, plus a few nearly-nude Tahitian women lazing around in Gaugin style, but I also expected to see the complete opposite – touristy resorts of bungalows reaching far out into a shallow, blue lagoons. That contradiction existed, but I ignorantly forgot there’d also be hundreds of thousands of local Polynesians living normal, modern lives there, in everything from shacks to apartments to hilltop mansions, and they drove around in lots of cars and buses and scooters and fishing boats. It’s a bustling little island, with lots to do and see, and I started to notice that although my imagination hadn’t quite painted the right picture, Tahiti was beautiful exactly they way it was, and the Polynesian people, very handsome.

Tahiti (and New Caledonia) has some special type of men called rei-rei’s, a sort of cross-dressing or feminine male, which are totally accepted into society and modern culture, and act even as a source of pride for their families. The more well-off families will spend a lot of money making their rei-rei a “true” female, with hormones and plastic surgery and the whole shebang, and then its nearly impossible to tell them apart from other females, or believe that some of them were really once men.

my hammock on deck

The boat I stayed on was anchored outside of Vairao, a tiny village near the end of the road in Tahiti iti. I woke up each day and jumped into the sea for my morning spruce up, and we bought fishes off the neighouring boats to barbeque our dinner. The buses were few and irregular to this corner of the island, so hitchhiking to get anywhere was almost a daily affair; otherwise I didn’t mind staying on the boat for hours, lazing around in my hammock, cat-napping and reading about Tahiti’s history.

The only transport I paid for my whole week there was from the airport to the Beachcomber hotel, which is only a 2km ride but it was late at night and I was tired, had just lost a day in my life (the international date line is a sneaky little thing), and I was already splurging on a night there. Staying at the InterContinental can put you back a few hundred euros, but its nearly worth it. I had to do it, it was Tahiti, and I wanted to wake up with the sea underneath me, then jump off my bungalow balcony for a salt-water bath. I’d highly recommend the same therapy to anyone else that makes the long journey here, all the way to the middle of the Pacific Ocean… unless you can manage to find Captain Tom and stay in his big, beautiful, black sail boat – the Karaka.

December 2, 2014

A Glimpse of normal in Brisbane

I lived in Brisbane for 5 months in 2007, and I’ve literally been homesick ever since. I had’t been back yet til now, and only one of my Australian friends ever came to visit in Iceland, Brooke. Seven and a half years is a long time, and things have changed, but only slightly, and all for the better. All my barefooted student friends are now flip-flop wearing doctors. Brooke lived in Dubai and worked for Emirates, and now returned to Brisbane to become a teacher. I used to work at Mazda and most of those friends still work as car salesmen, but now for Mercedes-Benz. Then there was me, the unemployed traveler who’s barely changed at all, crashing back into their lives and making them party like we were all still 19. And so we did.

James mischievously pouring some champagne at the Regatta

I took a few walks down memory lane, visiting all my old favourite spots. The University of Queensland campus was a lot greener, since I had been a student there on the 6^th year of drought. There was a new swimming pool I splashed around in, and the food court was nearly the same, so I had my usual – a Thai chicken curry meat pie and Bundaberg ginger beer. And once again I could eat uncut sushi rolls…. A genius invention that should have gone worldwide by now.

I went to the races, all pretty in a flowery dress with a fluffy purple fascinator in my hair. Brooke came with me, and together we managed to win money on every race except one. We picked the 1^st place winner on one race, and that basically paid for our whole day.

me and Brooke at the races

We went to our old watering holes, the unclassy Royal Exchange and the much prettier Regatta (it was rebuilt after the 2011 floods). We had a “Sunday sesh” at the Regatta and drank cheap bottles of Moet & Chandon, but mostly stuck to our daytime house party mixes of Bundaberg or Cracken rum with gingerbeer. My host James was always on night shifts, so daytime cocktails were excusable.

look at that hail!

Southbank has totally changed, although I never actually made it there, since a hail storm hit the day we wanted to go lie on the man-made beach. And it wasn’t a small hail storm, it was like the end of the world kinda winds, breaking trees, torrential downpours, flash floods, and hail the size of whiskey ice cubes falling from the sky. Bunches of the city just shut down, with roads underwater and electricity out in entire neighbourhoods for more than 2 days. Broken tree branches were slowly collected and piled up on the side of the roads, and eventually the weather was just fine again. But then it was time to fix the roofs that blew away, the windows that had been smashed into a million pieces, and all the cars whose hoods and windshields had been dented or cracked.

I only spent one day on the beach, at the Gold Coast. Its like an Australian Miami, with dozens of skyscrapers growing up into the sky from a sandy yellow beach, while beautiful half-naked people dip into the turquoise blue Pacific. The water wasn’t as warm, and the feeling of being on an isolated island was long gone, but this visit to Australia made me feel slightly normal again, with normal functioning cities and people to call friends.

the Gold Coast behind us

When it was time to go back to some far away Pacific island, I tried to get the help of some travel agencies. The company Student Flights has this price beat guarantee, which I managed to book since I found an airfare $100 cheaper than what they found. So a couple days later I got a pretty cheap one-way ticket to Tahiti, only to realize it was still expensive to be there, and a lot more expensive to leave.

November 30, 2014

Islands and islets in New Caledonia

Vanuatu had a mixed French-English history, but now in New Caledonia it was all French, about as Frenchy as it gets. It’s like you’ve dropped down in tropical Paris after weeks of fighting for electricity and something to eat that wasn’t rice or fried. Now there were supermarkets stocked full of cheese, pastries, wine, and vegetables that weren’t in season. You could eat lunch at a creperie and filet mignon for dinner, but you’d also have to pay the Parisian price for it. The cafes and bars were lined along the beach, so you could take a dip in the crystal blue water between lunch and dinner while working on your tan. The highways were painted and streets were signed, and a lot of fare skinned youngsters drove around in tiny Peugots.

cliff jumping in Dumbea river

I looked for a host on couchsurfing, and stumbled upon the same guy that hosted me a year and half ago in Martinique. Him and his roomates treated me like a guest of honour – I took the penthouse bedroom in exchange for cooking meals, and they took me to two of the most beautiful places in New Caledonia. First we spent the day at the base of a water dam, where a bright blue lagoon sat amidst cliffs and house-sized stones that you could jump off from different heights. The second day we hiked 2 hours into the Dumbea river valley, filled with waterfalls and freshwater pools, and did pretty much the same thing.

bungalows at Ilot Maitre

While the boys were at work every day, I busied myself with ferries to different isles and islets around Noumea. Two of them are reached by a 15-20 minute water taxi: Ile aux Canards is a couple kilometers off the coast, about 200m around, filled with beach chairs and one little restaurant, but I spent most of my time there in the water staring at colourful fishes and huge corals. Ilot Maitre was slightly bigger, a long narrow strip of sand and trees surrounded by a hundred kites. It’s a kite surfer’s paradise on the windward side, and the leeward side has more corals and pretty fishes, plus a handful of luxurious bungalows built right over the lagoon for lovey-dovey Japanese honeymooners.

Amedee lighthouse

Amadee Islet was a similar size, but you can only visit by day and its a lot further away. Its kind of a tourist trap, but still a lovely, all-inclusive day trip to paradise island. Its the kind of island you’ve seen on a thousand post cards of the south pacific, the ideal, isolated palm-fringed, white sand beach island, surrounded by perfect reefs holding turtles and sea snakes swimming among the big parrot fishes. There’s a towering white lighthouse in the middle that gives you an amazing aerial view of it all. After getting our fill of snorkeling and beaching, we feasted on a seafood buffet while watching Polynesian dancers shake their tattooed bodies and hips adorned with leafy belts.

Isle of Pines

Ile des Pins was just that – a tropical island filled with pine trees! They stuck out taller and darker than the palms, but made the island look even more magical than it already felt. People actually live on Ile des pins (there hadn’t been any locals on the other little ones), but it’s a small, isolated and picture perfect place that’s catered to French, Australian and Japanese tourists to come and buy into a slice of heaven for just the day or weekend. The locals work according to the plane and ferry schedules, opening shops and cooking stalls just for our arrival, and once we’ve left or gone to bed, they disappear back to their private lives, unmolested by light, noise, or any sort of hectic stress that Noumeans have to live with.

November 19, 2014

Horsing around in Vanuatu

On my journey through PNG and the Solomons, I was trailing a few weeks behind a Bulgarian backpacker named Tihomir taking the same overland route. I found him through couchsurfing, and after exchanging a few emails with him and following his blog, I was able to plan my own trip. It followed pretty much in his exact footsteps, except that he crossed the border in Bougainville a bit differently and stayed with other people, but I would never have made it to Honiara without his help. Only a handful of tourists cross into the Solomons this way, and after being on the move for more than 10 days without ever really knowing how to move or where to stay, I looked forward to arriving in Port Vila and staying put for a while.

Vanuatu isn’t a stranger to tourism, so its okay to just show up with no plan and wing it. It’s an archipelago of 80+ islands and islets, and 65 of them are inhabited, with ferries, boats and little planes connecting everyone. The international airport is on Efate Island (the 3rd largest and home of the country’s capital city Port Vila), which is only 160km around but sustains 65,000 residents and a couple cruise ships a week. Its a bilingual place, with colonial ties to England and France, but its been independent since 1980. Now the largest ex-pat community is probably Australian, and they’ve managed to keep a few touches of European culture alive. The food, wine and coffee culture was an especially nice surprise, but my favourite hobby was horses. They had horse farms, horse breeders, show jumping competitions and trail rides, and I found the biggest herd at Club Hippique.

tropical horse paradise

The owner there, Heidee, became my best friend instantly. I could talk to her for hours about horses, Iceland, life, or love. I basically moved in with her and her family for a week, and spent every day between the stables and her house. Her huge Great Dane and her cuddly cat took turns sharing my bed, and I have to stay I prefer the cat, since she liked to sleep on my feet and only weighed a few kilos, whereas the dog weighed 55kg and took up most of the mattress (she was always on my side of the bed!).

The farm sits on a big saltwater lagoon, so I could chose between kayaking or swimming with horses off the beach, or riding through a tropical forest covered in trails and coconut trees. I rode every day, I taught her lessons, and I trained her (recently gelded) stallion. At night we cooked dinners of steak or prawns and paired them with wine and champagne, and if I ever needed to go anywhere, I could drive her purple scooter (it only happened once – why would I want to leave that place?).

My visit to Vanuatu was a total breath of fresh air – slowing down the pace of travel and actually calling somewhere home for a while. I miss all the people and 4-legged animals that became my temporary family, and kind of wish I had stayed longer. I barely thought of doing any reading, writing, or researching for my upcoming trips, since I really felt as though I wasn’t traveling anymore. But now that I’m on the move again, I feel a little homesick and slightly disorganized… but hey, that’s all part of the package, so keep calm and travel on.

If you’d also like to live and work on Heidee’s farm, or just visit as a regular tourist, you can contact her through her facebook page, or apply to volunteer with her through Woof.

November 9, 2014

Munda to Honiara

From Gizo, I took a 2 hour speedboat to Munda, a touristy little town for divers to base themselves. No more expats or NGO’s, just legitimately interested tourists… but all staying in the confines of Agnes lodge, which is a hotel, restaurant and tour operator monopolizing all of the foreign money and white people that come to the island. I stayed at Munda Guesthouse, which was basically just paying a family $100 Solomon dollars (approx. $13US) per night to sleep in an empty room in the upstairs unfinished part of their house. Its incredibly comfortable, clean and cozy, especially in tropical rain storms, so I’d direct any tourist away from anonymous Agnes Lodge to this guesthouse, a few hundred metres away from the beach but nestled in a tall coconut tree forest (don’t forget to look up when you walk under them!).

rainstorm at the Munda guesthouse

I learned that I’m quite the pool shark, after visiting the local pool bar 3 nights in a row and beating a lot of big men I refused to take bets with, but was paid in beer instead. I was one of few women, the others much older but all beautifully adorned with flowers in their hair, and some of them equally defeating in pool. I finally got kicked off the winner-owned table by one such woman, but made great friends with some politician, the son of the owner of my guesthouse, and a tattooed guy named Rex whose tattoos were barely visible on his dark skin.

the MV Chanela, our carriage from Munda to Honiara

I later traveled with the mother and son from Munda guesthouse all the way to Honiara on an overnight boat, and she mothered me the whole way. She made my bed made with a mat and sleeping bag on the floor, sharing a crowded but air conditioned room with another 30 people sleeping on the floor. Our food for the journey, bought at different port markets we stopped at along the way, was seaweed and roti and cherry tomatoes and clams… not the best mixed together but seaparately, all delish.

sunset from the ship

In Honiara I stayed with Sara at the Hibiscus homestay, and she had the most rotted red teeth I had seen yet, since she still had all her teeth! I never saw her spit, but she was always chewing on something, and covered her mouth whenever she smiled or laughed. She wouldn’t let me sleep in my hammock, but she slept in it and I got the bed. She fed me food whenever I was home for mealtime, and I’ve never tasted such tasty rice… it must be the cinnamon she puts in the accompanying pork dish.

My favourite part of Honiara was a little ways inland, where little villages settled along a river leads you to a waterfall called Mataniko falls. Its only a few kilometres from the sea, but it’s a roasting 1 hr hike in, where only the last few minutes offer any shade whiles you climb down into the forested canyon to get to this little paradise oasis of cold, blue water after being scorched by the sun. Instead of hiking back along the barren hill tops, we followed the river back out to town, swimming with our shoes and clothes in one above the water to keep them dry. Sometimes we could walk in the shallower bits, or follow the river bank, but we were basically stuck in the narrow river canyon, climbing over fallen logs and big rocks, and only encountered some tiny frogs, a few fish and one eagle on our wet and windy way back.

Mataniko falls

November 7, 2014

A Warm ‘Welkam’ to the Solomons

Once I landed in Gizo, I really felt like I was in the second largest town in the Solomons, landing on a tarmac runway, pulling into an actual wharf (the airport is also on a neighbouring island connected to Ghizo island by banana boat transfer). But, with some perspective, I later realized that it was hardly a town, but a busy little village, with a handful of hotels, shops, and only a couple of unsealed roads, churches and banks. But I was able to withdraw money, check into my own private guesthouse (tourists are a rare commodity in the northern Solomon islands), and feel like I had returned to predictable civilization.

sunset in Munda

But the everyday things hadn’t changed much from Bougainville – people who spoke the same local language called eachother “wantoks” and their pidgin english was basically the same. The market had the same fruits and veggies for sale, the betel nut and cigarettes were sold on every street corner, peoples red stained smiles matched the red spit-covered dirt roads, and still everyone smiled at the sight of such a lonely white girl so far away from home. People’s faces and hair were lighter, perhaps also a bit bigger, and the prices of things had gotten cheaper, so as much as I had liked Bougainville, I was happy to be in Gizo where I could afford more and stand out less.

There are a bunch of islands, both smaller and a lot larger, surrounding Ghizo, comprising the Western province, and between them, a bunch of WWII wrecks and amazing coral reefs. But, unless you’re a scuba diver or an endurance freediver, they’re pretty hard to get to, especially if you’re the type that’s claustrophobic under water in open seas.

rainbows and dirt roads, isnt it beautiful

They have a saying here, or at least a slogan I saw printed on tshirts: “Solomon Islands – as beautiful above as it is below” with a picture of the palm tree beaches and mangrove forests filled with birds above the colourful scene of an underwater reef and all its peculiar fishes. I decided to stick to the above water half, especially since the people (which this picture fails to acknowledge) were my highlight. They always make eye contact and greet you, which, if returned, turns into huge smiles and more glances. Sometimes your face can hurt from smiling so much, since they’ll actually smile to the breaking point of laughter, and since you don’t want to feel like you’re laughing at them laughing, you try to keep a controlled smile, but their rotting red teeth are somehow more comical a sight to see stretched out in such care-free happiness.