friday july 3^rd 2009 (denarau, fiji)

I come from a long line of non-birthday-celebrating people. Jaime on the other hand, revels in the opportunity to make a big deal about such things. Comments about why our behaviors in regards to this custom are so different will contribute little to the story; I only mention it in order to set the stage for what would become a memorable day for me.

If you have been with us for a while, you might remember that on this day in 2008 somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean we were merrily making progress towards the Marquesan island of Fatu Hiva. Surely our proximity to land would somewhat diminish Jaime’s ability to ‘make a big deal’ that day, or so I thought. Somehow even there, to my surprise, she still managed to produce the substance of celebrations. My admiration of the forethought and cleverness that must have been required to pull this off may have betrayed my thin mask of discontent at being the center of her attention that day.

This year was to be a low key day at the beach. We would rent a car, fill a cooler with the ice and beer, hire a board or two, drive an hour or so up the road to the break at Sigatoka and spend the day surfing, talking shit, lazing around in the sun… as you do. I had been manipulated into a false sense of security and made to think that I had played a role in planning these activities. The first hint that I had to indicate otherwise was after opening a card which somehow found its way onto our table. It was from Mark, (aka: fearless), captain of the Kauhale-pirate crew who we had sadly left 500 miles away in Tonga 4 days ago. I read a line in there that read something about “enjoying the surf and the board”. How did he know? I thought that the surfing idea was borne last night. I felt quite clever after unraveling their deceitful plot; it clearly wasn’t my idea to go surfing since this card had to be at least 4 days old, and furthermore the pirates had rented us a board for the day, it said so right there in the card.

The theme continued when another package revealed surf wax, and another a beautiful watch waterproof to 200 meters (because you just never know) that provides the happy holder, in this case me, tidal information from around the world.

After breakfast we loaded up our flash CRV and prepared to pull out. I was in a hurry to get to the surf shop to procure our boards so we could get out and on our way when Jaime realized that she had forgotten her purse. Typical. Following her instructions, I went to retrieve it from the garage. It was right where she said it would be, but it seemed odd that she wouldn’t have mentioned the surfboard with balloons and ribbons all over it sitting right there beside it! The first thought that went through my mind was, Warren surfs?

Seemingly most of Denarau had been in some way involved in smuggling this board off of Kauhale Kai right under my nose and getting it into Jaime’s hands (A week later I started telling this story to a guy at the bar in Denarau. He cut me off and by saying; “Yeah, I know how this ends. How’d you like the board anyway?”)

No small feat. What’s even more miraculous is that she managed to keep it a secret for over a week.

It was hard not to feel smug rocketing along a sunny coastal road through Fiji’s rich greens and blues with your best people, stereo loud, board strapped to the roof, cooler in the back. It was one of those days that just couldn’t be anything but good.

We passed the Sri Siva Swami Temple on the way out of Nadi. Vibrantly colored in stark contrast to its surroundings, the temple is a tough one to pass by without a closer look so we wheeled around. We didn’t have any shoes to leave on the pile beside the ‘leave shoes here’ sign but Jaime did wrap a towel around her waist to cover up her knees, and Micah borrowed a t-shirt with sleeves in order to comply with house rules. They were a beautifully decorated group of buildings. Depictions of gods and goddesses as prolific as they are colorful adorn the walls, floors and ceilings. Sweet-smelling incense worked in harmony with the serene and tranquil mood and permeated the whole place. Devotees pray their way barefoot around and around the circumference of the main building offering fruit, incense and money to their deities du’jour.

Somewhere after the temple and before Sigatoka we made a wrong turn and ended up at a primary school. It looked as though the inmates had taken over the asylum. Kids were free and mostly just doing what kids do; run amuck. We were invited in. The kids were so cool that we all wished that we had more time to spend there. As it was, the clock was tricking. With assistance from my handy new watch, we knew that high tide was only minutes away and we still hadn’t found our break.

A boat pulled into the bay an hour after we did. Is that a Canadian flag? Yes it is. They came a little closer and we were able to make out their port of registration, our home town; Vancouver! After anchoring nearby they came on over. Turns out that they are from White Rock, 30 minutes from where we used to live. Not only that, we had been following a remarkably similar watery path for the past 2 years before finally meeting anchored beside Waya island in the remote Yasawa group. Funny little trip this one.

wednesday july 8^th 2009 (waya, fiji)

We got up early this morning and launched the dink. In these parts you pay your respects to the chief before exploring any islands, villages or reefs. Maybe Bligh’s reception would have been a little different if he had known that.

Sevusevu is the presentation of a gift to a village chief. Acceptance means that the giver will be presented certain privileges or favors. Refusal means that you will be killed and eaten. The sevusevu currency of choice here is a nice bunch of Kava roots. The root is chewed up by virgins and filtered through a dirty sock (or by some other means) to make a mildly narcotic drink. Okay so it’s not chewed up by virgins all that often anymore, but we haven’t heard of any cruisers being cannibalized lately either so just go with it.

Kava ceremonies can be casual, official, ceremonial or just fun. Most follow a basic set of ground rules that vary depending on the circumstances but I’ll report back in more detail on that end of things after I gain a little more experience. Apparently Vanuatu serves up the most potent Kava in the Pacific, and the prolific island of Tanna (our first port of call in Vanuatu) offers up their country’s strongest.

Our curt little ceremony on Waya didn’t reach the consumption stage, probably a shortage of good chewing virgins. It went something like this; we are brought to the village chief by a representative. We ask permission to visit the village, island, etc. He asks us where we are from, and we tell him. The Kava root is presented to the chief by an intermediary. The chief then chooses whether to accept or refuse the gift. Fortunately our Kava was deemed acceptable. At least that’s what we assumed the few synchronized claps and ‘hups!’ that followed meant because instead of being killed, cooked or eaten we were told that we were free to wander around the village and visit their island. So we did.

Apparently the island has 4 villages. The one we visited had 200 people living there full time. There’s kids everywhere, but we didn’t see any between about 12 and 20. We think that the village has figured out that teenagers are smelly and moody so ingeniously ship them off to a neighboring island for their gangly years. The kids that hadn’t been shipped off yet were pretty neat. They were curious, well mannered, hung around in packs, loved to harass the palangis and ham it up for the camera.

saturday july 11^th 2009 (malololeilei, fiji)

Slowly making our way back towards Vitu Levu we end up back at a familiar haunt, Musket Cove. Slapdash hangs off a mooring ball while the front blows through. Her crew expertly wastes time on shore with diversions ranging from doing laundry, to website updating. Cold Fiji Bitters are cheap enough and never far away. In a word, this place is ‘easy’.

The revised plan has us clearing out Monday and leaving Tuesday during the wee hours. So tomorrow we will head back to the mainland and restock what we can.

monday july 13^th 2009 (denarau, fiji)

We spent a couple of days back at our old haunt, Musket Cove. Happily waiting out some really crap weather that would have smashed us if we had stubbornly stuck to our plans and left on Monday.

We arrived back in Denarau this morning. We’ve cleared out, diesel-ed and watered up and Jaime is at the store mailing some shoes back to Canada (?) and picking up some passage treats.

We plan to make landfall in Vanuatu on the island of Tanna. It’s about 500 miles from here so we’ve planned for about 4 days at sea, but you know how these things go. Tomorrow morning we will rouse ourselves at an ungodly hour and make our way back to the same Momi channel that gave us access to this crazy Fiji in the first place.

In the meantime I’ll post this update, take one last Hollywood shower and have dinner with Warren and Kathryn.

Incidentally, if you are planning to visit Fiji by boat or by plane and are looking for some beautiful accommodations (fully serviced, private pool, near the port, airport, Nadi, 18 hole golf course, dock with power and water etc. etc.) that beats any hotel hands down and comes with our highest recommendations on Viti Levu please let us know. We’ll put you in touch with two really great people that can give you all the details you need.

That’s it for now. See you in Vanuatu!

We climbed up the bank and visited what appeared to be an abandoned village. We walked around and discovered a place that looked like it had been abandoned about 30 minutes before we arrived. Eerie. We walked through the Port Resolution Yacht club where the most impressive feature is its name. Continuing on down the path we finally found the villagers. They were all at church, on a Saturday! There are two churches here, the Seventh Day Adventists and Presbyterian. The practical minded Ni-Vans here hedge their bets by spending Saturday with the SDA’s, Sunday with the Presby’s and the rest of the week minding their ancestral magic and tabu.

 

sunday july 19^th 2009 (port resolution, vanuatu)

 Micah and I arrived at the nakamal at sunset last night, but not before getting ourselves horribly lost in the jungle for a couple of hours. An hour down a labyrinth of dwindling jungle trails we came across a small clearing complete with a pregnant lady nursing a toddler. Of all the things you would guess to find while lost in the jungle, a pregnant lady nursing a toddler would probably be 2376^th on the list, but there she was (like this lady sees a lost white Canadian guys bumbling around the corner into her jungle nursery all the time). She didn’t act the least bit surprised though and gave us some stellar directions. We were told to follow the ‘main road’ – wait, it gets better- and turn left at ‘the tree’. One thing I’ve learned on this trip is that you can’t ask a villager for directions and expect an answer that makes any sense to a non-villager. They were born here, grew up here and just know where everything is. They don’t do directions, they do names. It would make about as much sense as me telling her that I live by Kits Beach just across from the Kings Head. Any 5 year old from Ireupuow would know where ‘the tree’ was, and could certainly tell the ‘main road’ from the three hundred and fifty other identical trails that snake their way through the jungle. But I did not grow up in Ireupuow and to me the main road was barely discernable from the dense jungle that surrounded it. You know what else jungles are full of? You guessed it, trees!  So after making a lot of left turns it’s little wonder that we ended up back at the same clearing. This time our pregnant lady was surrounded by a half dozen hard looking bare footed Ni-Vans with machete’s. They didn’t seem to be the least bit surprised to see us either. We started to wonder if everyone here knows that we were lost in the jungle, they probably did. The youngest of the machete wielding posse, Simon, was dispatched by the oldest to guide us back to the village. We made it just in time to see the village men slowly wandering towards the nakamal, each carrying a fist of Kava roots. 

 Johnson was expecting us. The nakamal was in a big clearing underneath a Banyon tree. The village men kind of grouped in to clusters of 5 or six. Each group started a little fire from twigs and coconut shells. They distribute the Kava roots, which have a bit of a bulb and a bunch of spindly little legs, and begin scrubbing the dirt off using bristly coconut fibers. Once most of the dirt is off they either take a big chomp from the bulb part like an apple, or just pop a bunch of the spindly legs in their mouths and start chewing. Chewing on a mouthful of Kava root doesn’t dampen the conversation in the least. Imagine if everyone at your table scooped three or four big spoonfuls of mashed potatoes into their mouths and then without swallowing just carried on with a serious conversation. That’s what it was like. There’s a bit of a somber mood throughout the nakamal as well, parliament was in session. Grievances and village politics are discussed and resolved through mouths overflowing with pulpy chewed up kava root. It was kind of hard to keep a straight face on but laughing would have been inconceivably rude. After 10 minutes or so banana leaves are passed around to collect the chewed up pulpy mess. To carry on with the analogy above, imagine your potato conversation stops while a napkin is passed around. Each person opens their mouth and the potato that they’ve been chewing on the whole time slides out and plops onto the napkin. They pass the mess to the next person who does the same thing. Pretty soon you have a big pile of chewed up potatoes on your hands, in our case, kava root. Out comes a piece of cloth, like a chunk of burlap sack or something, about 2 feet long and a foot wide. The pulpy mass is scraped into the cloth which has a Ni-Van at each end holding it up over top of a halved coconut shell. One guy dribbles water over top as the other stirs the mixture with a stick. The substance that filters its way through this mess is collected in the coconut shell. First the chief drinks, then any special guests, followed by the other men in order of precedence. The chief was sitting right beside me and scooped up and sculled the first shell, etiquette requires it to go down in one gulp. By then a second shell was ready to go which he handed off to me. A sideways glance at Micah and down the hatch it goes. First impression? Mud puddle brown, saliva temperature and a peppery dishwater taste. No wonder you have to slam it like a bad shot, that’s the only way you could keep it down! Not exactly a drink to be savored.

 A little research explained part of the taste. Kava is actually related to the pepper plant. Kava based medicines are used for things like appetite suppressants, pain killers, relaxants, and decongestants. Overseas it’s making an appearance as an herbal extract used to alleviate stress, anxiety and insomnia. Sounds a little like another kind of herbal remedy we have back home. It works too; stress, anxiety and insomnia were pretty much the last things on our mind when we finally drifted back to the boat and fell into a coma.

 So what do the god fearing NI-Vans do after a night of getting stoned off their roots on Kava? They get up and go to church of course. Samson, a bit crazy and googly eyed guy that we met at the nakamal last night turns out to be the reverend. We decided to check it out and were promptly whisked to the front of the church and made to stand in front of the congregation. Uncomfortable? Then they sang a couple of songs to us at the top of their lungs and put wreaths around our necks. At the end of it we were asked to stand by the door and shake everyone’s hand as they left, every single man, woman and even baby. When everyone had, Samson reminded us that it wasn’t that long ago that we wouldn’t have been made to feel so welcome here. We would have been eaten. He wasn’t being sensational, quite the opposite, it was just a matter of fact. He said that they kind of feel bad for cooking and eating so many missionaries which is part of the reason that they have been so kind to us. All I could think of was how many thousands of their people must have died, been killed or sold into slavery along the path to ‘salvation’. I didn’t want to offend him so had to just secretly congratulate them for taking a few of ours out along the way.

 The Banyon trees are prolific here. I’m not usually a big tree and flower kind of guy but it’s impossible not to be stunned by these mammoth trees, their wide canopies, and huge aerial roots. Apparently Banyon seeds find their way onto the branches of some other tree by birds or wind. Once the seed sprouts, their roots gradually descend from the branches to the soil, encircling and eventually strangling the host tree. The roots are so big and wide that you could hide a bus behind one. The canopy is so big and thick that it blocks out the sun and starves out the jungle underneath it leaving a big clearing underneath. They are amazing.

Vanuatu claims to have the most different languages per capita than any country in the world. English and French are widely spoken, but in addition there are no less than 105 local languages for Vanuatu’s 206,000 people – that’s a different language for every 2000 people or so. That’s where Bislama comes in.

 Bislama is an English based pidgin used throughout the islands that enables everyone to communicate with each other. Kids here have been educated in either French or English and Bislama allows them to communicate with each other. It is easily Vanuatu’s most important language. Presidential debates are held in Bislama, and it’s in common use throughout the country on signage and even things like digicel mobile phone packaging. Check out the Bislama and its corresponding English translation on the picture.

The ride back to port resolution was less charming. It rained the whole way. We were soaked, cold and afraid for our lives. I’m quite happy to be back on the boat writing this in dry warm clothes between sips of hot coffee and Baileys.

tuesday july 21^st 2009 (port resolution, vanuatu)

Think you had a rough puberty? Boys in Vanuatu are initiated into adulthood through circumcision between the ages of 10 and 12… With a bamboo pole! 

They are secluded in a special hut and after their wounds heal -usually about a month- they are reunited with their families. An elaborate celebration takes place with kastam dancing, gift giving and of course kava drinking. We’ve been invited to attend one, and once we arrived to our great surprise, participate! Fortunately the whole bamboo bit took place a month ago so our participation will not involve any woody plant induced genital mutilations.

Back into the Toyota 4X4 for another ride. Jaime and I, Micah and our new friend Dennis who is traveling with his parents on another boat were dropped off with our Ni-Van buddy Stanley on the side of the road an hour from Port resolution. 

Upon our arrival Dennis, Micah and myself were taken aside to an area taboo for girls; probably because it’s hard to look cool in front of the ladies when you are dressing up in skirts and putting on makeup. It was a pretty efficient little powder room under the Papaya tree, it had to be because there were at least 60 Ni-Van dudes from several different villages getting prettied up for the ceremonies. We were last in line but were whisked through in only a few minutes. First stop was the skirting station where we were measured up and outfitted in under a minute, and then we were hustled along to the paint booth.

The women wore elaborate costumes, an explosion of colors and feathers. Separate villagers had different costumes and color schemes. It must be a big party because even the cargo cult guys showed up. It’s a bit of a long storey but in a nut shell the religion started in the 30’s. Followers believe that this American guy named John Frum turned up and promised wealth through cargo if they gave up their Christian teachings and returned to their customary ways. The movement gained steam in the 40’s when a few hundred thousand American troops rooted themselves in Vanuatu during the war and brought along the prophesied “cargo wealth” with them. At last report they are still waiting for John boys triumphant return.

The details of the ceremony were a bit um, detailed and my Bislama still needs a little work but from what I gathered there were two main parties involved. There’s the village our poor little recently circumcised boys belong to (I’ll call them the home team) and another visiting village that married up to one of their girls not too long ago. As custom dictates, when a boy from the home team is eventually circumcised it’s time to pay the piper. They make an elaborate presentation of gifts to the visiting team that kindly took one of the women off their hands. On an aside, the bride price in Vanuatu has been recently capped at 8000 Vatu, about 800 USD. We have it on good accord that you can still pick up a mediocre bride for half that amount though so there are still bargains to be had. In Tana pigs are money, and so are goats, cows, hand woven mats, kava, sugar cane, and reams of cloth. All of these were presented in huge volumes. We helped the home team make 5 piles each 5 feet high made up of the unusual assortment of currencies.

This took about an hour of shuffling back and forth with arm loads of kava, taro root, mats and a bunch of other stuff. Once our heaps were piled up nice and high, stood up to the scrutiny of the elders who checked on things like symmetry, coverage and balance it was time to whack some pigs. We strapped the wailing beasts to bamboo poles and carried them on our shoulders into the presentation area where they were efficiently clubbed to death, much to the delight of the 6 village dogs who greedily lapped up their blood. A couple of cows and some goats soon met a similar fate, perhaps resigned to their fate they managed to go a little more quietly.

When the home team was finally satisfied that their presentation of vegetables, drugs and dead animals was sufficient we marched off in the jungle to collect the boys who had painfully attained their manhood and return them to their wailing mothers. We marched in procession up the muddy little path with the 60 or so village men carrying big sugar cane stocks. After a few circles around the big piles of loot we whapped our sugar cane poles down on top of the piles and commenced with getting our groove on. We tried to keep the beat during an hour of stamping, clapping and hollering. It was a pretty remarkable experience; the ground shook as over a hundred bare feet slapped the ground, synchronized by guttural chants and clapping hands. We made up the inner circle while all the Ni-Van women circled around us flapping their feathers and trying to out-holler the men. Jaime captured a lot of video from the sidelines, over the next couple of months I’ll try to edit the footage down.

My insufficient description of this ceremony would be even less adequate without a mentioning laplap. Taro roots are ground up into a gag inducing gelatinous lump of putty colored gritty goodness; then it’s served up and force fed to unwitting visitors in epic proportions. A gooey taro based paste is put onto leaves and soaked in coconut milk. Pieces of fatty meat are added before it’s wrapped up in more leaves, tied with vines and placed in a ground oven to cook… or more descriptively; congeal.

I was forced to employ a decades old personal strategy; the same one familiar to most 5 year olds looking for a way to deal with unwanted vegetables. My game was fine tuned under the watchful eyes of suspicious parents so worked well in these circumstances. The offending laplap is transported by pocket to a secluded area under the pretext of ‘using the banyon tree’ where it can be safely disposed of. Crude, but it got us through the day without retching or offending our hosts.

Once all the dancing, clapping, stamping, yelling and wailing subsided the offering was apparently complete. It was now up to the visiting team to pack all the loot back up to their village. After chilling with our homies for a while watching the other guys do some work for a change some guy floated the idea of retreating to their namakal for a few shells of kava. We scraped, chewed, spat and slugged a few while Jaime and the ladies sat around in the smoky huts peeling Taro. Jaime learned about a few new taboos, such as having to sit in a ridiculously uncomfortable position while peeling the Taro to ensure that it wasn’t somehow ruined by evil spirits of bad posture or something.

Back in the namakal we learned that guys aren’t all that different wherever you go. Okay, cannibalism only ended here a few decades ago, but their pub is a clearing under a Banyon tree, their beer? Kava of course. We confirmed that a couple of the old timers chilling at this ‘pub’ know whether a human arm or your leg tastes better, but whether it’s a Banyon tree or the Kings Head - spend to long in either location consuming your beverage of cultural norm and you are going to be in trouble when you get back to your hut.

Sometime after dark we loaded ourselves into the back of the ubiquitous Toyota 4X4 and bounced our way back to Port Resolution, heads swimming with the events that unquestionably comprised one of the most extraordinary days of our whole trip.

wednesday july 22^nd 2009 (port resolution, vanuatu)

 Apparently Vanuatu lies squarely on top of something called the Pacific Ring of Fire. There are 9 active volcanoes here; seven on land and two under the sea. Thermal springs are still in common use for cooking food. Today we’ve lined up a trip up to the most famous and easily accessible of these volcanoes, Mt Yasur. At night you can see an orange glow coming from Mt Yasur in the sky, the same orange glow which attracted Captain Cook here to Port Resolution in 1774. When he found out that the glow was coming out of a mountain, he wanted to go and check it out, but the locals forbid it because the place was tabu. Apparently it’s not so tabu anymore or maybe James just didn’t say please, because all we had to do was ask. For 3500VT (about $35) they even arranged a 4x4 to give us a lift up to the top. 

 Late in the afternoon we commenced on another bumpy ride up another narrow winding pot hole infested muddy track. As we progressed slowly towards the volcano we began to notice a farty sulfuric smell sometimes associated with places like this. The vegetation began to thin out and Vanuatu’s typically lush green backdrop was gradually replaced with things more befitting a marsian landscape; big jagged boulders, reddish clay, ground covered with little splintered grey stones. The tracks left by our truck caused the ground to vent some kind of smoke or steam. Patches of mud beside the track hissed, pooped and boiled. It’s not hard to imagine why this place was considered tabu. In fact it’s difficult for me to imagine making this trip without getting the feeling that you are trespassing. We were clearly somewhere violent and inhospitable. Even plants, insects and birds had the good sense to stay away. That’s because nature has a way of telling you when to back off. Rattlesnakes rattle, skunks have a big white stripe so that you don’t mistake them for cats, dogs usually bark or growl before they bite, and so on. It’s the same way with exploding mountains. They graciously bubble, steam, hiss and fart so that we don’t mistake them for mountains of the ordinary non-detonating variety. It did not go unnoticed by me that Stanley, our Ni-Van buddy, hopped out of the truck miles before we smelled the first Yasur farts. Apparently Stanley also had the good sense to heed the warning signs and stay away.

 Near the top the truck finally stopped and we hopped out. It was almost dark, but just light enough to see that we were parked in what looked like a pock marked mortar field. Bomb sized craters were matched in numbers by boulders which ranged in size from soft balls to refrigerators. We were obviously standing well within Mt. Yasur’s range. With absolutely no reason to consider it safe other than knowing that many before us had done the same, we clambered up the side of the slope towards the rim. The air was warm and acrid with ash. We were heading towards something that sounded like a giant pot of boiling pasta. It was only a 10 minute hike before we found ourselves peering over the rim and into the depths of hell, so to speak.

 It was hard to judge distance without the benefit of scale, but the crater looked like it could have been a kilometer across. We were standing on the edge looking down the slope of a huge funnel. No ropes, signs, or railings, just dark grey ash and rock declining at about a 45 degree angle all the way down to a fiery orange hole at the center several hundred feet below. That fiery orange hole is what all the fuss was about and it was the one making the burbling pasta sounds. Apparently 3 people decided to descend the slope last year to get a closer look into that burbling orange hole. Say what you want about them, they aren’t around anymore to defend themselves. It struck me as a bit ironic that after hearing this story we, the rim standers, guffawed at the stupidity of the recently deceased slope descenders while standing on the rim of the same active volcano. Apparently we assured ourselves that by standing here only a couple of hundred yards away from where they were vaporized, we were completely safe and clearly beings of a much superior intelligence. That’s why none of us were ready for the explosion…

 We were just starting to get used to the sights and sounds; taking in the immensity of our vista, the bowel shaking rumbles, the power of this whole thing, when it bloody well exploded! I haven’t been to war, or experienced any significant natural disasters so the closest sound I can think of to compare this explosion to would be an especially loud thunder storm. You feel the sound in your feet first, then your chest, and when it hits your ears you instinctively snap your head back. The pasta hole several hundred feet below us had just spewed a plume of dazzling orange boiling magma. Frozen like deer in headlights we watched flaming molten rocks the size of Volkswagens lift hundreds of feet above our heads in what seemed like slow motion. We continued to watch in a stunned and terrified silence as they gradually arced and then began plummeting back to earth. Each landed with a tremendous “WHUMP!” onto the ashy grey slope beneath our feet. You could feel the concussion of their impacts. They burned brightly as they rolled, slid, and oozed their way back into the hole they came from. Then clouds of dense black smoke filled the crater before being lifted away by the wind once it had cleared the rim. This happened three or four more times in varying degrees of intensity before we lost our nerve and finally descended the slope back to our truck in the dark. Two trip highlights in as many days, not bad!

We were pretty quiet on the way back down to the beach. The whole thing left our spines feeling a little bit chilled. We were nearly blinded walking out from underneath the jungle canopy and into the sun though, the pink sand and blue water waiting there brought us back to our senses.

 Back on the beach I had a chance to ask Thomas about his sand drawing. He said that the people inside that cave we visited died a long time ago. Back then a lot of bad things were happening and so those people weren’t very nice to the white man. Their spirits would understandably be a little surprised and potentially ill humored to see us traipsing around in their burial chamber. The sand drawing was a little heads up for them. It let them know that he had invited us, we were okay and so they should play nice.