There’s a cross in the mast on the phinisi schooner, a traditional Indonesian boat I’m sailing on to the Alor Archipelago. The Ombak Putih, which is the name of the boat and translates to white wave, promises protection as we navigate the rising swell of the Alor Strait. We are the only seafaring vessel heading into waters edged by volcanic masses. In an area dubbed the Last Mile, it feels as if we’re heading towards the edge of the earth. We’re at the mercy of nature as it sends lightning crackles across the night sky, illuminating mounds of steep stratovolcanoes.
The Banda Sea lies to the north of the Alor Archipelago, an area that sees a limited number of visitors each year. It’s easy to understand why – its remote and undeveloped volcanic islands punctuate the ocean like gigantic stepping stones. When joined together they make up a section of the Ring of Fire. Maps show it as a thick red horseshoe of intense volcanic activity following the edge of the Pacific Ocean, as if warning us not to enter.
Our 40-metre, handcrafted vessel seems at home in this rough environment as she pushes the currents aside to reach the islands. As I watch constant flowing plumes of vapour escape from the jagged peaks, I mutter a mantra to the volcanic gods. Most travellers to the Banda Sea stay on liveaboard vessels to dive some of the world’s most vibrant and richly populated coral reefs; few go ashore to meet and spend time with the indigenous tribes and communities that are cut off from mainstream tourism.
Each morning, the crew finds a safe landing spot to go ashore in inflatable boats and visit the remote villages before the heat of the day sets in. They take with them supplies of water filters and solar lights, which help build lasting relationships with the villagers. People from surrounding islands are also employed onboard the boats, presenting them with opportunities rarely available to islanders who only receive basic elementary education. It’s day four of a 12-day cruise and, as our inflatable raft bobs over the white caps, we head towards Alor Island, which, at 2865 square kilometres, is the largest landmass in the Alor Archipelago. The water is fish-tank clear and the soft white sand sparkles at the water’s edge. I have a pinch-myself moment – it’s as if I’m watching a documentary on the best remote getaways on a big screen.
“Try the welcome of the betel nut. But don’t swallow – spit it out,” our guide Arie Pagaka warns us with a knowing grin as we land on the beach. “The Abui tribe will perform the lego-lego dance around the mesbah. It is unique to Alor.” He explains the mesbah is like an altar that represents the community; it’s the heartbeat of the village.
After an hour’s car journey, navigating snaking bends close to the cliff’s edge, we arrive at the tiny village of Takpala. In bare feet, the chief and his wife walk over jagged rocks to greet us dressed in traditional ikat cloth and wearing elaborate feathered headdresses. His wife, revered for her position, immediately stages a tribal dance to ask the ancestors for a blessing for her village.
Performing tribal dances has become a way of maximising the tourist dollar here. The harsh environment of the region offers little opportunity for income, and the people rely upon a trade of almonds, mung beans, cloves and corn.
As if under a spell, we quietly follow the elders into their village. The older women begin to sing in low harmonic voices as they stamp the earth with bangled feet while they head towards the mesbah, their arms interlocked behind one another in unity. The ritual is trance-like – they stomp one foot in, one foot out, kicking up dust as each generation joins the circle.
When the singing halts, there is no noise except the rhythmic rattle of bangles clanging together. The raw, deep, guttural singing of the chief suddenly interrupts, turning my skin to goose bumps as his powerful voice stirs deep emotions. They move together as if they are preserving their culture from the influences of the outside world.
The heads of the village then perform a short, intense war dance, where they charge at each other bearing teeth and spears followed by hollering and jumping skywards to show off their agility and power – they remind me of two dominant lions fighting over females on the savanna. The chief, Abner Yetimau, approaches me with an intense gaze, causing my body to stiffen. When his mouth breaks into an irresistible smile, I visibly relax. He wants to tell me about his village. Not one to turn down a chief, I sit alongside him and listen. Abner, 53, has been head of the village since 1984 and takes his role very seriously. He tells me their ‘government’ is made up of eight members who discuss tribal affairs, like marriage, trading goods and their spiritual duties around the mesbah, which is where they make all the important village decisions.
“Every July, when it’s dry,” he points to the rugged uninviting mountain, “I climb up to the top, I stay at night to pray, and make wish for two days.” He rolls a cigarette and I wait for him to continue. “Our old village used to be there, my ancestors are there in the sacred land – I talk with them.” He takes a puff on his cigarette, slowly blowing out smoke. “The spirits control our earth, they watch over us. I ask them for guidance on how to be the best chief.” He turns to me, flashing his infectious grin.
I ask Abner if he performs healing on his people, and he describes a ritual I have not previously witnessed. As chief, he will swirl water around his mouth, proceeding to blow a stream over his patients while saying secret, magical words. He will also touch the person to feel their symptoms and their bodily vibrations, and perform a sort of hands-on healing. Abner goes back into deep thought as we discuss his role as chief. He pushes his chest out. “I like the honour and the respect.” He emanates unquestionable power and I can’t imagine anyone disagreeing with him.
One of Abner’s duties is to communicate with the spirits as to where each house is built within the village. They have to be certain there are no bones where the foundations are laid, as this could disturb the spirits. As chief, his family has the most important house with four floors. He invites me in, wanting to give me the grand tour.
The ground floor is an open-air communal space, the hub of the home, where guests are greeted and strong thick coffee is served on a packed mud floor. The second has the bedroom and kitchen area. It’s a tight dark squeeze to clamber up a narrow ladder, but each level offers a different view. The third stores rice, cassava and corn, while the top floor protects the weapons and valuable moko drums. Thought to originate from Indochina, the drums are a part of a wife’s dowry. The distinct artwork, which features on every drum, represents Ramayana, the famous Hindu love story. They are considered a prized possession as they are no longer produced and are worth a substantial amount of money.
On my descent, a gecko shoots across the wall to a far corner. The chief’s wife gives the thumbs-up sign in front of a broad grin filled with red, betel-nut-stained teeth. Apparently a lizard spotted in the right corner is a sign of good luck, but if it pops up in the wrong corner, it’s a bad omen.
On our descent through dotted mountainside villages, I silently wish the western world could bottle some of the community spirit I’ve experienced here.
We are welcomed back on the deck of the schooner with cooling face cloths and a buffet lunch of king prawns, chicken kebabs, tasty Indonesian salads and spruced-up rice dishes. I can’t help but compare the obvious imbalance of the scales, but the Abui people have taught me that richness encompasses so much more than material wealth.
That afternoon we mask up with snorkel gear, jump back in the inflatables and head into the crystal waters. The vibrant colours of the tropical fish mirror a colour-by-numbers drawing – each brush stroke neatly kept within the lines. I’m so absorbed in the addictive underwater world, I have to remind myself to look up to check I’m still with the group – it’s easy to lose a sense of time and direction when nature is putting on a top-class show.
That night, I stretch out on a day bed on the deck of the schooner’s stern watching the sun slip below the horizon as we sail on to our next destination. There’s no storm or swell, just the swish of the ocean lapping gently against the side of the hull, lulling us into a new day and another place, where we’ll again be immersed in an untouched culture far off the beaten grid.
On Svalbard, the remote Norwegian archipelago halfway between Europe and the North Pole, it’s illegal to die. Which, for most travellers, of course, isn’t a deal breaker. In fact, it could be reassuring bearing in mind this is the land of the polar bear. It’s also forbidden, my guide was telling me, to leave the settlement without a gun in case you run into a spot of bear-shaped bother.
I am on a cheery whistle-stop tour of the main settlement, Longyearbyen, before joining my ship for a two-week Arctic voyage around this glacier-fringed, far-flung outpost and the east coast of Greenland with wilderness experts Aurora Expeditions.
The extreme below-zero temperatures are the reason for the death ban – the corpses don’t decompose. Scientists exhuming bodies two decades ago collected live samples of the influenza virus, which wiped out five per cent of the planet’s population in 1918. Add the threat of avalanches, permanent darkness for four months of the year and the fact that 60 per cent of the land mass is glacier, 27 per cent bare rock and only 13 per cent vegetation. Life here is tough.
But to visit? Svalbard has a surreal appeal and a desolate, spellbinding beauty. This is life on the edge. Think Twin Peaks or the twilight world of eerie Nordic noir thriller Fortitude, which was, in fact, set in Svalbard, although it was filmed in Iceland.
The brightly coloured wooden houses are built on stilts to preserve the permafrost, northern lights viewing is big business, you can go dog-sledding, bask in the midnight sun during summer and the stellar wildlife-watching isn’t a hard sell. I wander through Longyearbyen’s award-winning museum for a crash course on the archipelago’s geology, flora and fauna until it’s time to board the boat.
On this occasion, I’m travelling on the Polar Pioneer, a Soviet-era research vessel that will retire with Aurora Expeditions at the end of 2019. The purpose-built, state-of-the-art, ice-class expedition vessel, the Greg Mortimer (named after the company’s co-founder), will replace her for future expeditions, offering a ship with green credentials and a patented X-bow design for added stability as it slices through polar seas. After more than 27 years pioneering small group adventures across the planet’s wildest locations, the future for Aurora Expeditions is greener, sleeker and a good deal swankier than its predecessors.
Life onboard is relaxed and the voyage begins with team introductions, from expedition leader Dr Gary Miller, the Russian crew, the naturalists and the photography and kayaking guides. There’s also the compulsory polar bear safety and environmental briefings, lifeboat drills and crucial seasickness advice from the ship’s doctor, before we cast off for Isfjord under baby blue skies.
Each morning the Puffin Post, slotted through the cabin doors, outlines the plan for the day – including Zodiac cruises and beach landings – along with a recap of the previous day’s highlights, the ship’s position, a useful Russian phrase and an inspiring quote. It’s the only form of news you get after the
Longyearbyen 4G falls away, forcing you into a digital detox.
Our voyage offers two days to explore Svalbard’s northwest coast and fjords – it is a great taster of the archipelago, and we manage to cram in a smorgasbord of highlights.
Bundled up like Michelin men, we clamber down the gangway at Kongsbreen for our first Zodiac cruise. The water is the colour of a cappuccino, bobbing with brash ice and playful bearded seals, and the mountains that surround the glacier are a rusty red Devonian sandstone. At Ossian Sarsfjellet we land on the shore then hike up a hill as Svalbard reindeer graze the slopes.
The mist-wreathed island of Ytre Norskøya was once a hub for the Dutch whaling industry in the 17th century, when the waters ‘boiled’ with bowhead whales. Skirting around piles of rocks, makeshift graves above the frozen ground and a Zealander’s ancient skull, we wander across the mossy tundra.
As we tramp uphill a family of arctic foxes scampers across the slope, while over the cliff’s edge we spy perky puffins perched precariously on a narrow ledge.
Sailing on to Hamiltonbukta, the Zodiac cruise takes us past cliffs of cacophonous guillemots before edging towards the face of a glacier as huge chunks of ice crash into the water. The crackling sound of the radio fills the cold air as we fill sacks with old fishing nets and plastics for the Clean Up Svalbard initiative. It’s the news we’d all been waiting for – a yacht anchored in a nearby fjord has spotted a mother polar bear and her cub sleeping on the tundra.
It’s our first polar bear sighting for this trip. With binoculars, and an air of excitement, we scour the slope, only just able to make out a buttery smudge against the scree. All too soon, it’s time to leave, the captain pointing our bow across the ocean to Greenland.
Our days at sea are filled with lectures and photography workshops. Biologist Ryan Burner gives a presentation on bird migration. Huddled in the lecture theatre we learn about the arctic tern, the mightiest migrant, which travels from pole to pole each year, escaping the Arctic winter for balmier southern summer seas.
Naturalist Roger Kirkwood spins tales of Arctic marine mammals and our impact on them, from the times of whalers, sealers and walrus-hunters to current-day environmental factors. These accounts feature animals like the Greenland shark, which can live for up to 500 years, and hooded seals, which we’d seen lounging on ice floes. I learn that the male hooded seal inflates a red septum out of one nostril to attract a female. It sounds like quite the party trick.
The crossing is mercifully calm, the sea flat and glassy, with a cold current creating an eerie Arctic phenomenon: a fogbow, which is a white arc infused with light. Through the haze, Greenland makes its appearance.
The world’s largest non-continental island sprawls over 2,165,000 square kilometres, 80 per cent of it ice cap. In terms of scale it’s off the charts. Greenland’s fjords are sailed by glacial bergs the size of skyscrapers, while the trees – dwarf birch and arctic willow – are just centimetres high.
Our first landing is at the aptly named Myggebugta, or Mosquito Bay, a Sirius Patrol hut standing sentinel on the shore. Founded during the Second World War to defend northeast Greenland, the sledge patrol was made up of nine Danes, one Norwegian and two Greenlanders. It was disbanded at the end of the war but reinstated in 1950 by the Danish government. Today, its role is military surveillance and policing the Northeast Greenland National Park.
After a quick snoop around the wooden hut we set off across tundra sown with blooming bog saxifrage and up hills in search of musk ox, shaggy relics of the last ice age and Greenland’s largest grazing mammal. Our guides are armed in case we happen across polar bears, and our eyes are on high alert for any sign of animal life. Insects, however, are the only other creatures we find as we reach the summit. With the sun beating down on us, we take a moment to observe the peaceful panorama of the bay below.
The ship drifts through a sun-kissed afternoon to Kap Humboldt where we find a trapper’s hut, ransacked by a polar bear, and then on to Blomsterbugten, or Flower Bay, where we spot wolf tracks and the remnants of fox traps left by Norwegian hunters. But it’s not until we reach Nanortalik’s paleo-eskimo site that we spot a lone musk ox, which bolts like a shaggy mammoth across a carpet of billowing bog cotton. These primeval creatures once roamed as far south as Kansas, but now natural populations can only be found in northern Canada and Greenland. Hoping to track down a herd, we walk across the tussocky tundra, trying to stay down wind until, hunkering down in the grass, we gaze on a grazing herd. We hardly dare to breathe.
Icebergs aren’t nearly as hard to find. In Scoresbysund, the world’s largest fjord system, a labyrinth of waterways, we cruise through Iceberg Alley near Rode Island. It’s a jaw-dropping spectacle of soaring pillars, arches and ice caves, sculpted into outlandish shapes.
We’re anchoring off Ittoqqortoormiit, home to 350 east Greenlanders and around 100 sled dogs. The town was built in 1924 by a Dane, Ejnar Mikkelsen, before Greenlanders from the village of Ammasalik, 800 kilometres south, arrived to settle the area a year later.
Hunting was originally the mainstay of its economy, but now the village relies on tourism (there’s a small museum and guesthouse, which offers dog sled tours, hiking and fishing trips), although locals still export sealskin and polar bear pelts. Hunting restrictions are in place but the village has a quota of 35 polar bears a year.
We’re starting to develop berg-blindness and have overdosed on ice, but we’re not prepared to give up on sighting a bear up close. “It’s not over till it’s over,” Gary reminds us.
And he’s right. At 5.30am on our last morning his voice crackles over the intercom: “We have bears! Zodiacs launching in 30 minutes.”
Scrambling out of our bunks, we grab our life jackets and make our way on deck, and there, lumbering along the shore, is a polar bear drama unfolding. A large male is chasing off a younger bear, while a mother and two cubs run in the other direction.
It’s a pinch-yourself, lump-in-the-throat moment – the best day of the expedition. Puttering around Rømer Fjord in Zodiacs, we watch the bears pick at a narwhal carcass left on the shore by hunters. We keep a safe distance, but when a bear decides to take a swim, it makes the kayakers work hard to avoid doing the same. By the end of the day, the bear count reaches a greedy seven.
The next morning’s Puffin Post fittingly quotes an excerpt from Polar Bears by Dr Ian Stirling: “A wild polar bear is the Arctic incarnate. The Arctic is not a forsaken wasteland to a polar bear, it’s home.” And one that we have been privileged to share.
As I climb the stairs to the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, the stone theatre located southwest of the Acropolis, about 30 people – pagan celebrators – are putting the finishing touches on their tight-fitting costumes. Some are satyrs; others are dressed as Bacchides or in maenad costumes. Most are sporting Dionysian masks, some with pointy horns. Both men and women wear furry boots and wreaths of ivy, but it’s the male pagan outfits that come with a distinguishing addition – a leather phallus is tied around their pelvises. It’s a somewhat obscene look that enhances the sight of the colossal bright red and leatherbound phallic-shaped pole that stands before a cheeky figurehead of the Greek god Dionysus.
This is all part of Falliforia, a wild celebration thrown by the paganist communities of Athens to honour Dionysus, the half-man, half-goat god of wine, theatre, fertility, religious ecstasy and orgiastic joy. It’s a yearly festival held at the end of each winter that turns the historic centre of the city into an unhinged inferno.
“The phallus is not just the male part,” says Manthos, a pensive man with a grey mane of hair. He is a leading member of the Labrys religious community, the Greek polytheistic group behind Falliforia, a procession honouring freedom and rebellion, solidarity and joy, fertility and hedonic mania, and the Dionysian spirit.
“The phallus symbolises fertility, the vigour of life,” continues Manthos, who has been disguising himself as a satyr for every Falliforia festival since 2013. “This is where all carnivals started, even the Rio one,” he adds while a Bacchis butts in, holding a plate full of raisins. Apparently, these were the favourite snack of Dionysus, to whom ancient Greek mythology attributes the birth of the grapevine.
Falliforia literally means to carry a penis and is a religious celebration dating back 2500 years. In classical Greece, worshippers of the goat-footed god Pan wore masks, brandished torches and wooden sticks adorned with leather phalluses, danced like demons, and drank until they dropped to commemorate the triumph of spring over winter and the resurrection of nature.
The blood of the festival-goers is now boiling. Young maenads are banging drums and mature animal-print–wearing shepherds are playing their bagpipes. Dionysus worshippers gather, as do a potpourri of curious locals and tourists from all corners of the world.
“Hail, Bacchus,” the revellers chant, forming a tight circle around the master phallus while stomping their feet. Manthos, now arch-satyr, drops wine in front of the Dionysus xoanon (a wooden image of a Greek deity), and a man wearing a Bacchus mask burns incense. The procession commences through the historic city centre, with four men holding a rope stretcher the titanic phallus temporarily rests upon. First stop, the Acropolis Museum.
“Everything well?” asks a sassy satyr, putting his hands uninvited around my shoulders as I stand in front of the parade to take photos. Another satyr offers a posh-looking lady, who probably just happens by chance to be in the vicinity of the acclaimed museum with her husband, a wooden stick upon which a particular male organ hangs from the top. “No, thanks,” the lady nonchalantly answers, while the glasses-wearing husband tries to conceive what just happened. A few Bacchi chase two young girls, who scurry away, laughing, while a couple of Dionysians lightheartedly threaten a middle-age man idling on a bench at the foot of the Parthenon with penises made of plastic. Indecently teasing the passers-by is part of the ritual.
“It is not about obscenity,” says Vasilis, a polytheist assuming the identity of – you guessed it – a satyr. “It is the Dionysian mania and its scoptic character.”
For the next five hours or so, the nostalgia-riddled centre of Athens transforms into a demented yet luring asylum. Bystanders better get used to it.
In front of the Acropolis Museum, the porters of the master phallus carefully prop it up for worshippers to gather around. It’s time for the first Kordakas dance. Kordakas is an ancient Greek comedy dance believed to have first appeared in Greek playwright Aristophanes’ comedy, The Clouds, in 423BCE. The etymology of the word Kordakas stems from the Greek infinitive kordakizein, which means, sarcastically, to blow your own trumpet. As a dance, it is inherently provocative and salacious, but at the same time humorous, and is thought to be the predecessor of the famous tsifteteli dance, a rhythmic, lustful jig that has predominantly been associated with Anatolia and the Balkans.
Alongside the lewd jerk of the thighs, the Kordakas dance demands revellers must also sing the gamotragouda, a selection of Greek folk songs with intense sexual content that “survived Christian influence”, says Vasilis.
Falliforia merrymakers then weave their way through the cobblestone alleys of Plaka, commonly known as the Cyclades of Athens (the district of Gods), showering dumbstruck tourists with wine and fake penises. Onlookers respond with a barrage of smartphone photos. When the frenzied march reaches Avissinias Square, the focal point of the Baroque Monastiraki neighbourhood, the phallus being hauled on the backs of the masked rabble-rousers is erected once again, as the Kordakas dance and gamotragouda songs are performed with enough gusto to shake the spirits. The scene is surreal. Monastiraki is famous for its flea markets, but it’s also a hot spot of friction.
Situated in the heart of Athens, Monastiraki’s Avissinias Square is where everybody – the trendiest local hipsters going clubbing in the nearby Psyrri district, Latin street dancers basking in attention, international socialites craving a taste of Greek folk, recently displaced refugees and migrants from Muslim countries puzzling over the European way of life – meets. Imagine what happens when you mix all these with deranged satyrs in front of Panagia Pantanassa, a Byzantine church, one of the oldest in Athens and a landmark on Avissinias Square.
It’s now about 10pm, and the Falliforia parade heads back towards the Odeon of Herodes Atticus. This year the festival will conclude with a hymn expressing devotion to the gods – all 12 of them – and the removal of the Dionysian masks, which will be deposited under the nose of the Dionysus xoanon.
Kiki and Maria, two prepossessing Bacchides, hold on to their masks, stating
the festival fills them with joy. “I feel connected to nature, to my true self,” says Kiki, a petite and curly-haired woman, who works as a public servant by day. “It’s the reversal of identities,” adds Maria, who studies history and archaeology. They both agree the Dionysian mask does not hide but rather releases their true self, and they can’t stress this message enough.
“Falliforia is about fertility, the victory of spring over winter,” reiterates Patronios, a chubby man who has not missed the festival for 10 years. “It is about nature’s virality.” Patronios’s huge grin can both entertain and swallow you, and he may have drunk one too many glasses – a bottle, perhaps – of wine. But there is no residual guilt, because every reveller lived it up today. After all, their god Dionysus has blessed the rampage.
It’s the Earth, but not like I’ve ever seen it before. My paddling is erratic with no discernible rhythm, probably because I’m distracted ogling the dazzling shades of blue. Tropical waters stretch away from me in every direction, my line of sight broken only by an occasional limestone island topped with tangled jungle. From water level, the sky and ocean both seem absurdly big, peacefully joining at the horizon everywhere I look.
The silence is almost complete, save for the light slap of water against my kayak and the chatter of seabirds as they pass close over my head. Beneath the surface of the water, corals are clearly visible and I can pick out certain fish species – the turquoise of a moon wrasse, iridescent flashes of fusiliers in the sun. Exploring by kayak is prompting an unfamiliar sensation. Rather than observing nature as an outsider, I feel as though I might actually be part of it.
Guide Nathan Wilbur leads my group to a picture-perfect sandbank, just high enough to protrude from the sea at low tide. After gliding in safely over the reef, kayaks are hauled onto the golden sand and I imagine we’ve discovered our own island.
I’m in an archipelago in Indonesia’s far eastern province of West Papua. Raja Ampat is considered one of the last frontiers for diving and with good reason. The island chain is the richest marine environment in the world, boasting 75 per cent of the world’s coral species, 1700 species of fish, five types of sea turtles, 13 dolphin and whale species and even two types of manta ray.
Situated at a meeting point of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, this part of the ocean is subject to roaring tidal currents. They are laden with the planktonic larvae that are the basis of Raja Ampat’s underwater riches. Diverse habitats – coral reefs, mangroves, seagrass beds, limestone caves and 1500 islands – occur here. According to scientist Mark Erdmann of Conservation International, these factors combine to make Raja Ampat a “species factory”, and new scientific discoveries transpire regularly. Just last year, a fisherman reeled in (from a depth of 300 metres) a metre-long coelacanth, a species considered a living fossil.
Although the island of Papua is Australia’s nearest major land mass, expect a journey to Raja Ampat to take two or three days. I reach the gateway town of Sorong on a direct four-hour flight from Jakarta, but other visitors come from Bali with a middle-of-the-night stop in Makassar on Sulawesi. After overnighting in Sorong, I board a two-hour boat transfer to my small dive resort. Those staying at homestays take a ferry to Raja Ampat’s biggest town, Waisai, then transfer to smaller boats.
Isolation has largely protected Raja Ampat, which is a latecomer to the tourism party. In the past few years, however, tourism has boomed. Just 2000 visitors arrived in 2008. In 2017, according to Indonesian government statistics, that number had grown to an estimated 30,000 visitors, prompting concern from many that the area’s fragile environment may be threatened by the transitory population boom.
Most travellers arrive on liveaboard dive boats, owned by foreigners and staffed by Indonesians from distant provinces. So far, little tourism benefit has flowed to the Papuans, the islands’ original inhabitants. Many are poor, scratching a living from fishing, with an estimated 20 per cent of the locals living in poverty.
This is where not-for-profit Kayak4Conservation, which links tourists directly to local Papuan guides for multi-day adventures, comes in. Dutchman Max Ammer is behind the organisation and is also the founder of two low-key diving resorts on Kri Island – the rustic Kri Eco Resort and the relatively upmarket Sorido Bay Resort, where I am staying.
He explains his concerns about the methods used to conserve the Raja Ampat Marine Protected Area. Tourists pay a park entrance fee the equivalent of AU$94. Some of this money compensates locals so they care for nearshore reefs and keep their villages spick and span. But it doesn’t create employment prospects. “The government is handing out a lot of money, and to me this is destroying the people,” Max explains. “We do it the other way around – if they want to work, we give them a chance.”
Kayak4Conservation was established in 2012. Local Papuans were trained in fibreglassing skills and, using a donated South African kayak mould, built a fleet of 11 single and four double kayaks. Local men were trained to guide tourists through the labyrinth of spectacular islands, stopping at world-class snorkelling and jungle sights along the way.
Max scoped possible waypoints for overnight stays, and landowners were offered microloans to build traditional guesthouses or homestays. Hosts supply tourists with simple Papuan-style huts and home-cooked meals, but they also protect the immediate environment.
The organisation now employs seven local guides and nine homestays are involved in the project. The funds are helping families generate a sustainable income, moving away from pursuits such as shark-finning, bird poaching and logging. “Before, maybe these guides could earn $150 a month,” Max explains. “Now, sometimes, it’s possible to make that in a day.” He says the direct connection to the project is key: “If it’s your homestay, you take care of it because guests are coming and you want it to look good.”
I’m desperate to get out in a kayak, and Max directs me to Nathan, manager of Kayak4Conservation. I find him near the organisation’s guesthouse, putting the final touches on a new hut set in the trees by the beach. Kayakers typically spend a night here before and after their trip, with some also adding on a diving package at a nearby resort.
Nathan and I chat about why guests would travel for two or three days to come here to kayak, rather than go somewhere easier to reach. He points out Raja Ampat’s unique offerings – things that just don’t exist elsewhere. For some people, being off the grid in the wilderness is exactly what they crave. It makes sense to me. During my stay, I’m doing short, single-day excursions and taking a boat to explore some of the other highlights on the various kayak itineraries.
The kayak embarkation point is Kri Island, which boasts some of the best dive and snorkel sites in the world. In fact, dive site Cape Kri holds the world record for the most fish species counted in one dive, with 374 species recorded by scientist Dr Gerry Allen.
As well as underwater marvels, kayakers can find strange mammals in the rainforests. On Kri, a resident wild cuscus occasionally shows up at Sorido Bay Resort’s open-air restaurant. He dangles from the rafters by his tail with an outstretched paw, begging for a banana or two. Closer to the Kayak4Conservation guesthouse, a tree kangaroo that lives in the vicinity is often sighted.
The islands are replete with birds. Striking black-and-white radjah shelducks amble along beaches, imperial spice pigeons coo in treetops and bright red eclectus parrots squawk as they flit from tree to tree.
The red bird-of-paradise and Wilson’s bird-of-paradise are both endemic here. Kayak4Conservation trips can include a guided hike to a special tree to observe one of nature’s most flamboyant courtship displays, although on my visit it was sadly not date night for the birds-of-paradise.
One of the first stops on a kayak trip is a famous sandbank, Manta Sandy. Manta rays reliably congregate here, waiting for obliging cleaner fish to remove any parasites. Snorkelling on the top of the water, I squeal with delight as one majestic manta then another materialises from the plankton soup, banking and wheeling beneath me like underwater eagles.
At a homestay at nearby Arborek Village, I meet a group of three Papuan girls. Seemingly shy at first, a few smiles soon become giggles. “What’s your name?” one of them then asks. I snorkel under Arborek Jetty, mentally congratulating the community for protecting this reef. Bumphead parrotfish pass by, grazing on corals like a herd of wildebeest. A giant cuttlefish flashes colour signals at me that I think I’m supposed to understand.
On the island of Gam, Hidden Bay is kayak heaven. A narrow opening in the coastline becomes a kilometres-long ocean inlet offering a maze of limestone cliffs and islands. The flow of water and crashing of waves has undercut many limestone outcrops, creating mushroom-shaped islands with dainty orchids clinging to vertical walls. Mangrove trees line the water’s edge, their stilt-like roots intertwined with bright soft corals.
Kayakers, snorkellers and divers all visit the Passage, a narrow channel separating the sheer walls of Gam and Waigeo Islands. It’s only 20 metres wide in parts, and ripping tidal currents make it more like a surging jungle river than ocean. Secret caves and massive giant fan corals in improbable colours abound.
Nearby, I visit Kayak4Conservation’s Warikaf Homestay for lunch. This tiny overwater guesthouse sits below a mountain in a secluded bay, hidden from the world by a well-placed island. I’m offered a shower from a hose fed by a gushing mountain stream. On the peak of a hill sits a wooden viewing platform that promises postcard vistas.
With these compelling reasons to explore here, I’m not surprised to meet an overjoyed Kayak4Conservation customer. A tall German man, Thorsten Schmidt, face glowing from days of sunshine, beaches his kayak and hurries up to Nathan. “I’ve been trying to reach you but there is no phone signal,” he gushes. He gestures to his guide, Yesaya Demas. “Can I borrow this guy for a few extra days? I’m due to finish today but I really want to keep paddling.” Unfortunately, Yesaya is in demand and Thorsten has to stick with his original booking.
Yesaya is a quietly spoken man from Arborek Island. He explains to me he can make more money as a kayak guide than as a deckhand or fisherman, and this helps his family live better. He shyly says he is proud to be showing tourists his beautiful island home.
Thorsten describes the serenity of independent ocean travel. “Being in the kayaks with just Yesaya was completely magic,” he says. “You’re out of civilisation. It’s quiet – just you and the nature. We saw everything – coral reefs, Napoleon wrasse, and manta rays even swam beneath us.”
It’s a sentiment echoed by Max. “Sometimes people kayak with whales,” he says. “It’s common to see things here that you would normally never see.” But he’s preaching to the converted, and before I start the long journey home, I assure him I’ll be back for a longer kayak trip to experience this place at its magical best.
Akko has the habit of getting older every year, but by 40 years.” Uri Jeremias, our host for tonight’s dinner and a man who looks as much like Santa Claus as any I’ve ever met, pauses like he’s waiting for us to solve his riddle. “When I started this restaurant in Akko 21 years ago, it was declared as 4500 years of living history, now it’s 5300!” He laughs, his long grey beard grazing his round belly. We clink glasses of Israeli chenin blanc in appreciation.
This is the last in a long line of impressive Akko (also known as Acre) facts Jeremias has been telling us as we’ve dined with him in his famed seafood restaurant Uri Buri, housed in an old Turkish stone mansion looking across to the Mediterranean Sea. Over the past two hours, as we’ve devoured his deliciously fresh and uncomplicated seafood dishes, Jeremias has told us that this small Israeli port city is a perfect example of co-existence. It’s where Jews, Arabs, Christians and Baha’í live and work peacefully together, without tension and almost no police or army presence – a rarity in Israel.
He has also told us that Akko is surrounded by excellent small farms and wineries, creating the high-quality produce and unique flavours that are putting Israel so firmly on the foodie map. It’s surrounded by stunning national parks and is historically rich too, he tells us, holding remains of Crusader towns dating back as far as 1104.
I understand all the convincing. After all, Akko is located in northern Israel’s Galilee region, where travel advisory sites will warn you to exercise a high degree of caution when visiting. It’s just a 20-minute drive from the heavily fortified Lebanese border and off the track beaten of most Holy Land tourists. Jeremias has already outlined how difficult it can be to promote international tourism to a region where the travel warnings are severe, and from where news stories in the international media are almost entirely bad. And yet, just one afternoon in Akko has already rendered any winning-over unnecessary. We’re completely smitten, and convinced that this northern region just might be one of Israel’s best-kept secrets.
Admittedly, these feelings have so far largely been induced by the charms of the Efendi Boutique Hotel. Also owned by Jeremias, the 12-room hotel is one of Israel’s most luxurious, a merging of two Ottoman-era palaces, that Jeremias spent eight years painstakingly restoring and converting with the help of Israel’s Antiquities Authority. After arriving earlier in the afternoon and admiring the meticulously restored ceiling frescoes, the 400-year-old Turkish bath and the Crusader-era wine cellar and bar, my travel companion and I headed straight up to the breezy rooftop terrace for a sundowner. The Mediterranean Sea was winking at us from a few hundred metres away. The Muslim call to prayer was ringing out around us. We looked out over the crowns of the city’s mosques, synagogues, churches and Baha’i temples and raised our glasses to unity. To finding, in a country largely identified by its divisions and conflicts, a place where different cultures and faiths live peacefully side by side.
As morning dawns, we step out onto the dishevelled cobbled streets of the fortified old city and wander through winding alleyways lined with ancient sandstone buildings, their window frames painted green and blue, washing flapping from lines strung across their facades. We pass Muslim women in head scarves and street signs written in Arabic, a just-married Christian couple having their wedding photos taken by the seafront, and smiling, wizened fishermen hawking their wares from hole-in-the-wall shopfronts. We peer into Ottoman-era granite caravanserai and through carvings in the ancient stone ramparts to the roiling green sea, and get turned around in the zig-zagging alleyways of the market, filled with the scent of spices and cardamom coffee, freshly smashed tahini and frying fish.
It’s a fascinating insight into Akko’s cultural fusion, and Jeremias was right; we haven’t seen a single gun-toting soldier all morning, a ubiquitous sight in other parts of Israel including the tourist hubs of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
The most intriguing side of Akko, however, and one of the main reasons why its old city became Israel’s first UNESCO World Heritage site back in 2001, lies beneath our feet. Escaping the fierce midday sun, we make our way underground into the 350-metre-long Templars’ Tunnel. Created in the 12th century by the Knights Templar, it strategically connected their main fortress in the west to the city’s port in the east. Walking through the dimly lit stone passageway in the footsteps of the Crusaders is an extraordinary experience, and one that truly drives home the idea that this is one of the oldest living cities on the planet.
Soon, it’s time to farewell Akko and drive into the Upper Galilee to our next destination, Safed. We’re not quite ready to farewell the Mediterranean Sea yet though, so we take a detour along the coast to the Lebanese border. There, set into the cliffs hovering above the sea, we discover the Rosh Hanikra grottoes. A small red cable car takes us down to the caves, which have been naturally carved into the cliffs by the forces of the sea over millions of years. We wander through a network of tunnels linking the caves, stopping every few metres to watch the green ocean slapping up against the stark white chalk cliffs. It’s hypnotising and also a little strange, watching something so peaceful in a place just 100 metres away from where the 34-day Lebanon War raged over a decade ago.
The sun is starting to set by the time we arrive in Safed. A golden glow is sweeping through the town’s biscuit-coloured stone alleyways, setting the stained-glass windows that characterise the town ablaze. By happy chance our arrival in the city, a centre of Kabbalah Jewish mysticism since the 16th century and one of Judaism’s four holiest cities, has landed on a Saturday, the Jewish Shabbat day of rest. The town’s boutiques, restaurants and art galleries are all closed for the day, giving us the perfect opportunity to watch the quiet streets fill with devout local families strolling after synagogue. We walk along with them, passing men dressed in heavy black coats and rabbit fur hats with tight, shiny ringlets hanging by their ears. The women are in turbans, modest blouses and ankle-skimming skirts, many trailed by four or more children. It’s quiet; the air is still. We agree that this place seems touched by a special energy, but the atheists among us decide it probably has something to do with Safed being the highest town in Israel. A few hours later, however, we find ourselves on the rooftop of our guesthouse, chatting to the devout owner who has other ideas.
“There’s a reason why the energy in Safed is so special,” he tells us, nodding his head towards the mountains spreading out before us.
“The famous second-century Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, who wrote the Zohar (the chief work of the Kabbalah), was buried in that mountain over there. So, they say Safed has geula, or redemptive energy and light, coming down to it from heaven.”
Whether or not we believe in the geula, it has played a part in drawing spiritual seekers to Safed since the 16th century. Back then, Sephardic rabbis, sages and poets escaping the Spanish inquisition settled here, making it a destination for Jews wishing to get a blessing or advice from the rabbis, and giving the city a unique, bohemian character. Today this atmosphere remains and continues to draw not only Kabbalists and new-age hippie types, but also many artists and creatives.
In the town’s Artist Quarter, we spend hours exploring the dozens of small art galleries and craft boutiques, selling everything from handmade candles and jewellery to weavings and ceramics, scattered among the synagogues. When the heat of the day gets too much, we take the 20-minute drive to the Sea of Galilee, Israel’s biggest freshwater lake and the place where Jesus supposedly walked on water. The lake’s circumference is dotted with Christian holy sites, including the Mount of Beatitudes and the ancient village of Capernaum, and numerous small beaches. We stop at one called Hukuk, laying our towels out under the palm trees, surrounded by dozens of picnicking Arab families.
A lazy afternoon of slipping in and out of the water and reading on the grass ensues. We don’t see a single foreign tourist the whole time, nor do we when we arrive back in Safed for a sunset dinner at Gan Eden mountaintop restaurant. As we nibble tasty fish kebabs and charred eggplant salad accompanied by crisp Israeli chardonnay that golden light is thrown over the mountains once more.
Wine has been produced in the region since ancient times, but it’s only in recent years that the country has become known for its thriving wine economy. Of the its five wine regions, the Galilee’s high elevation, hot days, cool nights and well-drained soils make it the most suited to grape growing. As we drive further north, we pass through rolling hills covered in vineyards, that sit alongside orchards and cattle ranches. When we reach the Golan Heights, the closest area in Israel to the Syrian border, we also start to see abandoned Syrian bunkers and tanks. They’re sombre reminders of the tumultuous history of this area.
Conflict, however, feels worlds away as we start our hike through the Yehudiya Forest Nature Reserve. The rocky terrain is carpeted with dry yellow grasses, stocky olive trees and the remainder of spring’s purple globe thistle flowers. It is beautiful in that raw, elemental way Israeli landscapes often are. After 90 minutes of sweaty hiking, the earth finally splits open and drops into a lush canyon, from the bottom of which a deep natural pool beckons. As soon as we reach its banks we throw our sweat-soaked bodies into the cool water, and swim surrounded by hundreds of hexagonal basalt columns formed from lava flows millions of years ago. It’s otherworldly.
Afterwards, we lay out on the smooth rocks under oleander trees heavy with pink flowers. Aside from a lone park ranger quietly building a small rock cairn by the shore, we’re the only ones here. We wonder why, for perhaps the tenth time since arriving in northern Israel four days ago, this region isn’t crawling with tourists. For the moment, though, we’re glad we have it all to ourselves.
I’ve only been among the Ik people for a couple of hours but anything is starting to seem believable.
Mzee Mateus Yeya Acok, a headman in Uganda’s most mysterious tribe, is sitting outside the hyena-proof stockade that surrounds Nalemoru Village. Perched on a windswept ridge high above Uganda’s beautiful Kidepo Valley National Park, Nalemoru, which means ‘village on a highpoint’ in the Ik language, is well named.
In 1972 the Ik became famous in a book called The Mountain People by Oxford-educated anthropologist Colin M. Turnbull. According to Turnbull, daily life among the Ik seemed to be a constant series of almost unbelievable atrocities – teenagers gleefully stole food directly from the mouths of starving elderly; a mother celebrated when a predator relieved her of the responsibility of caring for her child; grandparents joyfully watched a baby crawl into a fire. It made powerful reading and, at the time, it shook the world of travel literature.
Images of Turnbull’s brutal characters flicker through my mind as Kidepo ranger, Phillip Akorongimoe, parks his LandCruiser and we begin our climb up Morungole Mountain with two AK47-toting troopers from the Uganda People’s Defence Force. While things have been peaceful since the disarmament that was taking place when I last travelled to the region in 2008, there are still regular patrols in this area bordering northern Kenya and South Sudan.
“Morungole was considered sacred,” wrote Turnbull. “I had noticed this by the almost reverential way with which the Ik looked at it – none of the shrewd cunning and cold appraisal with which they regard the rest of the world.”
Within an hour of climbing I’m struggling to remind myself that 50 years after those words were written, I’m on my way to a rendezvous with the nastiest people in the world. This is even harder to imagine because Mzee Hillary, a 64-year-old Ik man with a charmingly open smile and a chatty demeanour, has joined our little convoy to guide us to his highland home.
As we trek, Mzee Hillary points out the sacred fig trees where animal sacrifices are made to bring the rain and shows me shady copses where wild honey is collected to be used in Ik marriage ceremonies. There are groves of medicinal bushes that serve as a natural pharmacy, treating everything from earache to constipation to scorpion stings. We are joined by a group of Ik women and children carrying water from the stream. They seem determined to fill every minute of the three-hour walk with happy chatter and laughter and I wonder if these people are the same tribe that Turnbull travelled among for almost two years, complaining that his efforts to understand them were constantly frustrated by their moody silence. Back then the Ik still lived in the lowlands and although Turnbull tried to convince guides to take him to the peak, he never visited Morungole and describes it in his book as “a dark mass, always hidden in haze”.
Our trail follows a narrow ridge, overlooking the sweeping curve of Kidepo Valley, and South Sudan, which seems just a stone’s throw away. About 50 kilometres away in the other direction is the Turkana country of northern Kenya. Over the centuries, the Ik had become accustomed to persecution from all sides; they were trapped between warlike tribes such as the Toposa and Didinga of Sudan and at the mercy of cattle-crazed Turkana warriors from Kenya.
“We would buy cattle from the Turkana,” one old man tells me, “but they would follow us home and steal the cattle back again. In those raids Ik often died.”
“It was like a deadly game of football,” my guide Phillip explains. “Sometimes the different tribes played at home. Sometimes they played away. And always the Ik were caught in the middle.”
The misty summit rises steeply against gathering storm clouds when we finally reach the Ik’s highest village. The thatched roofs of the bandas (huts) are barely discernible behind the thorny stockade that protects precious goats from leopards and raiders, and people from hyena-riding witches. Elder Mzee Paulino Lukuam greets me with an exchange of the triple-grip handshake that is habitual among many African people. I know it took Turnbull a long time before being allowed to see inside a village, so I’m surprised when Mzee Paulino invites me into his private compound within minutes of meeting. I have to crouch to crawl through the low door into the round mud-and-thatch banda that’s about three metres in diameter. I’d read that Ik parents evict their children to sleep outside, curled like dogs from the age of three, but Paulino and his wife share their little hut with seven children.
As we duck through the asak – the low tunnel out of the family compound – Phillip tells me, “They’re still proud of a culture that has remained [almost] untainted. One almost unique thing about the Ik compared with other tribes in this area is that there is virtually no sex outside marriage and most women will only ever sleep with one man in their lives.”
I wonder how this tradition could have remained alive when, according to Turnbull’s experiences when he lived here in 1965 to 1966, Ik women “regarded their bodies as their greatest assets in the game of survival”.
I am no closer to solving the mystery of the British anthropologist’s bitter relationship with the tribe, but then mystery has surrounded the Ik for thousands of years. Nobody is sure where they originated but linguists have noted similarities between the Ik language and speech from southern Egypt. I’ve heard mystifying rumours their language was peppered with words that sounded Latin and Phillip had told me some Spanish travellers he’d brought here were even able to decipher occasional words. I question old Mzee Mateus in Spanish with no success whatsoever, but he’s eventually able to explain the mystery: apparently an Italian Catholic pastor called Father Florence had lived among the Ik in the 1960s and 1970s and had left many words behind including a tradition of Christian names.
When Kidepo Valley National Park was gazetted in 1958, the British colonial government forced the Ik to stop their traditional hunting and move to the foothills. By the early 1980s, pressure from neighbouring tribes, along with drought and famine, had forced the Ik to take to the peak of their sacred mountain. The Ik, now having dwindled to a total population of around 10,000, have retreated as far as they can possibly go.
Only once did the Ik take Turnbull close to Mount Morungole – to what they called their Place of God. “…The Ik had become increasingly uncommunicative,” he wrote. “Never again would they take me near that place, or talk about it. But, as little as I knew, I felt that for a brief moment I had made contact with an elusive reality, a reality that was fast retreating beyond Ik consciousness.”
Mzee Mateus was a young headman when Turnbull came to visit and remembers the anthropologist (who died in 1994). When I show him a copy of The Mountain People he is excited to recognise some old friends in the aged black-and-white pictures.
I don’t mention the contents of the book but the old man says, “I heard that he wrote some impolite things about us.
“If Colin Turnbull ever came back I would simply tell him, ‘Please, there is no business here that we are going to welcome you for. Please leave us and go home.’”Mzee Mateus Yeya Acok is now almost 90 years old and believes that he has been blessed with a long life because, as a boy and young man, he always obeyed his parents. As he speaks, the younger people and children huddle around us, listening to the old man’s reminiscences in respectful silence.
“When I was a boy we’d sit on the plains staring at the peaks of Morungole with its colobus monkeys and great stores of wild honey,” he tells. “Now we sit on Morungole shivering in the cold, gazing over the savannah far below with the endless game that is now forbidden to us. Life has always been hard for the Ik but we’re tough. Times will keep changing but in another thousand years there will still be Ik on Morungole Mountain.”
The ocean’s salty water floods through my stinger suit, caressing my body like a silk sheet that’s delicately pulled across my skin. The muted sounds of my fellow snorkellers talking, breathing and humming are in tune with the bubbling sounds of the reef, while tiny crustaceans snap and crackle, adding sounds that remind me of popcorn and sizzling bacon to the underwater symphony. Despite the reef’s tribulations, the sub-aquatic soundscape is vibrant.
Below me, a coral bommie glistens as the sun’s rays pierce the rippling water, creating a fittingly magical sparkle to the inaugural Dreamtime Dive and Snorkel tour. Schools of trevally and red bass follow the leader and moray eels pop their heads from dark hideouts, careful not to get too close to the action. Clownfish disappear into the wobbly arms of anemones, while colourful angel and parrotfish dart between green, blue, brown and pale coral – a contrasting reality of the state of the world’s largest living organism. Vibrant coral clings to life while others have noticeably succumbed to the impact of the modern environment.
We’re here in Cairns with Experience Co, a company that offers adventure-focused tours in 30 destinations across Australia and New Zealand, and the flagship company for Dreamtime Dive and Snorkel. Since arriving just a couple of days ago, we’ve taken a helicopter ride over the Great Barrier Reef, gorged on a delicious seafood lunch in Turtle Bay near the Yarrabah Community, and rafted down the rapids of Barron River. But it’s the dive tour out to the reef that is the real showstopper on this trip.
When we learn that 80 per cent of international and domestic tourists don’t engage in any form of Indigenous experience while travelling within Australia, the importance of an Indigenous-lead tourism initiative like this becomes obvious.
As we board the new boat, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags wave on the back deck, while the hull is decorated with the vessel’s logo, a colourful piece of artwork created by a local Gimuy Walubara Yidinji elder and artist, and inspired by the totems of the Traditional Land Owners of the region – the tentacles of a jellyfish, the wings of a sea hawk and the body of a turtle merge together to create the shape of a stingray. The vessel’s crew line our entrance to welcome us, including Indigenous rangers representing local Aboriginal tribes and the Torres Strait Islands. There’s no shortage of dive and snorkel tours in the Great Barrier Reef, but what makes Dreamtime Dive and Snorkel really stand out is its emphasis on Indigenous cultures and storytelling.
As the ship’s engine rumbles and we feel the boat start to push away from the dock and out to sea, Blake Cedar, who goes by his traditional name Rex, opens the tour with an Acknowledgement of Country and introduces the team. It’s just a taste of what’s to come, but an important part of the afternoon as we recognise the culture and history of Sea Country and its people.
We’re heading out to Moore Reef, a cluster of coral outcrops also known as bommies. It’s a one-and-a-half-hour journey, and my motion-sick-prone self wishes teleporting had been invented. I’m a water baby who loves being on the ocean, but my sight, inner ear and sensory processors don’t seem to work in harmony. I’m determined to find my sea legs on this trip though, and I settle in to a spot at the back of the boat, thankful there’s enough distraction on-board to keep my mind occupied. Rangers approach guests with a display of hunting tools, instruments used for ceremonial dances, and a hand drill used to make fire.
“You know that big long spear I showed you before,” says Jai Singleton, a 22-year-old Indigenous ranger who’s part of the Yirrganydji tribe. “Well, the first time I ever went out [hunting] for a turtle with my uncle, we had one of the big spears – they’re big and thick pieces of wood. Uncle hit the turtle but when he threw the spear back he hit the person driving the boat, knocked him out. Next minute, the boat was going around in circles.” It’s a funny memory of one of his earliest hunting experiences, a cultural practice Jai now takes very seriously.
“There are people that go out hunting, they do wrong hunting. They go out and take five turtles, that’s not good. Our people didn’t do that – we take one turtle and we go home and share that with the family and use everything. The only time they went out hunting for turtle was for ceremony. But people who go out every day, it’s ridiculous. That’s why you don’t see as many turtles now.”
Jai’s passion for his culture stirs a pride that’s hard not to rally around. He points to a murky beach we’re passing. “See there, that’s Yarrabah Mission,” he tells me. I later discover this sandy beach, Mission Bay on Gunggandji land, is not far from where we had dined on a champagne seafood picnic lunch just 24 hours ago – a contrasting experience to the one Australia’s Traditional Custodians and South Sea Islanders lived through during the years of the Stolen Generation. It’s this mission where Jai’s great-grandparents met. He tells me the tale of his great-grandmother who was taken from her family and her home in the Wujal Wujal camp and moved to the mission at the age of nine. Here, she met Jai’s great-grandfather, and they were married at the young age of 17-years-old just so they’d be allowed to legally leave the mission.
“For my dad, to see us have a job like this, he’s so proud. For his mother to come from where they came from, and then to see us today, he’s never been so proud.” Jai’s story is just one of many on the boat, and one that will continue to stay with me long after we’ve docked again in Cairns.
At the reef, I’m keen to zip up my stinger suit and dive into the water, but in a bid to get the full experience, I opt to see the reef from the dry deck of a glass-bottom boat. It’s just one of the experiences on offer. Others can take a heli ride over the reef.
The noisy engine roars and bubbles pattern their way across the glass. Rex stands at the rear of the boat, and with permission from the local Elders, he shares the Gimuy Walubara Yidinji tribe’s Great Barrier Reef creation story.
It’s a story of a hunter who spears a sacred black stingray, and his people who protect their land from the stormy aftermath by creating a rocky barrier, which we now know as the Great Barrier Reef. It’s a sacred story full of symbolism and deep significance to the Traditional Land Owners, and one that, out of respect for the people, I won’t share in its entirety.
Rex joins me for lunch and I’m keen to quiz him on the cultures of Sea Country. When I ask what working on this tour means to him, he responds with a similar pride I had previously seen in Jai. “I’m a proud Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander man, and I want to teach people about my culture.
This is my land, and my sea, and I want people to learn about it and respect it. To teach people how to preserve the ocean so that future generations can enjoy and experience it just like I did and the people before me.”
Rex is 21 years old. He was raised by his mother’s family in the Torres Strait before moving to Cairns to attend school.
“When I was a kid, I lived with my grandma and I repeated preschool twice because I didn’t know how to speak English, and for traditional reasons, I wasn’t going to school much.
“Growing up, I was really culturally connected. My grandparents were culturally strong and I was raised traditionally. But once my nan passed away, I moved to Cairns and stayed with my mum, who wasn’t very culturally connected… She put me in school and I learnt English really quickly but I realised, as I grew up, I had drifted away from my culture. Culture’s not taught in schools, which is a really big deal because we have kids going there and they’re learning the right things… But they’re just not learning everything they should be – our culture.”
Rex goes on to explain the concept of a totem, of which his is the hammerhead and tiger shark. I learn the northern islands of the Torres Strait have cultural similarities to Papua New Guinea, while the southern ones are more closely aligned to Australia’s Aboriginal cultures. More than 40 minutes go by and I’m still listening with fascination at the complex trading history of the Torres Strait. I’m perplexed at just how little I know about one of my own country’s Indigenous cultures.
Milln Reef, our second dive spot, is a 1.2 kilometre stretch of coral that’s considered one of the most beautiful in the region. Rex and I stop what’s turned into a passionate discussion about how we can work together to improve the country’s understanding of Indigenous cultures, and he prepares for the introductory scuba dive. His excitement is contagious.
“I love the reef,” he tells me jumping up from his seat. “It excites me every time I come out here and knowing I’m culturally connected to the ocean, it’s beautiful. One of my goals is to study marine biology so I can help the reef.” And with a shoulder shrug and a smile, he disappears to find his wetsuit.
My green gills are urging me to do the same, and I’m desperate to feel the cool water on my ailing face. A looming aeroplane ride stands between me and a scuba dive, but I pull on my stinger suit and mask to spend the rest of the afternoon in the water, safe from impending sea sickness. I start with a snorkel safari with the on-board marine biologist, Amandine Vuylsteke, and reef ranger, Enaz Mye, who goes by the name Sissy. Between watching fish and kicking my fins, Amandine talks us through the state of the reef, its sensitivity to climate change, the impact of humans and points out various fish, coral species and other marine life.
I follow a parrotfish over the reef, and spy a starfish lying on the sea bed below. The reef is a combination of light ripples, colourful coral and bubbles caused by the 20 or so people who are also in the water flapping their fins. Then, before I have time to steer myself in another direction, I’m besieged by a fluther of jellyfish. It’s the season for them in Far North Queensland, and I start to panic. Alongside crocodiles, which I’d so far managed to avoid, irukandji are my worst oceanic nightmare. I thank my lucky starfish that a layer of fabric stands between me and the transparent stingers. When I climb back on the boat out of breath and in an obvious state of trepidation, I realise my suit, as one person on the boat points out, looks more like I’m dressed for the cover of Sports Illustrated than a dive, with the zip sliding its way down to my belly button. Thankfully, the floating bobs were not irukandji and far less deadly.
Distracted by my efforts to try and keep lunch well inside my belly for the journey back to Cairns, my mind wanders back to something Jai had said during our discussion.
“When you look at someone like me, with fair skin and coloured eyes, I have to try really hard to convince people that I’m an Aboriginal man. Going to school every day, I was called black and white names by both sides. I’m not good enough for anyone – not good enough for the black fellas, not good enough for the white fellas, so I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place,” he tells me.
“But my father, and his dad, we’ve always been a part of the reef, hunting and fishing. So to now get to come out here where this is our office is amazing. It’s an honour to show our guests. There are a lot of untold stories that anybody else can tell until they’re blue in the face, but it has to come from the people themselves. And it’s my pleasure to share it.”
And in that simple reality, the importance of an extraordinary trip to the reef like this one becomes abundantly clear.
The old woman standing beside me dressed in black, grips my arm a little tighter, her glowing grin now replaced with a look of awe as the statue of Santa Marta finally emerges.
“It’s beautiful,” her voice quivers with emotion as the first coffin appears. The animated hum of human activity that seems a permanent feature of daily life in Spain has died to an ominous calm. The only sounds are the birds tweeting behind us and the shuffling of feet on the parched concrete. The coffin draws below us. A woman in her forties lies inside, her bright red trousers dazzling against the perfect white coffin lining. The corpse wriggled a little to get comfortable before adjusting her black sunglasses.
I’m standing among a few thousand spectators to witness one of the more peculiar ceremonies, in a country that has made a name for its oddball rituals. On 29 July each year people gather for the Fiesta de Santa Marta de Ribarteme in a tiny Galician village, surrounded by gentle rolling hills near As Neves. The living, breathing occupants of these seven stout wooden coffins are here to give thanks to Santa Marta for sparing their lives. “A victory of life over death,” local priest Alfonso Besada Paraje explained to me the day before.
The tradition dates back to the medieval ages, maybe even further, and is said to be an example of fervent religious beliefs mixed with the deep superstitions that have survived in the local area to this day.
Galicia is not the Spain most people know from the travel brochures. Forget the arid landscape, paella and bullfighting.
Galicia is a brilliantly green, mountainous corner of the Iberian Peninsula, positioned almost regally above Portugal. A place of stunning but harsh Atlantic-beaten coastline, thick mystical forests and ancient Celtic hill forts.
Outside the church we are immediately befriended by Maria del Carmen, a kind-natured woman of 86 with a gold tooth and hair a deep rust colour. She leans nonchalantly on a metal barrier, a plastic bag swinging from her arm.
“My smart shoes for the church,” she winks at us. I look down at her feet to find a pair of well-worn trainers. I like her immediately.
“My son is buried just around the corner, he’s the one in military uniform,” she gestures to a set of nearby graves and her eyes momentarily mist over, her thoughts deep in the past.
“Life was hard growing up here,” she finally continues. “My husband was a fisherman and he would be away for six to eight months. I brought up the five children alone most of the time.” Spain, in the years after its destructive civil war, was a place of great hardship; a country that had almost obliterated itself and took decades to recover.
“Both of my older sons left the village at 13 to find work – it wasn’t an easy time,” her voice trails off. Yet like some famous Hollywood star she is inundated by a steady stream of friends and family, and her mood remains wonderfully upbeat.
The tiny village is essentially a single road with a small church near the centre, where a large marquee has been erected to accommodate the much larger than normal attendance. Sermons are being held on the hour, every hour, and in truth seem to go on for the better part of the 60 minute intervals.
The fourth coffin is below us when a haunting melody suddenly ruptures the silence. A group close to one of the coffins has burst into an eerie, wailing song. “Virgin Santa Marta, star of the north, we bring you those who have seen death”. It adds a deeply unsettling accompaniment to the slightly macabre visuals.
The procession is led by one of two women choosing to complete the journey on her knees. Two companions each grip a hand to help.
“Seventeen years ago I had a terrible infection in my legs, I nearly lost them,” she had told me before the procession. “I return each year to thank Santa Marta.”
As the crowd moves up the hill they are framed by a stark reminder of the perennial line between life and death. A vivid green hillside stands above, peppered with trees blackened by fires. The previous year, on a catastrophic October weekend, wildfires, fanned by the winds of Hurricane Ophelia, had swept north, decimating much of northern Portugal and huge swathes of Galicia, killing four in the local area and forty-five in Portugal. Though this was unquestionably one of the worst in recent times, wildfires are now almost a yearly occurrence.
Despite the presence of coffins, there is a surprisingly jovial atmosphere – this is Spain after all. They take religion as seriously as they take fiestas – when the two are combined, you’re in for quite an experience.
The procession inches steadily past those choosing to pay their respects safely behind a table groaning with octopus and barbecued meat, and past the children’s trampoline, which provides the unique image of a coffin, juxtaposed with a child flying happily into the air. Two dogs, oblivious to their surroundings, amble casually into the procession to become comically entangled between the legs of the pallbearers.
“Madre mia!” one man hoots loudly while aiming a playful kick at the leading dog, drawing hearty chuckles from those around him.
As the church comes into view again, a young man, gripping one of the Saint’s poles, pulls out his ringing mobile.
“Digame,” (Spanish for ‘tell me’) he exclaims loudly, before chatting nonchalantly for a good minute. Nobody seems to care; he hasn’t caused any offence. Older ladies behind him smirk and playfully shake their heads.
One by one, the coffins arrive back at the church, the pallbearers grunting as they lower their occupants safely back to Earth. A young man in his twenties steps out, straightens his red and black chequered shirt and runs a hand through his casually-styled black hair. He seems unfazed by the whole experience.
“My father and I made a pact that if my grandmother survived her cancer I would come here,” he tells me.
One woman steps out of her coffin, her face already contorting with emotion. She is immediately engulfed by her large family and begins to sob uncontrollably. A year ago her family had attended the service as she lay in a coma after a serious accident. One year later, she is here herself.
The procession wasn’t quite what I was expecting. Moments of real sadness sit alongside those of joy. The people who attend, come not to mimic death but to revel in its defeat – to rejoice in that precious second chance. Those who have faced death, and who have turned away, come to this tiny Galician village surrounded by eucalyptus forests to shout wildly back into the abyss, “Yes, I’m still here.”
As we leave, I spot Maria del Carmen in the distance, sitting comfortably at a table surrounded by her family, one hand clutching a glass of white wine, the other foraging among the mounds of barbecued meat in front of her. There is a look of complete happiness on her deeply wrinkled face.
The world needs more people like Maria del Carmen who will remind you that even though life will beat you down, you should take every chance to sit with your face in the sun, smile, drink great wine, gorge on plentiful ribs and not be afraid to wear comfortable shoes.
It’s two in the morning and I can’t sleep. Considering I have spent the afternoon in the sunshine, kayaking and drinking a couple of beers with dinner, I ought to be in a deep, satisfied slumber. There certainly aren’t any distractions out here in the middle of the Andaman Sea. A few light beams from the half moon shining out on the water and the occasional creak of the boat as it slowly turns with the evening tide are the only interruptions. Maybe that’s the problem. Out here, in one of the last places in the world to offer a complete digital detox, my urban brain just can’t get accustomed to days without internet, cell phone access, or the lack of any metropolitan stimulation
I’m on a liveaboard boat, the MV Sea Gipsy, a restored Burmese junk, along with seven other intrepid travellers who are all out to experience the Mergui Archipelago, Asia’s last unspoilt tropical paradise. With over 800 mostly uninhabited islands, the Mergui features a seemingly endless wealth of empty white-sand beaches, turquoise bays, abundant marine life, and plenty of undiscovered dive spots. It’s a winning combination for aquamarine lovers and escapist travellers.
The Mergui was closed after World War II and didn’t see any outsiders again until Myanmar reopened to tourism in 1996. Still, only a trickle of tourists visit each year. While visas are now easy to obtain, the Myanmar government has kept a tight lid on permits issued for boats and tour operators sailing in the Mergui. Foreign boats have to pay US$1000 to enter the protected waters, as well as US$100 per passenger for a limit of five travel days, meaning that while the resorts of popular Phuket aren’t far away, most of the yachts moored there can’t afford to run charters over for the afternoon.
Bjorn Burchard, who is the face behind our Burmese junk journey, is the owner of Island Safari Mergui and Moby Dick Tours, one of the few companies in Yangon licensed to run trips out here. He is no stranger to beautiful and remote places. An expat Norwegian, Burchard was the first foreigner to open up a backpacker bungalow on Koh Samui in the 1980s, back when nobody had heard of the island other than a select few nomads who’d gotten wind of an untouched island nirvana in the Gulf of Thailand. Since then, Burchard has seen his fair share of Southeast Asian beaches and isles fall prey to the wrath of the developer’s sword, but he thinks that the Mergui has a chance to get things right, and sees the pristine marine archipelago as one of Asia’s last bastions for sustainable tourism.
“You’ve got some of the best dive spots in the world here, and the recent attention to the environment here by groups like Project Manaia (an ocean awareness project that is operating an advanced sonar system in the Mergui to map and monitor water quality, marine life, and coral regeneration) may get the word out that the Mergui stands for eco-friendly and alternative tourism, offering a pristine travel experience that you can’t get in too many other places,” Burchard says.
As dawn breaks, the photographers among us rise silently. With tripods and an array of lenses in hand, we traipse up to the deck to watch the sun make its way to the horizon to create a living artist’s palette of reds, oranges, and every shade in between. Several others make use of the sea kayaks that the MV Sea Gipsy tows along, paddling out to embrace the morning light.
As it begins to warm, Jerome, a tall Frenchman who appears to be the reincarnation of one of the aqua-loving Cousteau family, dives from the upper deck into the deep blue, swimming out to Island 115, a circular swathe of blinding white sand surrounded by water the colour of emeralds.
On all of the islands that we drop anchor at during the day, from Shark Island (named for its fin-like rock and not circling predators) to massive Swinton Island, full of dense jungle and root-choked mangroves, there is one recurring theme. All of the beaches are empty. Every time our boat stops in the bay and we navigate the tides by dinghy, kayak, or swimming, we feel like explorers finding land for the first time. Having spent my last decade in Thailand and seeing the changes that have transpired there, I remark to one of my companions that I can’t envision this type of untouched paradise lasting, and as we step onto each new beach I tell him that in ten years we will remember that we sunk our footprints into these powdery sands without another soul around.
Yet the Mergui is not completely devoid of human life. Sailing into a large bay at Jar Lann Island, we are greeted by a fleet of rustic wooden dugout canoes paddling out to meet us, all manned by young Moken girls. The Moken, known as ‘Salone’ in Myanmar, are a group of sea nomads who are famed for their prowess at deep sea free diving without the use of oxygen. Leading a nomadic existence, the Moken have lived for hundreds of years on traditional boats known as kabang, made from large logs and pandanus leaves, and only come ashore during the monsoon.
These days, international borders, the Boxing Day tsunami and politics have forced the Moken to stray from many of their traditional ways. The majority have been settled in government villages in the Surin Islands in Thailand and in a few spots here in the Mergui where they try to keep their connection to the sea by getting jobs on pearl farms or selling seafood to the fish traders from Phuket. It hasn’t been easy – the Mokens are traditionally stateless and nomadic, and feel that if they cannot roam freely, then their culture will disappear. There are few kabang left (national park service rules have stopped the Moken from cutting tree trunks to create them), and ‘integration’ into regular settled society has brought with it ills like drinking, gambling, and theft.
Yet despite the rather ramshackle and impoverished appearance of their village on Jar Lann, the Moken retain their easygoing nature. We watch families sitting around laughing, men tending to boats and fishing nets, and women smoking Burmese cheroots while washing clothing. I fall into conversation with a young man named Jao who has worked in Thailand and speaks as much Thai as I do. He tells me these days, village life has improved with several of the locals earning a decent living working on squid boats and selling locally caught fish, but he laments the fact that he has less time to spend with his kids who, he says, can’t dive as well as his generation could and worries about their future.
The Moken villages, as well as attempts to build tourist resorts in the Mergui, are limited by the lack of access to fresh drinking water. This is perhaps the simplest explanation as to why the archipelago hasn’t seen a more rapid tourism development. Only a handful of islands have freshwater streams, and liveaboard charters have to carry large barrels of water to survive one-week outings. Halfway through our sail in the Mergui, we call in at Nga Khin Nyo Gyee, better known as Boulder Island, aptly named for its large photogenic boulders that guard the entrance to one of the Andaman’s nicest bays. Boulder does have a water source, and is home to the rustic Boulder Bay Eco Resort. Here, simple wood and bamboo bungalows aesthetically blend in with the jungle just steps from hiking trails created by the resort, which lead to hidden jungle-overlooks, dazzling serene beaches and azure bays. You won’t find Jacuzzi tubs or spa treatments here, but the communal dining area features fresh barracuda and shrimp barbecues, documentary films about the Moken are shown at night and there’s even a sporadic Internet connection.
The resort is busy supporting a reef restoration project, using old fishing cages to grow new coral. Snorkelling here reveals an incredible array of anemones, blue-lined surgeonfish and striped coral fish, their long dorsal fins wiggling to and fro as they dart through the water.
On the trail out to Moken Bay, the island’s most beautiful beach, I spot several brahminy kites flying overhead, and my solitude is broken only by a group of white-rumped shama, small thrushes with overpoweringly loud and melodious voices, seemingly singing directions to me as I navigate through the forest.
Back aboard the MV Sea Gipsy, I marvel at the effects of living without a phone. A week without coverage, living in close proximity to strangers, forces us to reconnect and makes for great friendships. We share candlelit dinners where we bask in long conversations on the open-air deck; we enjoy diving into fictional worlds as we recline in teak chairs to read; and we spend endless time gazing out to sea in what seems to be a forced meditation. Initially, I wondered whether a week trapped in the confines of a small boat would drive a landlubber batty after a few days, but I find the longer I am out here, the more I want to stay.
David Van Driessche, a Belgian photographer based in Bangkok, leads photo tours to the Mergui and is on our trip, scouting out new locations. He’s been out here half a dozen times and says that despite the simple comforts, he never gets bored. “Where else in Asia can you find this many empty islands? Where else can you swim and kayak in the open sea without fear of longtails or speed boats running you down?” he laughs.
“I probably lose a bit of business due to being out of cell phone range when I come out here, but for the natural wonders and peace of mind, it’s well worth it.”
Before me is an endless horizon, with a storm in the distance and the red hues of the starting sunset signifying the end of another day. I take one last look at the exquisite blinding white sandbars that make up the nearest islet to our boat, and I couldn’t agree more. It’s more than worth it.
Falling in love was the last thing I had expected to happen on an expedition to the remote parts of Costa Rica’s Caribbean Coast. It’s the middle of my final night on Pacuare beach and darkness blankets the otherwise vibrant landscape I’ve come to know so well, interrupted only by the stars casting a fading spotlight over the waves violently crashing against the sandy shore. I’m out here wearing just Crocs and my underwear, thankful for the lack of light pollution in this remote haven.
The moon’s silver light outlines the curves of the body lying before me and I barely notice the bugs attacking my legs or the grains of sand flying through the air. Goosebumps creep across my skin as jolts of electric euphoria cause my mind to blank. It’s a moment so magical that despite my weary, sweaty body,
I almost hope it never ends.
When I arrived at Pacuare seven days ago, this was not the tale I thought I’d be weaving, but we have little say in the hand of fate.
I’m travelling with Biosphere Expeditions to a small beach-fronted research station in the province of Limon where I’ll be working with a team of scientists, research assistants and volunteers from conservation organisation, Latin American Sea Turtles (LAST).
A few hours drive from the country’s capital, San Jose, brings us to the canals of Tortuguero where we travel an hour by dinghy through the winding waterways. With every corner of the bend, the lush, green rainforest unfolds, and we play ‘I spy’ in the hope the tropical trees will uncover spider, howler and capuchin monkeys, geladas, caiman, green macaws, sloths and jaguars.
The engine of the boat hums to the chorus of cicadas and birds chime in for their solo, while white-faced geladas occasionally grunt their tenor parts like schoolboys whose parents have forced them onto the stage.
When we arrive at the station, we’re welcomed by the thunderous sound of the Caribbean Sea, and the delicate growl of Shakira, a deaf Rottweiler whose bark is as tough as her bite, but her nature as placid as a wise old owl.
“She is a guard dog,” our expedition leader Ida Vincent warns.
“She tends to go about her business, but we advise you avoid patting her because she does have a tendency to snap.” She points to Fabián Carrasco, LAST’s resident biologist, who reveals a nasty scar across his thumb and hand.
Teaming up with the volunteers from La Tortuga Feliz, a neighbouring program, we will walk a seven-kilometre stretch of beach each night in four-hour shifts between 7pm and 5am in search of leatherback, green and hawksbill turtles. We have one main goal – to find the turtles and collect the nests before poachers do.
Sea turtle eggs are hunted and sold on the black market, and for some species, like the green and hawksbill, they’re also traded for meat and shells. It’s long been a belief that the eggs are an aphrodisiac, which Fabián explains comes from an old sea tale.
“Fishermen were spending weeks or months out at sea. When sea turtles mate, they join tails and the male drops his sperm into the female. The process can take 30 to 40 minutes, but because the males want to stop others from mating with her, he hugs her for hours, or sometimes even days. The fishermen would see this and think they were mating the whole time.” I blush. The story is comical, but one that sadly results in a diminishing population, with almost all species appearing on the endangered list. Climate change, habitat damage, pollution, sand erosion, light pollution and fishing also play a part.
It takes us a while to adjust to our new surroundings. Our accommodation at the LAST station is rustic, dormitory-style bunk beds, some with a private bathroom, and others sharing the doorless washrooms, all fed by solar power. While the rest of our group search for phone service hotspots, I decide to make the most of this opportunity to completely detach from the outside world. It may be basic, but it doesn’t forgo comfort – there’s no need for hair dryers out here, and after a few hours in the sticky humidity, I welcome the pipe-style cold showers.
Our first day, like most days, is spent lounging in hammocks, attending lectures on sea turtles and getting to know our fellow volunteers. Sunlight hours are quiet and relaxing in preparation for our night shifts, but there’s still plenty to do and between chapters of books and dips in the sea, we help with beach clean ups, hatchery duty, fixing and cleaning equipment, and learning Spanish.
Fabián, a Mexican-born biologist who has worked with LAST for the past three years, runs the show and along with our leader, Ida, they make us feel welcomed and at home.
“In the beginning, I dreamed of working with big cats,” Fabián tells me, but an introduction to the world of turtles had him hooked. “It was something I wanted because I liked working on the beach, seeing the turtles and really enjoyed my time in the lab studying microbiology.
“Turtles are animals that cannot fend for themselves so when they come to the beach, they’re very vulnerable … They don’t do any damage when they come here, and we, humans, are their biggest predators.
I’m not here to be a hero, but I do want to protect them.”
Ida, who is also a marine biologist, agrees. “We could be really lucky on this trip,” she tells our group. “There’s a nest of turtles almost ready to hatch so we might get some babies.” Her smile and enthusiasm is infectious and despite our apprehension of what’s ahead of us on our walk tonight, we can’t help but embrace the energy.
After an early dinner of beans and vegetables (our meals are plant-based and organic, and alcohol is forbidden on the station) we are broken up into groups and head to bed to rest before our first shift.
My guide for the night is Hernan, a local who tells me he’s been looking for turtles for almost 10 years. Many of the guides are ex-poachers, now employed by LAST to lead teams during the season, which runs from May to November. For the most part of the four-hour walk, our group stays silent, chatting only between breathless puffs and during short breaks.
By the time we’re on our way back, my feet are covered in blisters, my body aches and I’m excreting so much sweat I can no longer tell if it’s been raining. A broken-English and broken-Spanish conversation with Hernan distracts me from the exhaustion, and while there are no turtles to be sighted tonight, it already starts to dawn on me that this trip is offering up more than just an opportunity to bond with my favourite oceanic reptiles. I was about to learn as much from the people as I was from the turtles.
Alongside the conservation work, LAST also invests in educating the locals, employs poachers and runs activities for the children who live nearby. “We want them to see us as a part of the community, rather than enemies,” Fabián explains as we scoff down our breakfast empanadas.
It’s only our second day here at the station, and our overnight introduction to saving the turtles is a reality check, but the hope of hatchlings keeps our spirits high.
The hatchery sits a few hundred metres away from the station and is a small, fenced-in section of sterilised beach that’s guarded 24/7 to protect the
re-nested eggs against predators – poachers, dogs, cats and crabs among them. Hatchery duty falls under our job description on this trip, but first, we need to learn how to recreate a nest.
Turtle nests, we learn, are circular holes with a lip pocket for air. As I dig my arms deep into the sand, my inner school student is desperate for praise. It turns out digging a near-perfect circle is harder than expected and with each “it’s too wide”, “it’s not straight enough” and “dig a little deeper” my overachiever persona is kicked to the curb.
I spend the afternoon soaking my feet in a makeshift saltwater footbath until the sun starts to lower its position in the sky. “It’s babies time,” Ida says, as we all walk over to the hidden nest Fabián buried earlier in the season.
The path there is as fascinating as the exhumation we’re about to witness. Geladas make frightening grunting noises from their thrones high in the trees, while leafcutter ants carry small squares of green on their back in a hi-ho fashion. Toucans squawk, desperate to steal the spotlight with their kaleidoscope beaks, and dogs follow us, baffled that on this rare occasion, no one is interested in playing.
A few kilometres up the beach, in an area covered in vines and overgrowth, we gather around Fabián who lies belly down. We’re given instructions for the hatchling release – never walk in front of a turtle, don’t interfere with their path to the sea, and above all else, watch where you step. As he scoops sand out of the nest by the handful, the occasional wriggling flipper is caught and gently placed in a polystyrene foam box to protect it from the sun. It’s important the hatchlings are released in the shade to avoid the hot sand frying their delicate bodies.
A leatherback nest houses an average of 80 eggs, and the exhumation takes a little over an hour, revealing a number of unsuccessful ones plagued by fungus, bacteria, or foetuses that died before hatching. As if the 1 in 1000 survival odds for hatchlings to reach sexual maturity isn’t enough, only seven are released from this single nest. Before Biosphere Expeditions and LAST arrived in Pacuare, poaching at this site was nearly 100 per cent, and has since been halved. I take comfort knowing that despite the small number, our release saved these hatchlings from a sure sale on the black market.
I stand in awe as they drag their tiny bodies across the sand toward the sea. One little guy lags in the back, trying to figure out whether he should follow his siblings to be engulfed in the ocean’s waves, or whether he’d much prefer to stay in the comfort of the box he’d just been released from, awoken from a tranced state. He’s my favourite, I decide, and with each simultaneous push of the flippers, it’s hard not to be moved by his conviction. Human footprints build mountainous obstacles, and while the lagging hatchling is not quick, nor graceful, his determination is unwavering. As a group of 20-odd humans standby rooting him on, my love affair with these chelonians strengthens.
Witnessing this has turned hatchery duty into a coveted role – everyone wants a break from the night walks and to be the first to see the near-ready nest in the hatchery emerge. I draw the lucky straw, along with my roommates, Scarlett and Talar, and sit on the 3am to 6am guard shift.
In 15-minute intervals, we inspect each nest, which are protected from predators by some netting, hoping to witness some bubbling sand indicating the exciting arrivals. The sun puts on a spectacular show, and a new day is dawning, but still no turtles.
It takes two more nights of braving the humid, rainy conditions before I come face-to-tail with an adult leatherback. It’s around 9pm and I’m getting some sleep when Ida comes knocking on our dorm’s door. “Ladies, come quick! There’s a turtle right out front!”
we hear her say in a tone somewhere between a shout and a whisper as to not wake the nearby sleepers.
Suddenly, body aches and wounded feet dissipate and I sprint to the station’s gate and out to the beach. This is the moment where exhaustion, relief and emotion collide and as I stand in the moonlight in my underwear, I feel my eyes well up with tears.
The mamma leatherback gracefully goes about her duty, sprinkling sand with a delicacy and calculation I’d been unable to match when digging days earlier. This is the only opportunity she’ll get to protect her babies, and once she’s satisfied with her masterpiece, she heavily turns her body back toward the sea. Her presence on land is far more laborious than her ability to glide through water, and just before she hits the wet sand, she takes a moment to rest and then, with a few more heaves of her flippers, she disappears, unknowingly leaving her babies in the safe hands of Carlos, an ex-poacher turned guide.
In that moment, my skin crawling with fervour, every step of the week becomes entirely worth it.
As I sit in the kitchen on my final day listening to paradise’s soundtrack, Fabián lies in the hammock somewhere between sueños (dreaming) and consciousness, and Shakira sits calmly by his feet. I stare out into the canal where Carlita, our cook, rests at the end of the dock, and I movie-roll my way through the last week. I’ve run out of clean clothes and my body is desperate for a hot bath, and yet, right here in this special part of Costa Rica, I feel totally and utterly at home. My heart is full.
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