There are four of us in a 4WD, gunning it through central Kashmir, heading towards some Himalayan trekking. We are me, my chain-smoking trekking guide Salim, driver and reluctant bachelor Daba and a small white chicken from Delhi.
Daba, who’s young and cheerful, has an eye for the ladies. His attention wanders from the road to the fields where such well-dressed, winsome creatures are working. Thankfully, the chicken kicks up a racket if Daba takes the corners too sharply, squawking and skidding across the back seat. Its rebuke makes Daba slow down, and for that, my clenched thighs are relieved.
The mountain air is tempered by thick pollution from passing army trucks. Soldiers wave happily at us as we stop for tea at a roadside cafe outside Gandarbal.
Kashmir is India’s northernmost state. It’s been on and off the tourist trail since Partition in 1945, when Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan split. The two countries continue to squabble over the rich land, a fight that was exacerbated by the deadly actions of Pakistani ‘mischief makers’, as one Delhi newspaper columnist charmingly described the 2008 Mumbai bombers.
Its jewels are the powder-blue, snow-capped Himalayan mountains, which are mirrored in the incomparably beautiful, eerily calm Dal Lake, on the outskirts of Kashmiri capital Srinagar. Canny Brits, when they weren’t running the empire, would retreat from the heat of Delhi and Bombay to a colony of houseboats on the lake, a cool 1730 metres above sea level.
A few days earlier I’d fled the clinging 40-degree oven of Delhi in April, and boarded a boat for a slice of fantasy.
Moghal Palace, Queen Elizabeth, Neil Armstrong and Helen of Troy (the names of the boats) sit shoulder to shoulder along the lake’s shores. Zipping between are shikaras – long, slim boats that sit perilously low in the water – delivering guests to their houseboats and providing a mobile shopping service.
My houseboat is a riot of hand-carved furniture, including a four-poster bed with Kashmir’s famed chain-stitch embroidery on the curtains, bedspreads and cushions. Each morning, a man paddles his boat to my moorings, waving his hand over boxes of lilies, red tulips, pansies and jasmine, all grown on the lake. In a few months, he’ll have lotuses, which spread across the water like a bejewelled Kashmiri weave.
The passenger shikaras have names as equally lustrous as the houseboats: New Love Heaven, Rose of Heaven, Darjeeling and my own Bob Marley, which is contracted to take me wherever I want to go, whenever I want to go. The little boats are moving lounges – luxuriously decked out with small covered loveseats plumped with pillows and curtains you can pull around yourself for added privacy. In morally correct India, it’s no wonder Kashmir is a famed honeymoon destination.
One morning, the houseboat’s gentle butler, Shabir, rugs me up against the cold and bundles me into Bob Marley. The boatman, a suntanned Daniel Day-Lewis look-alike, cruises the lakes’ ‘roads’, watery highways between the islands and beds of water lilies. The water is so clear I can see the lilies’ roots, and Kashmir’s mosques, floating shops, mountains and clouds are reproduced in the glossy water.
I hear voices from the little poplar-lined islands amid the lake, as children of the lotus farmers, boat builders, weavers and bee-keepers wave hello and call out. “Look! There’s a lady in that boat!”
After a few days on the houseboat, the temptation of those beautiful snowy mountain caps has proven too much, and I’ve chosen to swap opulence and indolence for altitude and exertion.
The road northwest from Srinagar to the hiking trailhead at a village called Naranagh is lined with fresh green poplars, fields of bright yellow mustard flowers, stringy marijuana and road signs.
For a region so torn apart by war, Kashmir is obsessed with safety. Reading Kashmiri road signs is like reading advice from Forrest Gump: ‘Life is a journey. Complete it.’ ‘Mountains are for pleasure. Only if you drive at leisure.’ ‘Don’t be rash, else you will crash.’ And my favourite, obviously targeting female Punjabi tourists: ‘Don’t gossip, let him drive.’
Base camp is two tents set up on a grassy plain by a rushing river, just outside Naranagh, around 2200 metres above sea level. We dump our gear and I check out my tent for the night: lots of blankets. Hot water bottle. Torch. Toilet paper.
Spitting distance from the disputed India–Pakistan ‘line of control’, peaceful Naranagh is dominated by the picturesque ruins of an old Hindu temple, on green grass nibbled to MCG smoothness by a battalion of trekking ponies. For its young Muslim inhabitants, it’s the perfect place for a game of cricket.
All Kashmiri boys play cricket and, it appears, all Kashmiri boys can bowl. After admiring their skill while the hardworking girls schlep past balancing towers of firewood and urns of water on their heads, we take a preparatory two-hour trek, the first of three day walks. The steep path climbs to a local beauty spot and lookout, following a river that, fed by the summer thaw, roars like Delhi at peak hour. It’s good to be in the clean air after the city smog. We see not one other soul the entire time.
That night, the scent of fragrant Kashmiri tea, spiced with cardamom, cinnamon and sugar, pervades the tent. The guys joke in a mix of Kashmiri and the local gypsy dialect. Bright constellations overhead chase each other down the north–south corridor that is this thin valley, the glacier-fed river grows stronger with every passing hour, and all is well in the world.
Unfortunately, there is more trekking and less pony than I’d hoped on this pony trek in the Kashmir valley. Not too early the next morning, after a small temper tantrum about sitting on an animal whose legs are only marginally longer than mine, I team up with Balah (his name means ‘white’ in Kashmiri), Moonti (aka ‘Pearl’), the ever-patient, ever-smoking Salim and the ponies’ owner Aktor to trek to the snowline on what is apparently classed as a mid-Himalayan hike.
We pass women who balance massive loads of firewood on their heads, and others busy collecting rare medicinal mushrooms that reap 10,000 rupees (about US$150) a kilo. “Come with us!” call the women, energetically pacing the track in scarves and flowing trousers.
The rough track is almost vertical at times. Snow and rain have pushed trees and rocks across the path, which Salim clears, a cigarette always drooping from his lip. Being mid-April, it’s too early in the season to do the celebrated ridge-top circuits that take about a week to complete. The peaks are still crowned with snow, which is rapidly melting into the rivers below.
So we climb to the snowline, where the purple wildflowers peter out and the old snow starts. In a couple of weeks, the pastures will be green and full of gypsies, their goats, sheep and ponies enjoying the summer grazing. We passed them on the way up here, slowly droving their animals along the roadsides from towns up to 600 kilometres away.
But for now, it’s just the three of us – and two work-shy ponies – enjoying the whoosh of the wind through the pine trees and feasting on a sumptuous picnic: boiled eggs, potatoes, carrots and macaroons. Salim tells tales of Himalayan black bears, snow leopards and brown trout in the rivers as we peer down the mountainside at the tiny village below, where we’ll return to tonight, before climbing the mountain’s skirts once again tomorrow.
After two nights at Naranagh, the mysterious disappearance of the white chicken and the appearance of a spectacular chicken curry, we drive back to Srinagar, past villages selling nothing but woven baskets, cricket bats or dried fruit. Little cafes advertise their wares: ‘Buttertoast’, ‘Maggi’, ‘Pakora’.
For my last night in Kashmir, I go back to the houseboat on Dal Lake. I’m the only one on the boat and Shabir, the butler, gives great mournful sighs as he brings my last supper of yet more curried chicken and mounds of awesome curried water spinach.
A jeweller from Ladakh has snared his prey and is breaking my budget, unwrapping bracelets of golden topaz, garnets, pearl, lapis lazuli and peridot. There are Kashmiri carpets to be admired, pashminas to be felt, saffron to smell and sweet, dried cashews and tart apricots to pack for tomorrow’s journey. For a lost land, Kashmir is the bringer of luxury.
The last word on Kashmir goes to Jehangir, the sixteenth-century Mughal emperor who started the Kashmir public relations machine. The story goes Jehangir was lying on his deathbed and, when asked what he wanted, uttered, “Kashmir, the rest is worthless.”
It could be a marketing ploy, it could be just a slogan, but he could well also be dead right.
It begins as ice melt and summer rain high in the Himalayas. Trickles form rivulets that merge into an icy blue-grey stream. The river gathers volume and turns a rich brown as it pours into China, where it is dammed, and into Myanmar, where rapids rage. Then it flirts with Laos and Thailand and for 400 kilometres becomes their border. But it is when the mighty Mekong is halfway across Cambodia that something truly remarkable happens. The water, which has grown immense on monsoonal rain, slows then stands still as if unsure about its destination. That’s when something even more unusual occurs. It changes course and flows backwards.
The Mekong performs this counterintuitive feat every wet season for months at a time. The river becomes constricted and its waters are forced upstream, engorging Tonle Sap Lake. By September the lake has grown up to five times in size and the Mekong begins to resemble an anaconda digesting a small horse. Tonle Sap is known as the beating heart of Cambodia and it has been pulsing away like this – one beat every wet season – for time immeasurable. This seasonal back-paddle makes it one of the world’s richest sources of freshwater fish and has led to official biosphere reserve status. All those fish and all that rich alluvial soil make the Mekong the major provider for an estimated 50 million people, many of whom crowd its perimeters or live precariously on its swirling waters.
For a week in early August there are an additional 28 humans who depend on the flooding Mekong for food, transport and entertainment. We are travellers aboard the Mekong Pandaw, a modern four-storey passenger vessel handsomely designed to resemble a colonial steamer. We plan to meander downstream (or is it upstream?) to Saigon (officially called Ho Chi Minh City), stopping to visit temples and markets, observing daily rituals and routines, and forming some of our own – cocktail hour on the sundeck being the most pressing. But like 50 million others, our schedule, if not our wellbeing, will be dictated by the vast chocolate stream beneath us.
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We embark from Kompong Cham after a visit to Siem Reap and the nearby Angkor temples. A day inside this vast complex of crumbling ruins, soaring temples and ancient walled cities is barely enough to scratch the surface. They were inspired initially by Hindu gods and later by a devotion to Buddha, and the meaning and complexity of the Angkor temples has been compared to the postmodern literature of James Joyce. It takes time and research to fully appreciate the grandeur and significance of these magnificent buildings.
Angkor Wat is the most famous, best-preserved and, apparently, largest religious structure in the world. From a distance (or a helicopter) the vastness
of the complex and the genius of its design, engineering and construction become apparent. Up close the carved sandstone walls of the central temple tell the story of the great Khmer Empire in arresting detail: gory battle scenes, multi-limbed gods, multi-layered allegories, 37 heavens, 32 hells and much more compete for your attention across 800 metres of exquisite bas-relief.
The risk with visiting the Angkor temples early in your visit to Southeast Asia is that you’re unlikely to top the experience. Either that or, like me, you might become a little obsessive about them. A river cruise down the Mekong is a great way to ween yourself off the works of the Khmer god-kings, though. There are lesser temples to experience and you’re likely to meet companions who understand your enthusiasm for the Churning of the Sea of Milk and your other top five Angkor engravings.
River cruising was an entirely new concept for me, and one I quickly embraced. I liked the pace: slower than a train but faster than a bike. The activity-to-food ratio also impressed: two expeditions and seven or eight serves of gorgeous food per day. I imagine it to be similar to ocean cruising – only without the fear of seasickness or enforced group fun.
We watched the scenery change and monsoonal storms arrive at what felt a lot like a regal pace. Village kids had time to spread the word of our arrival. For days the embankment was crowded with laughing children who would wave, salute, practise karate moves or scream “hello” over and over. I felt like I was in an aging boy band with a loyal following in remote Asia.
One morning we stopped at a small village and rode in an ox cart through the settlement, past the rice fields and out to a temple to receive a blessing and a prayer band from a wizened Buddhist monk. A procession of children followed us there and back, eager to practise their English. By the end of the excursion they had won us over with flowers, drawings of kangaroos and rings made of grass reeds. We had been serenaded (“If you’re happy and you know it”) and when it came time for farewells I was awash with First World guilt. That evening earnest discussions about how travellers can benefit developing communities without causing dependence were in full swing.
Each morning I would drink my coffee, order my eggs, read my itinerary and briefly wonder if I was really doing enough on this trip. But it gradually dawned on me that a process was underway. During each little trip ashore I was collecting small insights and snippets of experience. Each afternoon and early evening I had the luxury, the time and the deckchair to read. Personal experiences were meshing with a broader perspective. Unintentionally, and often while sipping a beer, I was becoming educated.
I learned about the people of Southern Vietnam, the Chams, who sailed up this very same river in 1177 and sacked the city of Angkor. Then we stopped at village just over the Vietnam border and I meet some real life Chams and bought a scarf and bracelet off them. All the while I’m thinking: if Jayavaraman VII (who in my mind was already Jay-V) hadn’t defeated the distant relatives of these lovely Chams here in the epic naval battle of 1181, then I may have been trading with them outside Angkor Wat, in a country called Champa. Jay-V not only defeated the Chams, but most of the monuments visited at Angkor to this day were also built during his reign. To top it off he ended centuries of devotion to Hinduism and kick-started centuries of devotion to Buddhism. Surely the man was one of history’s great over-achievers.
But I fear that I’m losing you. This is the sort of heady historical stuff that means very little on the page, but can become intoxicating when your drifting down the backwards-flowing Mekong in August. In your fist the cocktail of the day, back there in your wake the still-expanding Tonle Sap Lake (Cambodia’s beating heart) and the twinkling river city of Phnom Penh. And up ahead? The Mekong Delta! Saigon! The South China Sea! All you need to do is sit back, read your history book or exchange tales with your shipmates. Another storm is brewing to port. Dinner will be served when the gong sounds. The Mekong River isn’t going anywhere in a hurry.
"Are you scared?” Petr asks me as he untangles the spaghetti of coloured chords attached to a large orange chute laid out behind us. I’m staring over a cliff that drops almost 2000 metres down to a miniature Swiss village. I can’t respond.
“You just have to walk fast when I tell you. Then everything will be fine. You are not too heavy. Soon we’ll be flying!” He’s laughing as he tells me this. “You are lucky today. Fiesch is the best place in the world for flying!”
And with that my new best friend takes a big step forward with me strapped to his front. We walk awkwardly together like clumsy Siamese twins. The chute catches the wind and my steps get decidedly longer. “Keep walking!” yells Petr. “I am!” I yell back, finally finding my voice, only to stare down at my feet frantically pedalling air as the lush green mountainside drops away.
It is suddenly quiet but for the wind hissing past my ears. My initial fear is replaced by awe as I stare, mouth agape, at the jagged white teeth of the Swiss Alps around us. To my left I can make out the white highway of the incredible Aletsch Glacier, winding its way from the peaks of Jungfrau and the Eiger down towards the Rhône valley. In the distance to my right the Matterhorn towers through the clouds.
The Valais region of Switzerland is a mecca for paragliders, with the valleys creating a perfect storm of thermals and winds. Petr tells me the record for the longest flight was recently set at more than 11 hours. The pilot flew wind-assisted from Fiesch to Zurich and back.
I ask Petr what happens if you lose a thermal and have to land far from home. He laughs and tells me they simply jump on the nearest train. “Swiss Rail is the best in the world. Always on time. We can fly anywhere and get home easy!”
I’m in no hurry to get home though, and as we rise over the undulating valleys below, I ask Petr if he can fly me to Zurich airport tomorrow. He laughs again and says: “Catch the train. You are too heavy!”
Duels. There’s something wonderfully straightforward and final about them. Whether it’s cowboys drawing pistols at high noon, or kids straightening out an argument with a simple game of rock paper scissors, a duel is a no-nonsense way to settle a score between two warring parties.
Yet duels have become something of a lost art. When disputes occur in our lives these days, they are far more likely to end up in a courtroom, or at the very least, with an exchange of strong words. But do these methods really do anything to address the anger and malice involved? Probably not.
However, on Santa Catalina – a tiny island in the far east of the Solomon Islands – the idea of the duel and dealing with grievances is alive and well. Out here in the Pacific it is the old-fashioned spear that’s used for resolving disagreements.
While I’d heard small tidbits of information about the customs on Santa Catalina, neither I, nor any of the 10 or so other visitors who arrived by dingy in this remote part of the Solomons, knew the extent of what we were getting ourselves into. We all knew spear fighting was supposed to be a big spectacle, and we knew it was an important part of the island’s culture, but little else.
At the Spear Fighting Festival (known locally as Wogasia) the men of the island’s two tribes, the Amuea and the Ataua, meet on the beach at dawn and at dusk to lob sharpened sticks at each other. This is to sort out their disagreements from throughout the year – such as an unreturned household item, a broken marriage or a land dispute.
While spear fighting is obviously central to this event, the Wogasia goes well beyond the fight and the need to resolve differences. It is a three-day festival of complex rituals aimed at purging the community of the problems and frustrations of the previous year and, in doing so, set up the island for a solid root crop harvest. The festival formally starts with the ceremonial washing of a conch shell (selected from hundreds of shells by Santa Catalina chiefs), before the islanders meet at midnight to begin an all-night procession of chanting and conch shell blowing.
Wogasia is a three-day festival of complex rituals aimed at purging the community of the problems and frustrations of the previous year and, in doing so, set up the island for a solid root crop harvest.
One of the best things about the Wogasia is that the few visitors there for the festival are well and truly involved in the action. I spend much of the event side-by-side with my host, Edward Wasuka, immersed in the festival’s traditions. I am taught everything from throwing and blocking a spear, to chewing betel nut and blowing a conch. I even learn the best designs to smear on my body as I cake myself in mud.
At 2am on the night before the spear fight, the Santa Catalina women lead a frantic sprint through the villages, beating the ground with fire-lit coconut palms to drive disease and demons from the island. It’s wild, uninhibited stuff. The fronds crack loudly as they are smacked into the ground, sparks fly, children scream and elderly women stand in their doorways throwing buckets of dirty water and fish guts at those running past.
Later in the night as Edward and I are sitting down for a pre-festival coconut and some betel nut, I ask him what he is expecting from this year’s event. “I’m just looking forward to fighting,” he says, with a wry smile, clearly indicating that there are some issues he is looking forward to resolving. After days of build-up and a sleepless night of chanting, conch blowing and much talking, I can appreciate Edward’s keenness to get out on the beach and start throwing some spears.
As the sun rises on the festival’s big day, two of the Aumea tribe’s toughest warriors, painted in mud and wrapped in branches, commence proceedings by heading to one end of the beach. They dance in the shallows, bang their spears and wooden shields together, and scream the names of their enemies down the beach. Two warriors from the other tribe then emerge to lead the opposing charge, as more and more join the line-up on each side. Both groups move closer towards each other, howling, kicking water and stamping spears into the ground, before a lone fighter – the ‘chief of warriors’ – runs through the shallow water to the front, signals out his enemy and goads him from just metres away. The first spear is thrown (it is deflected with a swift move of a shield), the island’s chiefs nod the all-clear. From that moment, it’s on.
Up to this point, I’d enjoyed the bravado of the whole event, with constant talk of the spear fight, the kids threatening the visiting ‘whiteman’ with half-hearted jokes. But as a roar sounds down the beach and the two tribes begin their fighting, with spears flying in all directions, any sense of playfulness I’ve had about the event evaporates. A stray spear lands with a thud in the sand just centimetres from my feet, and I stumble back into a group of elders standing behind me. It occurs to me that despite my few hours of learning how to throw and block a spear, I am way, way out of my depth and I’d best stand back.
The sound of spears hitting shields fills the length of the beach. It’s a surreal event to witness so closely. Some spears travel frighteningly fast at their targets, hitting legs and grazing arms, others wobble through the air and fall far short. Supporters stand behind the fighters, collecting stray spears and passing them back to combatants. Families yell their support, while a group of island elders adjudicate proceedings from the safety of the dunes. I watch Edward charge his way into the fight. As he takes on two men at the opposite side of the battle, I wonder what it was that he did during the year to warrant a two-on-one fight.
After less than five minutes, it’s all over. The elders run down the beach calling an end to the fight. Spears are laid down and, within seconds, hands are shaken, smiles return to faces. It’s like a spear was never thrown. Friends and families from both tribes converge on the beach, and I see Edward and his two foes smiling and slapping each other on the back. Fighters who minutes earlier were launching spears at each other walk ceremonially together under a rokbonaparagu vine, signifying their unity and the end of their grievance, before everyone heads home to laugh and swap stories from the battle.
Having stood a little too close to the fight, I can attest that this is no theatre spectacle. These are actual spears thrown with real power at real people. There is genuine danger involved in the whole event. I saw at least five direct spear hits to legs or hips, two that resulted in fighters having to be carried away mid-fight. And the people of Santa Catalina still talk of the infamous 1974 fight, where one unlucky warrior lost an eye after a spear went into his eye socket.
With that said, island elder Chief Gordon Raroinamae emphasises that there have never been any deaths from the event – at least not in living memory. “The purpose isn’t to kill or harm your opponent; it is a test of his courage,” he says when we sit down for a long chat afterwards. He tells me that Kastom beliefs also play an important role in keeping the fight fair. Should a fight get out of hand, or a spear be thrown with bad intent, then there are three or four senior women on Santa Catalina who have the power of a secret chant that can redirect a spear from its target, or even shatter it mid-air.
On the afternoon before the final spear fight, the women head to Faraina, the island’s highest point, to cut banana leaves and chant cheeky insults at the men.
All the men join the women on top of the hill, where we cover ourselves in aranpagora, the island’s sacred orange mud, before wrapping ourselves in ferns and marching back down. We ceremonially yell out to the women below at each break in the trees, before storming through the village, stamping our spears on the ground and separating into respective sides for the next spear fight. As the first spear is thrown, I’m proudly still there, ready to get among it. But despite my enthusiasm, Chief Gordon pushes me away from the pack with a friendly smile and tells me, “Maybe you should just watch.” I half-smile and thank him for saving me the embarrassment of a certain stray-spear injury.
The women are covered in mud and dressed head to toe in banana leaves, resembling an army of walking trees. They line up and throw stones at the men, before sprinting into the ocean, where they stand proudly half-naked in the shallows as the sun goes down on the festival’s final afternoon.
It is a manic end to a wild few days that, in an odd way, celebrates conflict. But Wogasia makes people confront their grievances and addresses them publicly to ensure issues don’t fester and grow into something worse. So with that in mind, the next time someone throws a spear at you – whether literal or metaphorical – why not thank them for considering your long-term wellbeing?
THE RULES OF THE GAME
The rules of the Spear Fighting Festival, according to Chief Gordon Raroinamae:
1. Fight only with someone who has made you angry or caused you distress.
2. If you are fighting a member of your family, you can only fight a brother or a cousin – never your father or an uncle.
3. If an issue has been ‘formally’ reconciled (through compensation payments), but the grievance is still in your heart, then you are encouraged to fight to resolve it.
4. If your spear hits the wrong person, expect to pay them compensation after the fight.
“Pain starts here,” says Haitian guide Jean Cyril Pressoir, staring up at the mountaintop from the base of a long road. It’s already been a tough, sweaty, though very enjoyable day of hiking up and down steep rocky roads, but now there’s a slow, daunting climb ahead. All day we’ve been passed by fit, strong women from local villages, carrying great loads on their heads. Now, even their pace slows.
Few people imagine mountains when they think of Haiti. When it comes to the Caribbean, it’s mainly beaches and rum cocktails that come to mind. But, as Jean Cyril tells me, “Haiti is almost all mountains. Of all the Caribbean islands, it’s the most mountainous. Ayiti, the Kreyòl spelling of Haiti, means ‘land of mountains’. It comes from the Tainos, the indigenous Indians, who lived here before the arrival of Christopher Columbus.”
There’s a popular saying in this predominantly black Francophone country, which covers half an island shared with the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic: “Dèyè mòn gen mòn”, meaning “Beyond the mountains, there are mountains.” It can be taken literally, Jean Cyril explains as we make our way to the summit, but it’s also a fitting metaphor for a country with hidden depths and plenty to discover beyond the obvious. Haiti, a country known mainly for its troubled history and the devastating 2010 earthquake, isn’t on many adventure travellers’ radars, but there’s much to find here, from the very hikeable mountains and the national vodou (voodoo) culture to artist communities, traditional music and food. Not to mention sunshine, beaches and rum.
I’d flown into the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince, and set out immediately with Jean Cyril for the mist-covered hills beyond the sprawling metropolis, heading for La Visite National Park. The four-wheel drive drops us at the hilltop marketplace of Carrefour Badio and we hike up a rolling road into the mountain villages. There’s plenty to take in, with open views of green hills on either side. It’s a Sunday and locals are making their way home from church, the men in suits, girls in best dresses. Women carry heavy loads of mountain-grown carrots and onions down to the market in town. Dogs, pigs, chickens and horses are all part of the flowing traffic. “Hiking is the perfect pace to soak in this country,” Jean Cyril says as the hours pass. “You hear things and smell things you wouldn’t get from travelling in a van.” I have to agree.
After getting the painful hill slog out of the way, we find the evening filled with the sound of crickets and the smell of smoke from kitchen fires. There’s a fiery Caribbean sunset as we make our way through a pine forest to our lodge, Kay Winnie, where there’s lively kompa (traditional Haitian music), local mint tea and a couple of friendly old dogs to welcome us.
We’d set out from Port-au-Prince with the hope of hiking Haiti’s highest mountain, Pic La Selle, but it’s soon clear this isn’t going to happen. It rains heavily through the night, an unseasonable tropical storm, and our plan to ride a motorbike taxi (three men, one bike) for two hours on difficult terrain that’s now a muddy wash-out feels like an accident waiting to happen. Instead, we select nearby Pic Cabaio and, fuelled by Haitian coffee, climb up through the forest.
At the summit, we’re lucky to get a break in the mist for a brief but impressive vista over the island. To our right is the shining blue of Lac Azuéi. “The lake is in Haiti,” Jean Cyril tells me, “but it marks the border with the Dominican Republic. A lot of what we’re seeing from up here, over to the east, is in the Dominican Republic.”
It starts to rain hard again as we make our way down. There’s nothing to do back at the lodge but wait for the storm to blow through with a bottle of good Haitian rum. Sometimes it’s a tough life. The skies clear by morning and we make our way back down the mountain road. We’re rarely alone, with more local women carrying vegetables to market (it seems they do most of the heavy lifting around here). Some seem bemused that anyone would walk these hills for fun, but they’re always friendly, exchanging welcoming ‘bonjous’ (creole for hello).
These women are a good symbol for Haiti, a country that, like them, has had to be tough and resilient, keeping going no matter how difficult or rocky the road. Haiti has had more than its share of hard times. The arrival of Christopher Columbus and the Spanish was catastrophic for the indigenous Indians, who were wiped out. Slaves were then shipped in from Africa to work on the new French sugar plantations. When the black population fought for and won independence (Haiti was the world’s first black republic), they were ostracised and punished internationally, considered a dangerous example to other slave-run economies.
More recently, the country suffered the murderous dictatorship of Papa Doc (François Duvalier) and his feared security forces, the Tonton Macoutes, who were the subject of Graham Greene’s novel The Comedians. Then came the January 2010 earthquake, which killed an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 people, led to an outbreak of cholera and worsened poverty in a country that was already the poorest in the Western Hemisphere. It’s not surprising that Haiti doesn’t top travellers’ to-do lists.
Problems are still clear to see, especially the poverty in Port-au-Prince, but Haitians don’t sit around feeling sorry for themselves and the country feels like it’s on the up. “There’s something happening right now where people are starting to rediscover Haiti,” says Jean Cyril as we drive through the lively and colourful capital, with its brightly painted buildings and local tap-tap taxis decorated with evangelical Christian messages and paintings of pop stars. Many of the buildings have been rebuilt since the earthquake, including the destroyed Marché en Fer (Iron Market). This is the place to pick up vodou dolls, metre-long machetes, paintings and, if you’re eating ‘local’, a tubful of turtles or a cat.
From the market, I head to Atis Rezistans, an artist community that takes discarded materials from the street – car parts, bottle tops, shoes – and turns them into strange sculptures heavy with images of sex and death. Human skulls have also been incorporated in the artworks. “When you start to really think about death, you start to really understand life,” says artist Romel Jean-Pierre, explaining the positive meaning behind the imagery. “Knowing about death makes me want to live my life fully every day.”
He pours rum on the ground for the spirits. There’s food on altars left out for them, too. The idea is if you treat the spirits well they will reciprocate.
In another district, Noailles, local artists work with steel recycled from oil drums. Vodou flag maker and priest Jean-Baptiste Jean-Joseph has a studio here, where his meticulously beaded flags sell for up to AU$8000. Vodou is a central part of Haitian culture, brought here from Africa by the slaves. But Haitians are frustrated by Hollywood’s version of ‘voodoo’. “When I see people use vodou for evil, it doesn’t make me happy because that isn’t the purpose of vodou,” Jean-Joseph says, as he shows me around the temple behind his studio, knocking on doors to announce himself to loa (spirits) before entering. “Vodou is good, wise, pure. It helps you go forward. It helps you heal, to work, to prosper.” He pours rum on the ground for the spirits. There’s food on altars left out for them, too. The idea is if you treat the spirits well they will reciprocate.
A short flight takes us to Cap-Haïtien in the north, where Christopher Columbus established a settlement and where much of the French sugar industry was based. I hike up a steep path to the mountaintop fortress La Citadelle Henri Christophe – also known as La Citadelle Laferrière – in the afternoon heat with a group of local students. We end up discussing the merits of Ronaldo and Messi, as you do when you’re at a UNESCO World Heritage site in a region rich with history.
Built between 1804 and 1820 by former slave and revolution leader Henri Christophe, the citadelle is the largest of 22 mountaintop forts, part of a plan by Haiti’s first independence leader, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, to repel the French if they tried to regain control of the country. It has huge symbolic importance in a nation that suffered so much under colonial rule; the forts weren’t designed to guard ports or cities, but “to protect the idea of freedom, to never go back to slavery”, explains Jean Cyril. The defensive hilltop position of the citadelle affords views of green peaks on three sides and, to the north, the town of Cap-Haïtien.
After stopping in – and sampling the goods – at a local rum distillery, I spend a morning walking around Cap-Haïtien – its mellow streets lined with colourful lottery shops, watch menders and men playing dice – before flying south to spend a few days in the arty coastal town of Jacmel and the waterfalls and rock pools of Bassin-Bleu.
Haiti isn’t a country you’d travel to purely for beach time (there are cheaper, easier spots for that), but there are good beaches here. I make my way to Moulin Sur Mer, a resort on the west coast near Montrouis, built on an eighteenth-century sugar plantation. I explore the villages around Montrouis, where trees and the local water pool are decorated with vodou symbols. “Vodou is part of life here,” says local guide Jean-Roger Dorsainvil. We pass the local disco-cum-brothel, then talk our way into a small vodou ‘temple’, where a table in the back room is loaded with maracas, a deck of cards, bottles and other tools used to call the spirits. In another room there is a small coffin, a warning to people who enter without the priest’s permission.
The rest of the day’s spent on a seahawk boat, scuba diving in largely unexplored waters mostly used by fishermen and traditional sailing boats carrying salt up the coast. We drop anchor near La Gônave, the largest island off Haiti’s coast, to a soundtrack of tunes from national kompa star Sweet Micky, now the Haitian President Michel Martelly. “Haiti is a land of extremes,” divemaster Jeff Kirzner says, talking about everything from the president’s career choices to the difference between perceptions of Haiti and the reality of the island’s natural beauty.
During a mellow day of diving, I don’t see any big creatures, like turtles, sharks or mantas, or huge numbers of fish. But it’s fun swimming over landscapes of elephant ear sponges and vase and fan corals, spotting balloonfish, Caribbean stingrays and lionfish. Between dives, we explore the coast, swimming ashore to a white-sand beach, then on to the Iles des Arcadins islands that give this coast (Côte des Arcadins) its name.
I finish my time here with an early morning hike to the village of Kay Piat, halfway up the mountains that rise above the ocean. Paths are busy with villagers carrying loads of breadfruit down to the market. A hillside house has a cross outside, a vodou sign of protection. “In Haiti, when people come into an area and see the signs, they understand what it means,” says Jean-Roger.
For such a short and easy – if hot and sweaty – hike, the views are remarkable, constantly changing with the twists of the road to take in small villages, sugar plantations, palm trees, mountains and the Caribbean ocean. We stop at a local school and orphanage, where friendly kids clamour to greet us. At the end of their lessons, they sing uplifting songs. Jean-Roger and I sit outside in the sun and wait for the van to pick us up and take us back to the coast as the children’s voices ring out across the land of mountains.
"Whale! Whale!” Our guide Wintiga points excitedly towards a tell-tale fountain of water billowing skywards. It rises like a plume of smoke above the water several hundred metres away, prompting our boat captain Ishan to press forward on the throttle. We watch as a huge body breaches the surface of the calm ocean, but from this distance we can’t distinguish the species. Already today we’ve seen grey and Bryde’s whales, and we’ve heard reports of humpbacks nearby.
“Blue whale!” shouts Wintiga. “It’s a blue whale.”
The creature leaves a mirror-smooth trail in its wake. It’s swimming in a southeasterly direction and Ishan guns the engine in an effort to overtake it. International regulations stipulate boats must maintain a safe distance of at least 100 metres from any whales, so Ishan steers the vessel along a parallel course, careful not to encroach on that domain.
Suddenly the whale changes tack and is making a beeline straight for us. I watch from the viewing deck atop the boat’s control room as the largest animal ever to roam our planet makes for our starboard bow. If it collides, it might sink us.
It’s too late for Ishan to back away, so he cuts the engine to avoid slicing into the whale’s body with the boat’s propeller. From my elevated vantage point I can see this is, without doubt, one formidably sized creature. Just how big it is though I’m not sure. The sun reflects off its leathery hide as it arches its back – its spinal ridge seems to go on forever. Eventually its dorsal fin appears and by the time the tail rises out of the water I’m wondering whether this animal is ever going to end. Only then do I fully appreciate how enormous it is.
“It’s diving,” Wintiga yells, and the torpedo-shaped outline slips silently into the depths of the deep blue sea. It could surface in 15 or 20 minutes, but by then it might be miles away.
The whales many travellers come to Sri Lanka to see are the Indian pygmy blues. The name suggests a creature of diminished stature, but nothing could be further from the truth. Although these sea mammals are slightly smaller than the 30-metre-long giants found in the polar regions, they’re certainly no runts. An adult can be two-and-a-half times longer than a bus and weigh as much as 25 elephants. Even the flue – the misty spout of air and water erupting from a whale’s blowhole – can reach as high as a two-storey house, making them easy for whale watchers to spot. It’s also why they were so easy to catch during centuries past.
Sri Lanka’s whale-watching season lasts from late October through to April and the tiny fishing village of Mirissa is the main source of action. During the peak months of December and January as many as 30 whales have been sighted in one day. Sperm, fin, Bryde’s, humpback and even killer whales, as well as large pods of acrobatic spinner dolphins, are all seen regularly in this place where the warm coastal waters merge with the colder waters of the continental shelf, just 10 nautical miles offshore. This convergence of currents creates a cycle of rising nutrients that provides nourishment for millions of krill, the tiny crustacean baleen whales feed on. Nowhere else in the world do they venture so close to shore. Still, it’s the blues everyone comes to see.
Scientists are still learning about Sri Lanka’s pygmy blue whale population. Studies only commenced here in 2006, so there isn’t enough data to know exact migratory habits. Some believe they come to Mirissa each year from the Arabian Sea; others think they never leave.
Marine biologists only realised Indian pygmy blue whales passed by Mirissa at the same time every year early in 2008. By October, two companies had started operating tours. Now it’s difficult to count exactly how many boats cruise these waters in search of whales.
When I first came to Mirissa early in 2008, there were no whale-watching tours. My wife and I had travelled to Sri Lanka for a week’s holiday from the Middle East, where we’d been living and working for seven years. By that stage we’d made up our minds to return home to Australia, prompted largely by the arrival of our son. But before the economic realities of living in Australia took over we wanted to bum by the sea somewhere. Sri Lanka seemed as good a place as any.
After scoping various beach towns along the south-west coast – both Hikkaduwa and Unawatuna had been changed by the arrival of big hotels and large numbers of tourists – we set eyes on Mirissa and knew we’d found our place to live. Coconut palms fringed a dazzlingly white beach that swept from Mirissa Point to Parrot Island. The seas were calm and clear and I could count on one hand the number of people lazing on the sand. Apart from one small section, the beach was set away from the main coastal highway, meaning we wouldn’t have to listen to the blaring horns of trucks and buses as they travelled between Colombo and Matara each day. As a bonus, Mirissa Point at the beach’s northern end was home to a small, surfable reef break, although only a few locals were out riding it.
The town was a sleepy fishing village then and a fair chunk of its beachfront was occupied by two properties – the Paradise Beach Club and the regional headquarters for the Sri Lankan Coast Guard. A handful of other guesthouses, mostly empty and neglected, were sprinkled along the beach. Apart from the nightly buffets on offer at the club, the only other restaurants were two low-key establishments placed side by side whose menus were restricted to basic seafood dishes and Sri Lankan curries.
We couldn’t imagine a better seaside town in which to spend six months, so we made enquiries about rental properties at the Paradise Beach Club. As luck would have it, the owner’s older brother had the ideal pad for us for the equivalent of about US$75 a week, and we moved into the upstairs part of his house. From August 2008 right through to February the following year, we lived in a flat with five bedrooms, a central living area, a poky kitchen and a balcony overlooking tropical gardens the owner personally looked after.
I soon fell into a pattern of working on a book manuscript each morning then spending the rest of the day on the beach with my wife and son. Every second day I’d get up early and surf at the point, regardless of the state of the waves. For half that time, I was largely on my own in the water. The local surfers waited until the monsoon season passed and the tides receded, and tourists only paddled out from November onwards.
On Tuesdays and Fridays my wife would shop for fresh groceries at the twice-weekly fruit and vegetable market. Once a week we’d catch a bus into Matara to buy dry goods, cheap Australian wine and beer in long necks. We didn’t own a television and our only internet access – spasmodic as it was – was through a neighbour or a friend around the corner, so most evenings we spent talking or reading on our balcony.
A regular procession of visitors stayed with us, and often we’d all go off travelling to see the Sacred Cities, wildlife parks and hill country that together make Sri Lanka one of the prettiest and most interesting islands on Earth. In Mirissa we’d laze about on the beach or take them on excursions to visit the Paravi Island Buddhist temple in Matara or to Galle Fort, where we’d sit and sip Ceylon tea inside colonial-era buildings that had been converted into cafes.
Every second day I’d get up early and surf at the point, regardless of the state of the waves. For half that time, I was largely on my own in the water.
When my younger brother arrived from Australia we’d trawl the coast for waves, usually ending up in Midigama or Ahangama, where fishermen perched on stilts in the shallows against streaky skies painted crimson and orange by the setting sun. On a couple of occasions we’d go snorkelling off the perfectly calm beach of Polhena, further south near Matara, and watch children splash in rock pools near the shore.
It was a slow, idyllic life and my wife and I seriously contemplated making Mirissa our permanent home. We could live comfortably, simply and cheaply, far from the everyday hassles and financial constraints of the Western world. However, like Hikkaduwa and Unawatuna further north, Mirissa has changed too.
Travellers have learned throughout the years that undiscovered paradises don’t remain that way forever. The secret eventually escapes, whereupon the backpackers move in. They are followed by developers with big ideas, deep pockets and very few scruples when it comes to preserving the essence of what initially made the place so appealing.
A concrete monstrosity is currently under construction in Weligama, up the road from Mirissa. Similarly tasteless projects are yet to reach Mirissa itself, but what’s certain is they will creep down the coast, following the tide of foreign visitors who have descended here en masse during the past two or three years.
The reasons for this influx are many. The recent completion of the Southern Expressway all the way from Colombo to Matara and another north to the international airport at Katunayake have knocked hours off the time required to make it this far south. Soon the two will link, and when they do Mirissa and the south coast will become even more alluring and accessible for those in search of sun-filled beach holidays.
For the entire six months that I lived in Mirissa, government forces were heavily engaged in a military offensive against the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) rebels in the country’s north. Not long after we left, the Rajapaksa government claimed victory – the 26-year-old war was finally over – and foreign visitors once scared off by concerns for their safety no longer shied away.
The Russians discovered Sri Lanka after the national carrier Aeroflot began direct flights from Moscow to Colombo in 2011. Now nubile young Ruskies – only rivalled in numbers by the French – just a few threads away from being naked, frolic on Mirissa beach. Backpackers began trickling into the town after Lonely Planet listed its beach as one of the Top 10 attractions in its Sri Lankan guidebook two editions ago.
I’ve returned to Mirissa twice since our initial six-month stay. On my most recent visit, I was aghast to find sun lounges and umbrellas for hire on the beach. Restaurant owners have increasingly moved their dishes from the kitchen to the sand, where diners wearing boardshorts and bikinis can choose from trays of fresh seafood under a montage of coloured lights.
At least there are the whales – that won’t be changing. They’ll keep swimming up and down the coast just as they have for who knows how long. And more than anything these days – more than the slick new highways and dazzling beaches and warless times – it’s the lure of the whales that drives people towards Mirissa.
A metal hook slices the air beside me. The blade is old, rusted and definitely lethal. It’s attached to a man who introduced himself moments ago while I slurped on a coconut from a street stall. “Yesterday, three whales!” he hisses, gouging the air again. A grin cracks his face and I finally exhale, realising he has no intention of plunging the metal into my skin. With pride he tells me the hook once hunted ikan paus (whales) in his hometown of Lamalera, a village on an island not too far from here. I am soon to discover life in the remote town revolves around the tradition of slicing, dicing and digesting the king of the sea.
Later, after the evening prayers have fizzed from crackling loudspeakers across town, bounced off mountains and dispersed over discarded ships tipped like toys in Larantuka’s port, the warungs (cafes) open their doors. “Four nights ago they caught five whales. Not big ones, little ones,” a restaurant owner informs me as I polish off a plate of mie goreng.
“I read it in the paper.”
It seems everyone here is captivated by Lamalera and its whales. I’ve found myself on Flores Island, smack bang in the middle of the Indonesian province of East Nusa Tenggara, hoping to learn about the region’s sacred creatures and the cultures who worship them. The province stretches from the island of Komodo in the west, crawling with prehistoric lizards dribbling saliva so toxic it can kill, to a little-known diver’s paradise called Alor in the east. Bundled in between are Flores, West Timor and Sumba – each peppered with fishing villages, traditional tribes and volcanoes – and more than 500 tiny isles. The figure seems immense until you remember Indonesia comprises more than 17,500 islands.
Whispers about Lamalera seem to float across the sea, but reaching the whaling town is no easy task. First, it’s a four-hour cruise from the port in Larantuka on Flores Island to Lewoleba on Lembata Island. From there you catch a bemo (van) to the outskirts of town where you’ll find a truck that rollicks through thick growth toward Lamalera. My thoughts curdle from heat and the vehicle’s vibrations seconds into the 40-kilometre ride. When we rumble into Lamalera four hours later I’m struggling to remember what town belongs to which L-word. My legs, stiff and bruised from contorting between metal bars, bushels of live chickens and sacks of rice, refuse to unfurl.
The first thing I notice when I disembark is an assaulting stench. The second is a wishbone the size of a child flanking the side of the road. Lamalera lives and breathes whale. A quick stroll reveals drying flesh, flyblown blubber and curious bits of anatomy dangling from bamboo poles. The black sand beach is greasy with fat melting under the sun and vertebrae prop up pot plants. In the middle of the main street a choir harmonises under a tree outside a building decorated with murals depicting whales and Jesus on the cross.
Passing empty boatsheds on the sand I spot children sliding off a bloated white mass in the shallows. They lunge, thrusting imaginary spears into the carcass in lieu of the harpoon-tipped bamboo poles used by the hunters. The villagers believe whales are gifts from their ancestors and eat the flesh, crush the bones for fertiliser and burn the oil for fuel.
Superstition underlies the tradition; it is thought that if the town is at peace there will be plenty of whales, if not crews fear an even more dangerous hunt. This rare waste, a rotting sperm whale – the most cherished of all whales besides the endangered blue, which is revered and never captured – put up a mean fight, tossing a lamafa (whaler) around like a doll. Perhaps it was punishment for a clan dispute. Incredibly, the lamafa survived and rests in a distant hospital waiting for crushed bones to bind while the creature’s cranium lurks
in the sea, tainted with bad luck and well past its use by date.
One morning the beach resembles a butcher’s shop. The fishermen’s sacred boats, handmade using techniques passed down from forebears who sailed from Sulawesi hundreds of years ago, have returned to their shelters and dozens of villagers are at work carving three pilot whales into pieces. Despite whispers of abundance that bounce around Flores, the lamafa often return empty-handed. This is a generous catch. Seizing small quantities and avoiding rare species earn the hunters the badge of subsistence fishers, a term employed by the International Whaling Commission, which permits aboriginal whaling. Indonesia isn’t a member, but to toe the line the lamafa are banned from using modern fishing techniques, instead relying on rickety wooden boats, bamboo poles and the weight of their bodies to drive metal barbs into the graceful beasts.
Hunks of meat ooze onto the sand and a team hauls pink and purple ribbons from a magician’s bag of guts. Beaming women cart away their family’s portion in buckets on their heads. Some will be dried and stored, some cooked fresh in stews. What isn’t needed will be bartered at a market a two-hour walk away for vegetables that refuse to grow in the region’s stubborn soil. Through this trade the whales support life across the entire island.
It’s peak tourist season and a photographer from Spain sits on a couch in my homestay flicking through images from his voyage out with the boats. A couple on a bizarre honeymoon browses photographs of renowned locals on the walls, and two backpackers are searching for somewhere bloodless to swim. We converge for the same rationed lunch and dinner each day – an egg, rice and packet mie goreng with slices of choko – but today a new dish stands out in the spread. Whale. Handing the plate of unappetising brown gloop around the table we each take a lump and chew it down along with our Western misgivings. Despite simmering for hours it’s still tough and tastes a lot like liver. Perhaps it is. Even after our best efforts to make it look as though we’ve appreciated the delicacy, the braise looks almost untouched.
The evening generator kicks in as I settle on the porch with Jeffrey, a teacher who has recently returned to the village hoping to open a guesthouse off the back of the town’s whaling notoriety. The venture isn’t just for money, he says, as a breeze permeated with putrefying fat plays with a mobile of whale figurines above our heads. “All the people here have the responsibility for the existence of this [whaling] tradition.” And running an inn to keep travellers comfy would be his way of helping the town. Bob Marley’s ‘One Love’ erupts from his hip and he frees his phone and places it on the table next to a bone-cum-ashtray. It’s a casual motion, but with reception arriving in the area only a month ago the device is hot property, modernising the town with one great leap.
“Money is not everything,” he tells me. “First I want to make friends, learn. Money can come afterwards.” In truth the village needs rupiahs and food to survive. Cash is hard to come by – bartered whale meat doesn’t bring in a cent – and the numbers who hunt are dwindling. “Most of the parents here want their child to go to school,” Jeffrey explains, describing the conflict they face in trying to feed themselves and keep the whaling tradition alive, while earning enough to give their children the best possible life. Tourists carry coin, although it’s harder to lure them now that newer editions of Lonely Planet have erased references to the little island. Jeffrey insists that although the town benefits from visitors, whaling is for survival not for show.
Hunting season spans May to October and the fishermen must rest, often for a week, before saying their prayers, unfurling woven sails and riding the waves in pursuit of more mammals. When the prized creatures elude capture, dolphins, manta rays and sharks are all on the menu, and their dried bones, fins and teeth litter the town. Late one afternoon I watch kids cluster around a boat, prodding flying fish that pad its hull. A boy plucks one from the mix, puckers his lips and plants a kiss on its eyeball, sparking a frenzy of slurping and gouging until every last peeper is clean. I decline the offer of an eye but harbour hopes that tonight the homestay’s cook will fry up fish instead of wasting more whale on us.
While Lamalera lies eons off the tourist track, those who do make it to East Nusa Tenggara often set sail from Flores to see the famous dragons on Komodo Island, and I’m no exception. The sky is a pool of ink when I climb from a motorboat onto the deck of Plataran Felicia, a luxe phinisi (traditional schooner), in the harbour of Labuan Bajo, a fishing town on the west of Flores. We are racing the heat of the day to Komodo in the hope of spotting the world’s biggest lizard, believed to be the ancestors of the island’s inhabitants. Despite our head start it’s not long before the sun erupts behind distant mountains, staining the water pink and warming the air.
In Lamalera villagers eat the gifts sent by their forebears, but make a wrong move on Komodo and the local’s ancestors might munch you. Before Komodo National Park was created in 1980 to protect the sacred lizards, the residents considered it their duty to appease them with goats and deer. The practice has since been banished, along with the canines that once safeguarded their plots, and rumours says the fork-tongued scavengers are becoming increasingly bold.
As we sail Flores Sea I laze on the deck and watch islands jut from glassy water like the backbones of dinosaurs until the rocking lulls me to sleep. Like the boats of Lamalera on the other side of the province, the majestic phinisi have sailed the waters of East Nusa Tenggara for centuries. The 25-metre schooner I’m cruising on nods to the traditional vessels crafted by the Bugis ship makers of South Sulawesi, but while the whaling boats remain bound to their heritage, this ship boasts modern luxuries including bathrooms, a kitchen and day beds for drowsy explorers.
Docking at Komodo we’re asked to declare any wounds and, without a hint of jest, menstruation. Smelling blood whips dragons into a craze, so if anyone’s bleeding we’ll need extra guards. “They look like they’re very lazy, but if they have the chance they’ll eat you,” cautions Jakobus, one of our protectors. I scour my skin for scratches – these three-metre monsters run faster than me, clock in at one-and-a-half times my weight and harbour deadly bacteria in their bite, so I’m sure as hell not taking any chances. We’re warned: be quiet, keep your hands to yourself, don’t stink of fish. Done.
Half an hour later adrenaline bashes my veins as a dragon lumbers across the baked earth with my exposed limbs set in its sights. A rope of drool dangles from his jaw, his tongue stabs the dusty air and great folds of skin rub at his joints. My shipmates and I have just discovered six dragons chilling near a watering hole in a tamarind forest, and crouching like prey to snap a photo probably isn’t my brightest idea.
I creep backwards and Isak, one of the guards, fetches a forked stick (our only protection) and brandishes it near the beast’s nose. It heaves to a stop and resumes hissing like Darth Vader.
“Sometimes you can get three or four metres close, put your hands out and touch the dragon,” chirps one of our defenders. I’ll pass.
As we wander deeper into the forest, a baby komodo darts across the track terrified of us and of the older dragons. Although the mothers lovingly protect their eggs, once hatched all they see are four-legged snacks. The offspring hide in trees for a couple of years, foraging for insects, smaller lizards and birds until they are big enough to brave the elders. In case we’re unconvinced of their menace, Isak describes the most recent fatality, a seven-year-old local boy who was mauled while collecting tamarind for dinner. The poor boy had broken one of the golden rules by fishing and forgetting to scrub clean before hiking on shore. Whether you’re a massive sperm whale, deadly dragon or village local, in this neck of the woods you need your wits turned up full throttle.
After vanquishing the last of my nerves on board Plataran Felicia with a feast of snapper and spicy sambal, cubes of juicy watermelon, and green beans with desiccated coconut, I slip on some fins, chomp onto a snorkel and plunge into the sea. Whorls of colour sway in the gin-clear water, schools of fish stream by and electric blue swimmer crabs dart behind blooms of coral. Two of the ship’s crew hover in a dinghy nearby, searching the tree line for dragons. Not only can the creatures dash faster than me, they are also far better swimmers. I pad onto the delicate sand, sit and let the island’s beauty sink in. In the distance an eagle dives at the surface, latches its talons around a fish and soars away with its lunch. Out here, it’s eat or be eaten.
It’s summer in Oran on Algeria’s Mediterranean coast. I’m in town for the Arab Film Festival, but on my first afternoon in the city, thanks to a contact in the local music world, I’m in the chic foyer of the Sheraton to meet Sadek Bouzinou, founder of reggae rock band Democratoz.
He’d said he’d arrive at 3.30, but time in Algeria is ‘flexible’ – 3.30 can mean 4.30, 5.30 or perhaps next Tuesday. But two minutes later, a tall, striking figure walks across the white lobby. In a landscape of businessmen, families and schmick hotel staff, it feels like I’m having a hallucination. This good-looking singer with his powerful smile appears to be wrought in technicolour.
This is what I love about travel. One minute you can be sitting in a five-star hotel with sweeping views of the Mediterranean and city, but no real sense of the local culture, and the next you’re leaping into a dump of a car with a singer, saxophonist and drummer then bumping down a dusty road to a neighbouring village for a jam session. Later I discover it’s protocol for international festival guests to check out with hotel security, but they were either having a siesta or recognised Sadek (who could miss him?), a respected and famous local figure on the music scene. Sure, the military escort from the airport was kinda cool, but the getaway with the local musos is even cooler.
We hoon along with warm air blowing in through a broken window and Sadek points to a lone tree on the arid horizon. “It’s the Democratoz tree – all alone,” he states solemnly, before his face erupts with a wide, infectious grin.
Twenty minutes later we pull up beside his four-storey house in Gdyel. After a tour of the garden planted with figs and wild roses, we head upstairs to a large terrace. I spy a perfectly tap-danceable plank of wood and, by the time I’ve dusted it off, even more musicians have materialised. To my delight, everyone’s keen to jam.
Democratoz was born when Sadek, guitarist Abderrahmane and drummer Popay began getting together to play Bob Marley covers. More musicians joined them, and the band grew from there. Its music takes the Jamaican rhythms and grooves of Marley as its starting point, but adds a local flavour, weaving in Algerian beats – local raï music and gnawa – as well as funk, dub, jazz and rock. They have performed at major festivals around Algeria, toured Morocco, Jordan and Beirut, and will head to the USA this year.
There’s a particular song, lyrical and anthem-esque, that has pricked my ears. In a video of the band performing ‘Mazel’ at a festival in the Sahara, Sadek sits on stage singing, his voice charged with emotion. Thousands of Algerians sing along and wave lighters above their heads. I ask Sadek what the song is about. “‘Mazel’ talks about Algeria,” he explains. “It’s a song that tells the history of the country and says that whatever has happened and is happening, there are people here who want to try to change things for the better.”
During the 1990s, terrorism destablised Algeria, and social and political commentary through art was a dangerous act. Those who dared often did so from the other side of the Mediterranean. Now Sadek believes artists need to “say things as they are, be daring enough to express”. Democratoz’s songs all carry a positive message or tone of irony that allows the music to be serious and accessible, authentic and bold – and danceable.
We don’t waste time and get jamming. Sadek, grinning and singing, plays a cowbell, accompanied by the saxophonist, two guitarists, three percussionists and me, tapping along. It’s percussive, driving, inspired and exhilarating in the North African heat.
Then suddenly it’s dusk and time for me to head to the cinema. We’re back in the decrepit car and banging out rhythms on the dashboard while discussing life, music and when I’m going to come back for one of their concerts.
Almost 700,000 people visit Fiji every year, but the vast majority sees only two parts of the country: the airport and whichever resort was bundled into their holiday package. Make the slightest deviation from the well-worn tourist trail though, and you’ll quickly discover there’s a whole lot more to Fiji than can be seen from the edge of a swimming pool. As an added bonus, it’s as cheap as chips. Our 11-day exploration of Viti Levu, the Mamanucas and Taveuni is rich in experience but low in cost, and it’s worth noting that all our accommodation options have dorms if you’re travelling on your own.
MAMANUCAS – THREE NIGHTS
After touching down at Nadi Airport, catch a free coach transfer to Port Denarau and jump on the Malolo high-speed catamaran. It’ll take you to Malolo Island, one of 20 sun-kissed jewels comprising the Mamanuca Archipelago. Spend the night bar-hopping your way around the half-dozen resorts while acclimatising to the heat and the unhurried way of doing things – known around here as Fiji time. The following day, take a 10-minute boat ride to Cloud 9, a floating day club set in the translucent blue waters of Ro Ro Reef. Australian co-owner Bar’el can usually be found blending cocktails behind the bar or mixing tracks on the decks, while his Fijian partner Tony rustles up pizzas in the wood-fired oven. Spend the next couple of days snorkelling, wind-surfing, hiking, stand-up paddleboarding, kayaking or just working on your tan on Malolo Island.
NAUSORI HIGHLANDS – THREE NIGHTS
Catch the 4pm catamaran back to Denarau then the courtesy coach to Wailoaloa Beach, the island’s backpacker HQ. Rise early the next day, catch a cab to Westside Motorcycle Rentals and get ready for adventure as you ride through the Nausori Highlands. Your route will take you north along the coast past the Indo-Fijian towns of Lautoka and Ba before detouring inland along a gravel road that cuts through rolling, green countryside and sugarcane plantations. This is a devastatingly beautiful place that will redefine your conceptions of Fiji: it looks like Nepal, the climate is cool and the villagers are mostly descendants of Indian labourers brought here by the British during the nineteenth century. Spend the night at Navala, the only village on Viti Levu where all the houses are built in the traditional bure palm-thatch style, before continuing south on a trail that passes through rivers, drops into valleys and climbs mountains enveloped in mist before terminating at Sigatoka on Viti Levu’s south coast. The next morning, follow the coast back to Nadi, drop off your motorbike and catch a cab to the airport.
TAVEUNI – FOUR NIGHTS
Passing over dizzying mountain peaks, vast river deltas and enormous fringing reefs, the flight from Nadi to Taveuni is an adventure in itself. It’s a fitting introduction to the final leg of your trip on the velvet green paradise of Taveuni, aka the Garden Island of Fiji. Spend your first full day here exploring Bouma National Heritage Park, where a two-hour walking trail leads to the Tavoro Waterfalls, the largest of which is 30 metres high. The following day, catch a local bus to Taveuni’s east coast for the Lavena Coastal Walk. Think friendly Fijian villages, turquoise lagoons edged in powder-white sand and waterfalls that cascade straight into the ocean. On day three, catch a bus along the west coast to the Waitavala natural waterslide. Formed by molten lava that poured down the faces of Taveuni’s 150 now extinct volcanoes, the slides and freshwater swimming holes form a playground cut straight out of the Garden of Eden. On your last full day in Fiji, go diving or snorkelling at Rainbow Reef. Consistently ranked among the top five dive sites in the world, it’s home to the Great White Wall, a sunken escarpment blanketed in glowing white corals the locals call Fijian Snow.
In the northwest corner of Tasmania, the Tarkine rainforest is primed for battle. In one trench, the Tasmanian government has recently approved leases for several new mines. In the other, environmentalists are threatening to turn the world’s second-largest intact temperate rainforest – a place scientist and environmentalist Tim Flannery has described as “perhaps the least disturbed forest in all of Australia, the closest thing our continent offers to a true wilderness” – into a Franklin River–style blockade.
At the forest’s edge, however, in the former gold-mining settlement of Corinna, politics is another world. In fact, the rest of the world is another world. Cottages at the only accommodation inside the Tarkine have no TVs, no radios, no internet access and no phone reception. In the ever-connected modern world, it’s a place almost as primeval as the rainforest itself.
By Tasmanian standards, Corinna and the Tarkine are about as remote as it gets – this is the island state’s damp outback. To get here from Hobart, I drive for five hours, crossing the Pieman River on a vehicle punt – affectionately known as the Fatman Barge – to officially enter the forest that spreads across about seven per cent of Tasmania’s land mass.
On the northern bank of the Pieman sits Corinna, a smattering of gold-rush-era buildings and updated cottages nestled in the rainforest. The bedroom and deck of my cottage peer straight out into the forest canopy – into celery top pine, myrtle beech and laurel – and it feels as though I could be sleeping in a tree house. It is restful and tranquil, but I’m not here to simply hang out in a room.
Outdoor attractions are plentiful, with a web of trails and activities ranging out into the forest and along the Pieman River, which forms the southern border of the rainforest. Even in a place so dense with plant and animal species, there are standout stars. Centuries-old Huon pines – among the oldest trees in the world – hang over the river. The Tasmanian devil population is healthy and free of facial tumour disease. Freshwater crayfish have created a mini-metropolis of chimney-like mud burrows behind one line of cottages. And on my first morning at Corinna I set out early on foot through the forest to the Whyte River in hope of sighting a platypus.
The walking trail begins about six steps from the door of my cottage, diving immediately into the rainforest, which is an orchestra of birdsong. The forest drips with overnight rain and on the bank of the river I stop and watch as a white-faced heron swings downstream, and an azure kingfisher skims low over the water. For a time the only other movement is the splashing of rain on the taut river surface, but then a small brown body glides along the opposite bank, the platypus’s bill searching the water as fervently as did the gold miners who worked these rivers more than a century ago.
In the early morning, the Pieman river is mirror-still, its tannin-stained water as dark as the rainforest floor. Ancient Huon pines, bearded with lichen, jostle for prominence along the banks.
Gold was discovered in the Tarkine – in what is now Middleton Creek, just a few kilometres from Corinna – in 1879. By gold-rush standards, what eventuated was more a gold stroll, although by July of that year there were 400 people seeking golden dreams along the Tarkine’s southern waterways.
In January 1881, a store was built on the banks of the Pieman, and Corinna was founded. Two pubs – one on each bank of the river – arose, along with a blacksmith, baker, slaughterhouse, butcher and bootmaker. Within 40 years the town would be all but abandoned, leaving behind what’s now billed as the only surviving remote-area historic mining settlement in Tasmania.
In Corinna’s heyday, steamships brought supplies and miners up the Pieman, carrying out holds full of Huon pine. Today, Huon pine still floats daily down the river, though now it is in the shape of the Arcadia II, the only Huon pine-built river cruiser still operating in the world.
Since 1970, the one-time WWII-armed supply ship has been running visitors from Corinna to Pieman Heads – the mouth of the Pieman River – near the point where Australia’s highest wave (19 metres) was once recorded. It’s a place so wild that three ships were wrecked here in 1867 alone.
The contrasts are extraordinary. In the early morning, the Pieman is mirror-still, its tannin-stained water as dark as the rainforest floor. Ancient Huon pines, bearded with lichen, jostle for prominence along the banks.
“This would be the most intact Huon pine forest in the world,” skipper John McGhee tells me. “There are still 1000-year-old trees along the Gordon River, but you have to look hard to find them. Here, you see them every 10 to 15 feet.”
Even on this benign day, however, it’s the literal Wild West out on the coast, where six-metre swells thunder ashore at Pieman Heads. Wind scours the beach, driving sand through a graveyard of logs and driftwood. I continue to hear the roar of the ocean from kilometres away.
The next morning I return to the Pieman River, this time in a kayak. Once again the river is motionless, and I paddle across the reflected glory of the rainforest. My destination is the natural feature that’s arguably the brightest of Corinna’s many stars: Lovers Falls. Accessible only by water, it’s a hidden wonderland, just a few steps from the Pieman River.
“I’ve always thought that if Tinkerbell and Peter Pan were real, they would be living up there,” McGhee had suggested the previous day. “It’s quite magical.”
Inside its gully, green light filters through a forest of man ferns standing up to 10 metres high and thought to be among the oldest in the world. At the head of the gully, water pours over a 30-metre drop into a virtual sinkhole – it’s one of the most idyllic scenes in Tasmania, well deserving of its quixotic name.
As I paddle back to Corinna, I detour briefly into the Savage River. A short distance upstream is the sunken steamship SS Croydon, its metal bow peeping out of the water. Australia’s furthest inland shipwreck, it sank in 1919 while winching Huon pine logs.
As I paddle over the ship, its winches visible through the stout-coloured water, there’s an eerie, almost ghostly feeling to the scene. The tangled riverbanks squeeze the river tight, and there’s not another person for kilometres. As I sit over the wreck, hanging onto its bow, rain begins to fall. I paddle across to the riverbank, sheltering beneath a myrtle beech tree as the forest drinks up the rain that has made this a place worth fighting for.
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