set sail
October 12th 2008, 12:50 pm
It looks like I’ve got some malicious code being squirted in – huge thanks to Mildly Diverting for spotting that – so sorry if it’s buggering up the RSS feed. I’m trying to upgrade Wordpress but I’ve got stuck halfway through and FTP doesn’t seem to want to work over a satellite connection anymore. I’ll keep trying though.
But what a week. It was no sleep till Jayapura – the overnight flight on Saturday stopped twice, in Makasa and Biak, with hoovering and meals both times so sleep was impossible. I was on the verge of passing out, but we had to wait for other people coming in on a second flight and travel in to Jayapura together. I forgot both the names and faces of the people I met and had to be reintroduced later on, and could barely speak to the two or three people I already knew. I woke up at 5pm and it took several days before I got my sleep mojo back.
I didn’t get to see much of Jayapura, though, apart from a water-side fish barbeque (someone said the night skyline looked like Hong Kong, although presumably on a smaller scale) and a sweltering pool hall. A friend once told me how much he loved border towns and while Jayapura isn’t literally on a border (although it’s pretty damn close), there is a frontier feel to the place, like a boom town in the wild west where greedy fingers are trying to get at the natural resources further inland. But then that’s kind of why I’m here.
The Esperanza drifted in to the welcome ceremony on Monday morning and while I have to admit I’ve never been sure what all the fuss around Greenpeace ships is about, childish excitement began to bubble up. Once on board, however, it quickly dawned on me just how far outside my normal comfort zone I was – I got lost in the almost identical corridors and with the internet connection down, I couldn’t file my first story. By the time I realised the ship was offline, though, we’d already left the dock and were anchored in the harbour. Exhaustion and frustration dissolved together and I got really, really snappy – it makes such a bad first impression, and I had to spend the next 24 hours apologising to several people I’d been narky to.
So instead of moving straight onto the ship as planned, I had to return to shore and stay in the Hotel Yasmin where I could at least publish to the blog. When I did finally get on board, it took a couple of days to settle in to the rhythms of shipboard life which isn’t really surprising – it seemed like it took longer, but then maybe that was because I was stuck in a confined space, so everything is that little bit more intense.
But oh yes, setting sail: that was quite an experience. It was after dark, the moon was out and an electrical storm chased our tail as we sailed west alongside fearsome coastal mountains. The shore was in darkness apart from infrequent, solitary lights just above the water line, and I had an unhealthy urge to jump into the slick water. Oddly I still do, so I try not to lean over the deck railing too much.
The rest of the crew only got on a couple of days before I did, so they’re all settling in as well. Socially, things were kind of quiet for the first few days but now everyone’s relaxing a bit more and not heading to their cabins straight after dinner.
But the highlight of the trip so far (and it’s going to be hard to top this) was going up in the tiny helicopter over a huge expanse of rainforest. I’ve already burbled about this in an official capacity, but it was truly incredible. Not just zipping along a few metres above a beach at 120 mph as the wind tugged at my eyeballs, or leaning at 45 degrees suspended above the doorless doorway with only my seat belt supporting me, but the sheer lush forestness of the jagged landscape beneath us. Fellow passenger Usnea and myself were utter tourists, taking hundreds of pictures between us (although many of mine are blurred due to the speed we were travelling) and I tried to be all Englishly reserved when we got back, but I couldn’t help babbling about it for hours afterwards.
Today has been a day of rest, something I hadn’t realised I’d needed. But after two weeks on the go (and 13,502km travelled), it was high time for a break. There was a plan to boat out to a beach, but torrential rain and then inconveniently placed coral reefs prevented us. Still, we got to swim by the side of the ship and it’s given me a chance to catch up on some personal stuff. Even if there’s still a malicious whiff of spam around here.
By the way, photos should be going up on Flickr soon.
