The Native Iowan

78 nautical miles north east of Gizo is a little known group of islands named the Arnavons. They are made up of three main islands and a number of smaller sandy rocks sticking out of the sea. The place is known for is unspoiled raw beauty and the fact that it is a favored nesting spot for a number of big sea turtles. I don’t mean a number of sea turtles chose this islands for nesting (though they do) I mean that a number of different kinds of turtles use the island for nesting. A big difference!

For a number of years these islands have been a controlled nature conservation sight. And, once there, you can see why.

But I’m ahead of myself…

A couple weeks ago my ol’ buddy “wash yer hands in urine” (that’s a story Teddy needs to tell) Pat Purcell decided we should go up to the Arnovons. There has been a neat ol’ Kiwi guy with an old commercial fishing boat hanging around so we come up with the idea of asking Dave (the Kiwi) if he’d like to run his boat up there.  Well, Dave was pretty open to the idea. So we start the planning…

Leave by 5pm on Friday 23 April, steam for ten hours (or until daylight, which ever comes first) and arrive at the Arnavons first light Saturday morning. Spend the day on the island then head back (another 10 hour trip) sometime Sunday arriving no later than start of the day Monday.

We got Pat and his son Ricky, PCVs from Fort Collins Col., Mark Berry and Tammy Wolffe, Grace, Paul and me with the skipper Dave and his wife Margaret.

Anyway we got on the boat ok. (with boxes and crates and eskies and food and drink and tents and fishing gear and… and… well, a lot of gear.) It was a nice end day to travel. A good sun setting in the west. Lots of food on the deck and coolers brimming full of frosty drinks. Ah, what a life!

We be sailors.

Dave’s boat is set up for a 60 plus year old single-handed sailor. It’s a standard small trawler with not a whole lot of cabin space but roomy decks and lots of stretching room. The boat is around 40 foot long, 16 feet wide, draws 6.6 feet and can run over 12 knots per hour. He’s got all the good gear: Autopilot, radar, GPS, etc. He sets a course and lets the boat run. No standing watches or worrying about where we be going.

We be civilized sailors.

I personally am a deck sailor. By this I mean that if I go inside the hold or the cabin I tend to get ill, quickly. If I stay on the deck (preferably in a prone position) I am fine. So upon boarding a boat I have learned to get my deck bed set up and to occupy it reasonably quickly.

This trip was fine enough heading out that I did not spend too much time on the deck right away. Instead I sat and drank a couple beers and ate a pile of tuna fish sandwiches. Tami particularly likes the tune salad and made a bit of an oinker out of herself on the sandwiches.

Night fell (boom) and we were night sailing. (or motoring) Everyone started packing it into his or her respective deck beds. The sea started blowing up a bit and, predictably, the sea legs school of fish feeding was started. Gracie was the first to feed the fishies and it was cute to see ten year old Paul trying to help his mama in her illness.

By this stage I was pretty flat on the deck. Too much moving was bad for my nice dinner so I stayed still. I wrapped up in an army surplus poncho and thought about anything but the rolling seas, tuna fish sadnwiches or diving bow of the boat.

Somewhere around 2am the rain came forcing everyone but me up and off the deck. I curled up tighter in my poncho and figured being wet was better than being sick.

Tami, at this point, got to pay the fiddler for over indulging on the tuna salad sandwiches. If you travel at sea and are prone to sickness from the sea it is best to eat small quantities of bland food like plain bread or dry navy biscuits. The last thing you want is the acidic burn of mayonnaise and tuna with a head of beer coming through your nose. She handled it like a pro.

Tammy suffered. As did Gracie (again) and Ricki.

I remained still on the wet deck in my wet clothes wrapped in my wet poncho. I was cold and shivering but not sick.

We slowed down for the last couple hours before dawn. This intensified the rolling and wallowing of the boat and the unhappy turkey sounds coming from our sick comrades. At times we caught a “dear god’ and a “I’ll never eat tuna again” as the seas tossed us and the wind carried most intelligible sounds over board along with the fresh chum our chums were producing.

Sunlight found us snaking our way through a passage of coral and rock. In front of us was the prettiest little group of islands one could hope to find. We had made it, in tact and semi coherent, to the Arnovons.

The Arnovons has a number of “conservation officers” which live on the main island, keep poachers away, monitor and count the protected wild life as well as live a very cool life style. The officers do a month on a month off roster and do not appear to have a bad situation.

They showed us into the harbor, came aboard, gave us a talk about the place and helped us pack up and move ashore. We made short order of packing our gear up and getting off Dave’s boat. It is not a negative comment per Dave’s boat but rather a comment per the sailor quality of the passengers at the time.

The place we set foot on was well worth the trip. Words do fail me. (shut up…  I hear the hecklers in the crowd) The place is really something.

As we were coming ashore there was a very big Bromide’s Kite (a reddish brown with white head sea “eagle”) in the mangroves near where the main camp area is. The sea in front of the beach where we were to stay was teeming with small baitfish and the very regular boiling water of larger fish chasing after the bait sized ones.

Needless to say the seaworthy crew was a bit weary from our night’s journey. We decided a hearty breakfast was in order and, after getting somewhat settled, chose this as our primary task.

The island where the conservation officers stay has three houses. One is a leaf house with two rooms and a verandah. This is the guesthouse. There is a large open mess hall / kitchen with a tin roof and water plumbed into the sink. Then there is the dorm / office where the guys live and work. The fresh water supply is adequate and there is a water seal toilet a ways off in the mangroves. This is all within a small, cleared area on only one of the islands that make up the group. The establishment of the structures there has encroached very little on the nature of the place.

So we start into digging through our eskies and boxes and bags and… we make a mess basically. We find that our dozen eggs made it in uncracked. Grace, Paul’s and my clothes were in a stuff bag and got soaked. The beer was still cold. (“…Sure, I’ll have one before breakfast”) And our bread was only moderately destroyed beyond consumption.

This all led us to a big mess of French toast. We had butter and honey. Got a big pot of fresh coffee going and in no time at all were shoveling the warm, sweet, buttery, fried slices of egg soaked bread into our grateful mouths. It was good. As we had less plates than people and as we were cranking the toast out one slice at a time some of our shipmates were polite and ate a slice or two and pretended they were full. We also had a boatload of politicians from Santa Ysabel show up as we were cooking and we decided to offer them each a plate. This took some time and, after we got everyone through their first feed, we found that there was plenty left over and most of the crew had gone off in pursuit of other activities. This suited Mark, Paul and I fine. Mark was still hanging out looking for additional belly lining. Paul had gotten right into the fishing as soon as we had set foot on the island and had to be threatened with serve punishment to get him off the beach and into the mess hall. I was chief cook and thus was last to be fed.

All I can say is that we three had a very nice, large, warm breakfast.

With the bellys full and the magnificent beach in front of us we all headed to the water. I chose a small spin casting rod / reel as my plaything and began casting out into the thick schools of baitfish. Mark was armed with a fly rod and reel our buddy Rod Olsen had lent us. When we had showed Mark the fly rod he had almost wet himself with excitement. Mark is a maniacal fly fisherman who has been going through very severe withdrawals from the inability to spend the day wearing his arm out casting the little fly back and forth.

Any way, I was spin casting, Mark was fly casting, Paul and Ricki were using small hand lines and treble hooks to cast out and foul hook small bait fish. Gracie had decided to get our gear (wet and dry) sorted. She was hanging clothes in the trees and organizing the house. Tami had gotten their tent set up and was puttering there-abouts. Pat had set up his camp cot under the trees and was between finishing a beer and falling asleep. Dave and Margaret had stayed on their boat. I think they were happy to be shut of us.

It was great. The fish were beyond description. There were millions of them right in front of us. You could see the various bigger fish swimming under the baitfish. Mark was busily casing back and forth, back and forth. He’d regularly emit little cries of “oh!”, “my!”, “weeeee!”. I am of private opinions as to why Mark may have been emitting these noises and will not venture to elucidate these opinions due to the possibility of youthful readers of this text.

Gracie had come up and had a small hand line wrapped around a bottle. She was casting a hook with a bit of fish on it. She was very involved in talking to the fish (or herself) as she did this. She would cast the line out and start saying “a big fish.” “Come on big fish.” “there is a big fish.”

I was casting out and reeling in. I had changed lures a couple times and was considering another change. The bigger fish were regularly causing the water to boil as they and the smaller fish came to the surface in a frenzied dance. There were many singular, large fish that would get their sights on a particularly tasty looking meal and come skipping over the water in hot pursuit.

We’d cast our lines in the direction of the activity. All hopeful that they’d get a bite.

At this point we were all joking. Gracie was bragging that, as a Solomon Islander, she was the best fisherman. Mark opinioned that the fly-fishing was the way to go. I decided to challenge the others and said,” the first to catch a fish is not a monkey”.

I cast the lure way, way out. I intended to drag the jig I had on through the baitfish. BAMB. WAMMO. KAZIiiNGGGG. It all happened at once. Bamb, I felt the lure go. Wammo, the rod bent in half and Kazingggg, the drag started screaming.

I must have started yelling too. I don’t know. I remember getting control of the rod and the drag on the line going out. I looked up and everyone was on the beach. Pat was up from his cot telling me what to do. Gracie was next to me hollering advice. Paul and Ricki were there trying to get the rod into their hands. Mark was making more of those (they may be fish catching calls?) noises. Tami had appeared and was doing a combination German / Irish Jig across the beach.

I had the fish hooked, was gaining on the reeling in and was enjoying the adrenaline rush all fishermen love. I went into that mental ticking off of all the fish it may be. “..It’s a trevaly, or a big long tom, or a barracuda, or a…” It surfaced for a moment and I saw a large, broad body. It was too short of a sighting to see what it was but it was very decent in size.

I kept reeling and eventually, in the shallows we saw a shiny red skin appear and struggle. I looked closer and thought (or yelled, maybe) “it’s a snapper”.

Yes, fishing enthusiasts… a 4 kilo red snapper off the beach.

And guess who is not a monkey.

I am certain a number (a large number) of my faithful readers are fishermen. (fisherpeople?) Those who are, I am sure, understand the totally immeasurable buzz one gets from hooking into a fish. There is an increase in the buzz as the fisherperson reels the fish in. The longer the reeling time the longer the buzz. The buzz goes into overload when you realize that you will land the fish. The buzz hits a crescendo when you actually lay hands on the poor, slimy beast you have been waging war against.

I had a buzz: a big, big buzz when I waded into the shallows and snagged the gorgeous, red creature I had unmercifully dragged from the water’s depth. The gang on the shore was in various states of agitation… Paul & Ricki because I had been selfish and not let them handle the rod. Pat because he thought it was hilarious to 1) catch a snapper off the beach and 2) that I (who had not really been fishing in years) had done this extra special feat. Mark was all over the place… you could see in his eye his imaginings of catching the same fish on his fly line. He was beside himself. (I think he actually did wet himself) Tami was as excited as a 6 year old and was still doing her amazing Irish / German jig up and down the beach. Gracie was not happy. I believe she thought this should have been her fish. And I, the ever-sensitive human being I am, must have become crazed by my overdose of adrenaline and was crowing about not being a monkey. This did not make Gracie happy.

Anyway, I was more than happy. We tore the guts outa the critter and threw it in on the iced beer.  We had supper ready and waiting.

Upon the catching of the fish everyone became obsessed with being the next. Tammy promptly pushed me away from what I now considered “My Fishing Rod”. She was adamant. “You had your turn.” She said in a determined way. “You caught your fish,” she continued as she grabbed a hold of the rod I still firmly grasped.  “We get to play too, you know.” She claimed as she started tugging on the rod and causing the sharp hook to jump and dance around our shoulders. “I’m gonna tell mom” She said with a pout and a tear beginning in her left eye.

I let go. I’m not sure if I was fooled by her beginning to cry or afraid of her calling “MOM!”…I learned at a young age to never mess with a person willing to call mom. Moms are hard and very, very dangerous. They use weapons. Lethal items such as wooden spoons, rolling pins, wet dish rags and even tire irons have been seen by mine own eyes as seemingly adequate tools of retribution utilized by a pissed off mom. I was not sure which or what mom Tammy was willing to invoke against me but I wanted no part of it.  I let go.

Somewhere in the process of landing the fish I ended up with another cold beer in my hand. The gang of monkeys had piled into the canoe and were paddling off to get out to “where the fish were”. They took everything but a couple big game rods and the fly gear. I sipped the beer. And eyed the game rods. I figgered I could beach cast with them and knew I’d get me another fish thus proving (twice in one day) I ain’t no monkey.

I grabbed a big one that belongs to our buddy Rod. With the drag completely off I could not get it to cast. It simply was too stiff in the drag department. I next grabbed Pat’s nice Penn Senator. I took the drag completely off, pulled back and let the line go. And go it did. The reel is so sensitive that it spins faster than the line can travel out. When this happens you have what is known as a “bird’s nest”. Every time I have ever seen this occur there were very bad words said by the perpetrator, the maker of the birds nest.

This was no exception. Pat was watching and gave me a funny smile and said “looks like you got a job ahead of you”.

When the line on a reel bird nests it is a mess. Imagine up to 500 meters of tangled 12-kg test monofiliment line. Imagine that this line is expensive. Imagine that the owner of the line had planned to do some serious fishing with his favorite rig. Imagine that the closest replacement line was in Gizo.

You got it… It was either straighten the mess out or walk to Gizo and get more line.

It was actually good therapy for me. I had to go slow. I couldn’t go fishing. I had a cold beer. So why was I cursing myself as I slowly, delicately unwound the plethora of tangles and crazy knots?

As I sat in the shade and carried on this therapeutic exercise Mark continued to cast his fly upon the waters. His ever-continuous sound of fish calls filling the air.

Pat had resumed position “A” on the cot. I think he may have gotten me my beer because he had a reasonably full one on the ground by the cot.

Gracie was either trying to fish with her hand line or was simply having a lot of fun throwing her line out and reeling it back.

The knowledge that there were fish out there and that today was a fish catching day had acted like an aphrodisiac. Everyone was determined to get himself or herself a fish.

I guess I employed myself for an hour or so (a couple beers) with the untangling of the bird nest. This is actually something special in it’s self in that after all the years I have been around this type of fishing gear I have seen very, very few brids nests unraveled.

I remember the time when Steve and Jenny Sirell came by for our 98 Christmas party. Steve had bought some real good gear for the trip. Shiny new Penn reels. All loaded up with the best mono line. Jenny was more excited over fishing than she was over Christmas. She was intent on getting out on the water. We kept promising we’d go but found that the Christmas spirit was strong in us and we were often inebriated by 4PM thus precluding any fishing trip.

A couple days into their stay Jenny was very serious. If we didn’t stay sober enough to take her fishing there would be hell to pay. Steve and I had the best intentions in the world. Yet by noon we had met up with Uncle Teddy and Pat, were in the Gizo Hotel slopping down Gizo Burgers and chugging good old SolBrew.

Jenny showed up around 2pm and made it clear we were going fishing and that Steve (and the rest of us) were in severe excrement. Steve’s conjugal rights were on the line. We downed a couple more beers and made it to the wharf in time. We staggered on to the boat got the motor started and started putting the lines out. We were rounding the first point as Jenny dropped the end of one line in the water and released the drag. This was the shiniest and most likely to “catch a fish” rig Steve had. Anyway, Jenny released the drag and let out a squeal as if she’d sat on a tack. We all looked down and saw her reel’s line in a loose mess… a birds nest mess.

What brings this story to mind now is that the line was untangleable and had to be cut out and that, in contradiction to what I said above, Steve actually smiled and looked happy when he saw this. He knew that Jenny’s screwing up the line was worse than his drinking for days running and thus had his conjugal rights back… and then some.

But I digress… the beach I sat on was magic.

 I recall seeing my first beach in the Solomons… it was at Tambea in January 1981. We were sent there to cool down from out travels before we started our Peace Corps In-country Training. I, being a neophyte as far as ocean and beaches went, thought it was spectacular. (the Tambea beach is really kinda nice) I latter found the beach at out training village, Manahuki on Makira, to be even better.

Over the past years I have seen beaches in the Shortlands, all around Choisuel and its islands, around Vella, around Rannonga, throughout the Gizo lagoon system, through the Vona Vona, the Roviana, the Marovo, much of New Georgia, Ysabel, Gaudalcanal, the Floridas and Malatia. I did not mention Kolomobangara here because I’ve yet to find a beach on that island.

I would estimate that I have walked thousands of miles on the beaches of the Solomons. I’d claim to have made thousdands of water entries from thousands of various beaches. I’d feel qualified to say… OK, I hear ya, speed it up …

The point here is that I have seen many beaches and none previous compared to the one I sat on that day. It is almost beyond my ability to describe. Perhaps it may suffice to say that sitting on this beach was the first time I really noticed how much litter there was and is around. This beach gave me a feeling or sense of it’s being fresh or unspoiled. The word pristine comes into mind.

And this pristine-ness was totally violated by innumerable bits and pieces of nonbiodegradable human waste.

Broken bits of blue and red buckets. Plenty of plastic bottles of various sizes and shapes. Discarded flip-flops. Plastic bags, rice bags, onion bags… anything that would not rot and would float seemed to end up here.

It reminded me of the old sci-fi / Tarzan type movies which showed the elephants graveyards behind the waterfall. It was an amazing place (better than modern Xfects could do) with a mountain of elephant tusks and bones.

A line of colourful trash delineated the high tide mark. Not just a little bit but more than I ever remember noticing. A walk into the mangroves was like a perverse treasure hunt. There was some pretty neat stuff there and the lord knows how far it floated to get here but it simply did not belong.

I pondered this puzzle: In a scientific frame of mind I wondered… Perhaps the Arnavons was on a floating junk path of some nature. In a social frame of mind I speculated… Perhaps, because no one “lives” here, the junk does not get picked up and thus accumulates and thus is more noticeable. Getting closer to the truth I queried… could it be that I am not use to seeing places that are so pristine? Could it be that this amount of trash and waste is everywhere yet is masked by the daily cosmetics of life? With a click of an unseen switch a light came on…

I had never been to a really pristine place before. Everywhere I have been has had people dwelling there and or had regular visits from near by residents. This place was as devoid of man’s presence as any place I had ever laid my eyes on. This place was less spoiled or, if you will, more unspoiled than any single natural location I had ever previously been.

And the trash drastically clashed with the natural beauty. It was like seeing a green tie on a guy with a pink shirt. Or someone wearing  dots with plaids. It stood out from miles away and affronted the senses.

I do not want to give the impression that the beaches of the Arnavons are covered in trash. They are not. What I am saying is that the pristine-ness of the Arnovons allowed me (for perhaps the first time) to see how much man has befouled his own nest. The natural setting of the Arnovons is horrifically smudged by any small amount of human presence. The conservation station was done tastefully and with minimization of human interference in mind. It worked. Yet the thoughts I had on that beach led me to look around afterwards and to realize that the other places that I thought were fantastic or beautiful were actually pretty blaze’.

They have the mark of Cain upon them. They have been bought or sold. Prostituted and cultivated. They have been trimmed and coiffured. They have lost their natural-ness.

And boy oh boy. The Arnavons does sure retain their natural-ness. It very much opened my eyes.

So I take all this in. Pat is snoring quietly on his cot. Gracie has left the beach and is fiddling around in the cabin. I hear the gang in the boat returning. Mark is getting ready to take a break. It’s probably around noon. I hear Gracie banging pans. Tami is making hungry sounds. Paul and Ricki are complaining (still) about not getting a hand on the rod with the snapper.

Life is good.

I decide to take a walk around. From where I am I can see a good-sized stream of some nature emptying into the lagoon. Tide is out and I decide to see what’s up the stream. I walk down the beach and wade up the stream a bit. It quickly opens up into a really neat estuary.

Mangroves send they’re crooked, spindly legs outward. Various types of small fish dart through the knee-deep water. Tangles of fallen trees force me to deviate from my straight and narrow path. I wander around.

What I figured out is the island we were on has a little tidal lake. I did not walk to the end of it but saw enough to figure out that it is substantial in size. I later found out (talking to George Myers) that there are pools of trapped milkfish back there. I did not get that far but I now can grow excited about the possibility of hooking up a meter long milkfish on a fly line. I’m planning it for my next trip.

I must have dawdled in the tidal lake for quite some time. There were various species of birds to see. The smaller fish were plentiful. The white sand bottom of the estuary made walking through it easy. It was way, way cool.

By the time I got back to “our” beach things were pretty quiet. Mark and Tami had bedded down for a bit. Paul and Ricki were visibly slowing down but were still doing kids things in the water. Pat either had remained on is cot or had been up and was back down. Gracie was taking a nap.

I found that whatever had been prepared for lunch was totally consumed with no regard for the intrepid explorer who comes late. I opened a cold beer and started eyeing the fly rod.

As a kid I had tied flies and jigs. On the East Side of the river where I grew up (we walked by it everyday to school) was a company called “the Wapsi Fly Tying Co.” It was owned by Lacey Gee. It had neat stuff like polar bear fur and bright yellow pheasant breasts in the front window. Somewhere along the way Brian Esmoil and I walked into the place and got to know Lacey.

He was a cool old guy who had made a life out of fishing. He was known and respected as an authority. He had created such entities as the “crappie queen” and the “royal coachman”.

He had a big house right on the river a couple blocks from where I lived. He had a dock and a boat. I started hanging out with Lacey. I must have been 10 or so and could never figure out the casting of a flyline but I knew how to cast on a spinning reel and soon Lacey had me buying a vice, taking home bits of discarded fur and feathers and tying up my own lead head jigs.

As I look back at it I probably only spent that summer hanging out with Lacey. But him and his fly rod have left a vivid image in my feeble brain. I recall him gracefully manipulating the line out. He enjoyed showing me the spot where he would lay his fly or jig and hit the spot every time. I thought it was neat.

These memories were running through my mind as I stripped some line off the fly reel and prepared to cast.

It wasn’t too many moments later when the seemingly light fly I was whipping to and fro caught me square between the eyes. I say seemingly light because it hit like a 16-ounce hammer.

The flies we use here have a set of metal “dumb bell” eyes tied on them. The eyes act to attract fish but also add a bit of weight to it. They also, luckily, make the fly travel headfirst rather than hook first when you are tossing it around.

It was the eyes I felt smash into my forehead. I must have looked foolish as it took some time for me to untangle myself from the line. All the while rubbing the lump on my head and swearing.

Throughout the time I was fooling with the fly rig I succeeded in banging the hell out of myself with the damn thing. It was soooo fun.

Mark appeared on the beach and gave me my first, adult, fly casting lesson. He is good at it and made perfect sense with his instruction. It’s just that the perfectly sensible instructions are all but impossible to follow. Fly-fishing is an intense skill and Mark impressed the hell out of me that day.

We took the canoe out and I paddled him round to the edge of the reef where it drops off. We could see fish everywhere. It was the time of intense heat, 3m or so, but the fish were still out. Mark was exerting a lot of energy flinging the fly out and back. Even though he never caught a fish (he is s monkey) he showed 100% enjoyment in just being there and doing it. That’s cool.

Around this time Pat hollered at us from the beach. He was going to take the kids for an exploratory ride around the island. It sounded like a good time for me to kick back a bit. Pat and the boys went taking the little spin-caster. I elected to stay back, have clean up and wait for evening.

We had learned during the voyage that today was the skipper, Dave’s, 65^th birthday. So we planned a party. I had caught the fish. Mark and Tami had brought a cake with them. (Mark is a muscle bound Betty Crocker) We had asked the conservation officers to come eat with us. We was goin’ ta have a party.

So I go to one of the tanks set up behind the office building to have a bucket bath. It felt great. I was getting on in the day. I was running out of steam. I had worked all of the day before and had not washed my face or hands for quite a while. I was wearing a pair of cut offs which had been wet n’ dry several times in the past 24 hours. They were damn near a part of me. The soap felt good and a brush of the teeth actually made me feel human.

I wondered back to camp and drug a chair and the eskie out to the beach. Gracie and Tami were pulling the meat out of a pile of very small snails they had dug up on the beach. Mark was leading the cooks. The beach was quiet and the show nature was putting on was fantastic.

Two “Sanford’s” Eagles were fishing not 50 yards away from where I sat. One would fly up, dive in, grab a fish and head back to the nest. Then the other would come catch it’s share of supper and head off. This continued for many cycles. I can only assume that had a nest of younguns near by.

The fish were carrying on their incessant dance of life… the larger chasing the smaller and ending up making the water looking like it was boiling. The sky was slowly changing. We were somewhere around 4 degrees off the equator; it would get dark quickly.

Pat and the boys came back. Dave and Margaret came ashore. Pat started setting up the bbq. The boys were put to work collecting firewood. A brisk breeze had come up and the sky was getting that broad brush stroke pattern of orange and lavender and blue and gold and… It was very nice.

It was around this time that I felt myself being picked up by unseen forces. Really. I was being mysteriously levitated out of my chair. It was bit on the dark side…. I had been sitting in the shade and the sunlight was getting dimmer. I was trying to figure out what was happening and was considering getting my flashlight when I realized I was being picked up by mosquitoes.

I had not really noticed them before but as the sun set they appeared in clouds from the mangroves. I quickly got a bottle of repellant and passed it around. As I did so I blasphemed George’s name a bit. He had told me that there were no mosquitoes there. When I later confronted George on this he claimed he had said, “he had had no problems with mosquitoes there”. In any event I saw an uncomfortable night ahead of us (we’d left the mosquito nets at home) but at the moment we had a party to attend.

And it was a good party. We all sat on the beach as Pat grilled the fresh fish. Dave and Margaret told stories. The scenery was great and the beer was cold. The boys were chased off to clean up. Gracie and Tami applied the finishing touches to the meal.

It was more like a feast: A big pot of curried snails, A monster pot of rice, the grilled fish, a salad, a fruit salad and cake for desert.

As is the custom in this fine land speeches were (I think by law) required. Pat made the opening speech. We tucked into the meal and everyone got a chance to say what he or she wanted.

Dave basically said thanks to all of us and thanked the good lord (where ever she may be) for having made him a sailor and for allowing him to spend his 65^th with us in the Arnavons.

The conservation officers came next and treated the event with quite a bit more gravity than I felt at the time. Their senior guy gave a lively talk on what nice guests we were and offered Dave all the best on his birthday. He closed his speech by saying that after our meal he would take anyone willing to go to the other side of the island to see the beach where the turtles actually laid their eggs.

We finished (well filled up on… there was heaps left over) our meal and brought out the cake. We were considering putting 65 matches on the cake and lighting the lot but since we were in a leaf walled house we figured that might not be a good idea. We decided to put a single match on the cake and sang happy birthday to “skipper”.

I was into my second helping of cake and fruit salad when Davie and Margaret said good night. I had opened a fresh beer when the conservation officers decided it was time to go and see if there were any turtles on the egg-laying beach. Gracie, Paul, Pat and Ricki were keen to go but I declined. My belly was full. My body was tired and I was comfortable where I was. I planned to head to bed directly and would have a look at the egglaying beach in the morning.

Somewhere in all this I doused my self with a thick coating of bug spray and stretched out in the leaf house. I was pretty weary. It had been a great day and I was looking forward to a peaceful night. It was not to be.

The mosquitoes were fierce. By the time Paul and Gracie returned I had figured out that it was going to be a hard night. It was quite warm and the mossies were simply too much to bear.

I ended up spaying the bug repellant in my hair, on my ears and up my nose. I considered spraying my tongue (I am a master of the open mouth snore and was a bit worried) but figured it might be a bad idea. I got Paul and Gracie to douse up with the bug juice and prepared for a reasonably sleepless night.

I have always tried to figure out why, when you’re having a hard night sleeping, that you fall into such a deep slumber when the sun comes up. Perhaps it has to do with the mossies departure. Perhaps it is out of sheer exhaustion. I dunno but I did finally fall fast asleep somewhere around dawn.

It was 10am when I finally crawled out of the rack. Breakfast had come and gone. Mark was hanging out playing the guitar. Pat was lazing in the shade. Gracie and Tami were slowly packing up. (Thank god for women) I checked the eskie and saw we had several still cold beers. Looked like I got breakfast after all.

So we sat around smoking cigarettes and being lazy. Somewhere in this it was decided that we’d have to be gone by 1pm. I tried to voice a vetoing vote here but was simply ignored. I figured that the kids could miss a day of school. I was sure the Head Teacher at the school would understand Mark and Tami’s absence. Why not hang around all day and sail at last light. Arrive at Gizo first thing in the morning. It was not to be.

With the mandate to leave by noon I decided to take one last walk through the island. I wanted to have a look at the egg-laying beach and Pat figured he could show me the way. It had taken the gang less the 20 minutes to reach it last night in the dark. Pat figured we could take a short cut and get there quicker in the light of day.

So we head out down a beaten track. We were not in a hurry and stopped to enjoy an unfrightened blue heron that was looking at us as though he was the tourist and we were exotic life forms. We left the beaten track and headed into the mangroves to take what Pat was sure was a short cut. It wasn’t.

We wondered and backtracked through the mangroves for a fair amount of time. We ended up stuck at what looked like a dead end. A 20-foot patch of quick-sand type mud between us and what Pat was sure was the beach.

Those of you who have experienced mangrove swamps will understand what we were going through. Mangrove hiking is not for the lighthearted. To begin with they hold a primordial scariness. Again, the old sci-fi / adventure movie “the Creature from the Black Lagoon” comes to mind. No, mangrove swamps are serious business.

So Boy Scout Pat decided we can make it. You walk along one fallen down tree, climb to another and then make a 6-foot jump over some deep looking mud onto the bank. That was easy but where’s the beach? We could hear the surf breaking but the wall of impenetrable vines and foliage in front up us offered no clue as to what was over there.

It was down on the hands and knees and crawl.  Under the vines and greenery. Around a gnarled tree covered in the same vines, out through a brambly type thicket and…

Wow! After the dimness of the swamp the light was blinding.

The most spectacular white sand beach imaginable stretched for several hundred yards to either side. It slopped steeply to the sea. A short shelf where the reef ended could be seen. The waves were rolling in.

If the other beach was pristine then this was… pristiner? More pristine? The pinnacle of pristinyness? The quintessence of pristinism?

I dunno. I seriously (all joking aside) doubt if there are many places on our fair planet that are as untouched as that beach. One look at it and one could understand why the endangered turtles make bookings years ahead and stand in line to come here to lay their eggs. If I were a turtle I’d lay my eggs here. If I were a turtle I’d wish I’d been laid and hatched here. I always thought it was great to be from Iowa but man oh man, to be from Turtle Beach, Arnovons… that’d be something.

The place has a church like (stop laughing… I spent enough time in churches in years past to know what its like) feeling. Or better yet a sacred place like feeling. I’ve been to Acropolis and felt an oldness about the place. I’ve been to Skull Island in the Vona Vona and felt a strange power there. This place gave a feeling of sacredness. It is a very special place.

Pat and I sat on the beach and just took it all in. I was not inclined to walk around the beach. It appeared to be a desecration. Pat was disinclined to light a smoke. It’d simply be wrong. We just sat there in silence and enjoyed the energy of the place. I was good. Real good.

Eventually we both came out of our private worlds and decided to head back. We went back the way we had come… crawl out through the vines, jump onto the log, tight ropewalk across the mud and snake our way back through the mangroves.

I can’t speak for Pat but I know I did this little trip in a bit of a daze or on a high. The beach was seriously something very, very special.

We got back in time to help finish packing and by 1:00 had everything loaded and stowed on the boat. Dave pulled the pick and we were back on the water.

The problem with sailing during the day is that the sun simply will not hold still. You lay down in a bit of nice shade and an hour later you’re being fried by the sun.

I was pretty tired. We got sailing homeward and I found a place to lay down. We were sailing southward and the sun was going southwest. The awnings and covers were lending the least amount of shade possible. It was hard touring to the max.

Somewhere around dusk the gang cooked up a big mess of hot dogs and hamburgers. I was enjoying my migratory sleep and declined a feed. The seas were nice and the entire crew had gained their sea legs on the trip out. A number of fishing lines were being drug behind us and a couple decent catches were made. After the big feed everyone found a place to lie down. The rain gods were good to us. The air was warm. It was a fine trip home.

We entered Gizo harbour somewhere around mid night. We came in slow and pulled up to my wharf around 1am. We unloaded the gear and dumped it in the depot. Pat and Ricki headed to their beds and we dropped Mark and Tami off and let the pony have her head for the stable. By 2am I was having a very luxurious, hot shower. It felt great.

No matter how much fun traveling and seeing new places may be… no matter how cool the places one visits may be… there simply is nothing like coming home.

We all slept real well that night.

The morning came too soon. We got Paul to school and I got into my office. I checked the emails and thought of what I should be trying to accomplish. I thought of the weekend we had shared. I was still inspired. The place is special and I felt better for the trip. I felt cleaner. The place is unspoiled. It is natural. I was high from it. I was going to write about it….

My words do these island gems little justice. But as I reread what I wrote I am again inspired.

If you ever get the chance to visit The Arnavons take it. You will not be disappointed.