Day 5 - Lili Insanity

As we have been piecing our way up the coast, we've heard repeatedly from folks that we don't want to go past a certain point here because the tide is too strong. It's been very hard to discern what point they're talking about, and also how their warning would apply to Shan Skailyn. But all their warnings have pointed to somewhere there closer to where the North Coast (leading up to Madang) and the Rai Coast meet. The Rai Coast goes from the eastern tip of the peninsula, up along the northern edge, tracking mostly west-northwest (is that the right way to indicate that?) and then right where it curves sharply up north, it becomes the north coast, which then carries on well beyond Madang and on over to Wewak and eventually what is West Papua. Anyway, where Rai Coast meets North Coast... that area is called Astrolabe Bay. It's at this juncture that there does indeed seem to clearly be a tidal flow of some sort. The locals all blame it on the many rivers that find their way into that bay, thus causing the water there to be making a general movement out away from the point where Rai meets North. Whether this is true or not, I'm not sure but the consistent warning about the strength of the tide is worth taking note of.

It was this tide, whatever causes it, that slowed our progress despite feeling like we were moving pretty good today.

We woke up early as usual. The day prior, Sesi mentioned that the way we had snacked on trail mix in the morning before leaving our last destination was a bit of a faux pas. Doing it in sight of our hosts and not offering to let empty the bag with us; that was the error. I knew better. Bad call. Anyway, we'd agreed that if we were going to munch on the mix before heading out we should do it incognito so as not to offend. While still in our room, we each grabbed a couple handfuls of trail mix, a piece or two of beef jerky, snarfed them down, and got ready to head out. We were figuring that as usual it would be unusual to expect to be fed that early in the morning. But our host surprised us this morning. We knew something was up when we smelled burning kerosene. We discussed quietly our conjecture that he must be boiling or cooking something. So we went downstairs and wouldn't you know it, David was going above and beyond and had made us a meal and even served tea with it... thick with sugar of course.

We ate, storied a bit more about what we were hoping to do today, where the 'gutpela basis' were at up the coast where we could land if needed, and started heading down the road. Just as we were heading out, I heard in the corner of my mind, one of David's kids say in disgust "Aghhh! He just stepped in pek pek!" It took me a minute for what he said to register. I was thinking about other things and not watching the ground or even listening. I checked my shoe... wouldn't you know it? I did step in pek pek. I wiped it off and headed down the trail laughing about it with the boy and his friend. Good thing I had my water socks on!

We got down to the main village of Tookia (too-KEE-a) right at dawn, got our stuff which had been locked in a shed built for all the moto skipas that lived there among whom David, our host, was a bit of a big-wig, and headed down to Shan Skailyn. All was well. Didn't look like anyone had messed with him during the night. We untied him, removed and rolled up the tarp, loaded our stuff up and moved him down to the water where we got in and paddled out to the mouth of the river. Once there we had to get out to guide him. The motos can just move through the mouth direct into the sea. Where the water spills out it narrows and is cut into rock. So the water speeds up quite a bit and serves to suck anything within range. It nearly took Shan Skailyn before we realized he wasn't going to fit the narrower channel with the ama. It took a number of us jumping into action to work against the pulling and lift the Shan up onto the beach and over the bank from where we would launch him through the breakers. Another problem free, easy going launch. Off at 7:20am.

The water was smooth this morning. Yet there was enough wind to get us going. Our experience over the last several days was starting to show. We were able to handle Shan Skailyn much better today than we had other days. We were feeling more confident and it seemed we were able to deal with some of the seas conditions better. Not to be cocky though. I mean we're complete amateurs. Anyone with experience could watch us and see all we're doing wrong and ways we could improve our techniques to drastically improve performance. So don't get me wrong. Just saying we were feeling pretty good about being out on the water sailing Shan Skailyn. We were ready for another day.

And a good day it was! It felt like we had a more consistent decent speed this day than any other day. We couldn't wait to find out how far we'd come! Again, without the GPS there is no objective data. But the boat was moving pretty good, pretty consistently.

We moved up the coast past Gowar River, the river that we'd heard about a couple days ago that had been stopped up by a landslide and then flooded, breaking free from its constraints, causing the massive flash flood that had brought all that trash and trees and even people and houses into the bay. Once again, we passed the line that divided the blue of the sea bringing us suddenly into the semi translucent green of the brackish Gowar water. Once in view of the mouth of the river we gawked at the damage. Clearly it must have been a huge flash flood that ripped through there. Life stripped bare, only yellowed tree trunks were left, standing in the midst of a wide swath of brown. What is usually green with life now screamed barrenness. It must have been recent because nothing here stays barren for long. Seeing this, all the logs we'd been seeing floating about and washed up, especially at the beach at Basamuk made sense.

After passing Gowar we went on and moved past the point that was known as Tapalip. You can't find Tapalip on any maps, but that is what every local moto skipa and their moms and dogs call the place. It's a big outcropping of land that juts out prominently from the Rai Coast toward Madang. It is the last place where all the motos will begin to cross Astrolabe Bay to go to Madang. They say the tide is so strong that even on a 40HP moto, you aim for the river just south of Bil Bil Island in order to get to Bil Bil. We have wondered again and again about this tide. If the motos struggle with it, what's that going to mean for us?

For now we were at Tapalip. Also significant to us was that this meant we were off the edge of our map. No we weren't afraid we'd fall of the edge of the world. But since our GPS fried on day 2... or was it 3... we had no map of the rest of our journey. I just happened to have had a printed map of the Saidor coastline. We'd been following our daily travels on that map, which thankfully I'd chosen to attempt to waterproof. By the way, acrylic sealer, the kind you use for artwork, does a treat for waterproofing maps! Use it! 3 coats will do the job extremely well! The thing was soaked all day every day and held up perfect! Unfortunately, treating a map like that does nothing for giving you information after you passed off the edge of it. So we weren't familiar with what to expect, where we were going, how many kilometers we had yet to travel... nothing. Just word of mouth.

Rounding Tapalip remained nothing more than an idea which teased us all afternoon long. We'd been on the water since 7:20 this morning. It wasn't long after leaving that we could see Tapalip in the distance. But it only ever seemed to remain a hazy notion in the distance. We pressed on and on and on, wanting that point, aiming for it, trying to get past it. The thought that we'd pursued it all day long without realizing our goal was beginning to become angering! Why in the world, especially moving the way we've been moving today, would that point elude us so.

The answer didn't come, but we continued to press on. Hours more eventually won us that point with the realization that maybe the tide that people had been talking about had been working against us so that while moving swiftly on the water, we weren't making much progress up the coast. But we did eventually round Tapalip and we found ourselves being greeted by another long stretch of rocky coastline. These always made us nervous because you just don't know what the weather is going to do. Once you start your attempt to move past these dangerous spots, you're committed to finish it. If the weather doesn't agree, you press on and hope for the best. The weather right now wasn't the best. It was hard to tell because we'd just come around this point, and we'd learned over the last few days that the winds always seem to be different whenever we come around a point. They were a bit shifty, stronger... the waves were a bit more rough, but not too much to handle. We weren't going back on the other side of that point! So we pressed on.

Having rounded Tapalip, the stronger winds did seem to maybe be in our favor. We were on one of those starboard tacks that, if we stayed pointed high into the wind would be just enough to keep us crawling right up that rocky coast without having to tack out. But it was not to be. Those rocks and the breakers that threatened to splinter grew eerily close and so we tacked out again. What is it with our ideal of not having to tack? Maybe we suffer some OCD tendency there. It's really not a big deal. So we tacked out a ways and then back on our starboard tack up the coast, but now at a safer distance away from the rocks. It wasn't long before we crossed another line into the brack of an unnamed river (I say unnamed because we no longer had a map. This brackish green was different than the others we'd been into in that it followed a completely different pattern. Rather than balloon out into the ocean, this seemed to be drawn in close to the rocky coast, never veering more than maybe a 1/2 or 3/4 kilometer out. This stood out to me because our tack had us following this dividing line between the green and the blue almost perfectly. It would deviate a little bit here and there, making our straight tack take us into and out of the green multiple times. It felt strange to be following this line, wondering what strange phenomenon makes for such a distinct contrast between the waters.

Still maintaining our starboard tack on our search for relief from the stress of this rocky coast, the wind and waves were picking up, making us even more nervous. I also began to notice at this point just how tired I was. It was now about 3:30pm and we'd been on the water all day with little to eat other than a couple handfuls of trail mix and the last few pieces of bread which the PMV driver had given us at Basamuk. I was feeling like I needed some rest and I was sure that Chad and Sesi were feeling the same.

That's about when we noticed among the crags a small break with a white beach. It lay inside a very small bay, dwarfed even more by the massive length of black rock coastline that bounded either side. This small beach was a welcome sight. I mentioned that maybe we should land there to find out where we were at and get a feel for what lay ahead. Without a map, we were totally dependent on word of mouth and our eyes for the remainder of our trip. Who knows how much more of this dangerous coast lay ahead, or how much more of it the weather would allow us to transverse. Chad reminded us that if we landed at this point in the day, we'd in all likelihood be staying for the night. After discussing whether or not to continue on or stop here, it was decided that getting some rest was worth the possibility of being done for the day. While the current stronger winds and waves were manageable, we weren't sure we wanted to be caught between wind, waves and rock if it were to get any stronger.

The approach to this small beach was no problem. As we neared, we began to discern the many trees that spread their branches far out over the beach. One in particular, its branches bare and bleached white, seemed to mark the spot where the waves were the least threatening. We lined up for a landing, brailed the sail and let the waves work us in closer, getting ready to enact our landing routine. But just as we were about to step it into action we realized those branches weren't just restricted to the beach, but they extended well out over the water... and our brailed spars were not going to clear them! We back paddled as hard as we could against the waves, barely escaping that point of no return. Maneuvering Shan Skailyn over to the right a bit we managed to find enough of an opening to land without snagging his spars on the trees. Had we paid more attention further out we could have easily just dropped the sail on our approach.

Pulling Shan Skailyn up out of water's reach on this steep beach was proving difficult for just the three of us. We used the waves to move him up as high as we could and then tied him off so we could check things out. There didn't seem to be anyone around, nor any place. But then we noticed that there seemed to be a little village tucked away behind the rocky coastline to the east of our little bay. We wondered if anyone had seen us come in. Then finally one lone soul came walking up a trail from the west. We greeted him and attempted to make conversation. He smiled big and bright eyed as we told him we weren't really sure where we were at. "Where is this?" Chad asked. "New Zealand!" he responded. What?! Maybe his place name just sounded a bit like New Zealand and we just mistakenly thought that's what he said. "You mean, like the place near Australia?" Chad inquired further. "Yeah, Australia is right over there!" he said pointing south. The thought hit me hard just how Twilight Zone-ish this seemed. For a brief moment I was transported back to my younger, more frivolous days. "Trippy," I thought to myself. Chad asked, "So what's the name of this village over here?" "Sri Lanka!" the man answered with no hesitation and a big ole grin still on his face. Chad said to us, in English, what we were all starting to wonder, "We've obviously got a screw loose here." "So what's you're name?" "Rambo," he said. OK, definitely something wrong. Where did this guy get this stuff?!!! It certainly was an entertaining moment.

As the minutes went on it became clearer that this poor gentleman was indeed 'trango'. He seemed harmless, childlike in whatever you call his state. Eventually three guys, about the same age as the trango man, arrived from the village east of where we landed. They told us just to ignore the other guy, that he's trango, doesn't have a clue what's going on. I wondered what actually is going through the man's head. I found it sad that his peers (and even the children in the community, as we saw later) laugh and poke fun and take advantage of him the way they do. The three men kind of chuckled away at everything he did. I was intrigued. Does he have any awareness of the fact that they're laughing at him? I honestly don't know. He doesn't seem phased by the treatment. We started talking with the men about where we were at, what the name of their village is, and got an invite to stay the night there. We had landed near Lili. They mentioned that we probably wouldn't want to leave our boat here, but should drag it up over by the mouth of the little river next to their village. So as we were getting ready to move Shan Skailyn, the guys called out to trango man to help, but he was preoccupied on the beach, enjoying the waves in child-like fashion, laughing at them, jumping and doing flips over the them into the sea. On the surface, being trango looked unburdened by the complexity we grow into as adults. A small part of me envied the outward simplicity of this guy's condition. But just a small part of me. The reality is that this guy's life is harsh. My thoughts were interrupted as I heard Chad yell, "UP!"... and all six of us, the sane ones, lifted Shan Skailyn by the crossbeams and his bow and stern, and began our short trek over to the river mouth as Muni (trango man's name, as we later came to find out) stayed behind laughing at the waves.

Lili was different from the other places we'd been so far. After we'd been shown where we'd stay and introduced to the papa graun (landowner), we were on our way to wash up in the river. With a bit more privacy Chad and Sesi and I quietly discussed what we were sensing here. We had a hard time putting our finger on it. Were we welcome here? Were we interrupting something in this place? It was hard to tell. We certainly weren't turned away. But the attitude toward us seemed indifferent. Not that we're deserving of any great excitement or anything. Maybe we'd just gotten used to our presence stirring up more curiosity. That curiosity, the novelty of outside visitors wasn't there. The people at Lila were great hosts. Don't get me wrong. We were given a place to stay, food to eat, we made friends and stayed up late that night talking with our hosts as usual. But it was different. It was this difference that threw us off initially. We decided it was just that we were closer to town, where exposure to visitors is much more common, and so while the cultural norms regarding hosting are satisfied, it's not done with a great deal of fuss. Visitors here in Lili must be much more the norm than the exception.

Feeling a bit more at ease after having thought it through (we didn't want to impose, or be putting anyone off by our being here) we washed up and headed back to our house. The house was perched up high, a spindly set of steps providing the entry on one side, and a fuel drum standing on end providing the make shift entry on the other. The floors were the split palm variety. We laid out our floor mats, hung the mosquito nets and hung up our washed clothes to dry as much as possible before morning. We went outside in the dusk to hang out in the trimmed grassy place just outside the house and interact with the kids and the folks there. Muni was there the whole time obviously enjoying our presence, laughing at the most inopportune moments, and providing cause for derision, especially from the kids. Muni would often just stare at us, smiling, as if he were looking at something he'd never seen before. Here and again, I'd steal a glance at him, raise my eyebrows or nod at him with a smile, or some other mundane gesture, eliciting great approval and sometimes a chuckle from him.

We were beginning to feel relaxed, enjoying the company, having enjoyed some local brus (tobacco) given to us by Muni, when food was brought out by a couple women from the adjoining hut. We took it up into our house, sat down and polished off the tasty meal of taro and greens and bananas. An hour or two later, another round of food was brought out... this time with chicken! During both meals, Muni, who had also been served with us, sat there across from us watching and being entertained by us rather than eating. Only when we were done did he start working on his own meal.

One thing we noticed upon our arrival and getting situated in our house was that there was a massive generator (guessing 7+ kw) right under the hut we were going to stay in. Right about the time our first meal was being served I noted someone under there fiddling with the machine, apparently getting ready to run it for the night. I wondered if we'd be sleeping much that night. Who knows how late that thing would run. When it was started, it was so loud that it was difficult to converse without raising your voice quite a bit. Also, that generator seemed to be a bit of overkill for the total of 5 fluorescent lights it was powering. I wondered how much petrol these guys go through for such a small benefit. Was a smaller, less fuel consuming model just not available when they bought this? Still, it was nice having some light... though at the expense of peaceful quiet.

After we'd finished our first meal, Sesi just crashed. Nevermind the screaming generator; that man was tired. Even later, when the chicken was brought out and I called several times to him ('cause I know his appreciation for chicken would be enough to interrupt his slumber) he didn't stir. That gave me hope for my impending sleep as I was starting to feel so tired I had a hard time thinking let alone talking about much. We had company though so I continued to hang out and talk-slash-yell-over-the-generator a bit.

Chad and I talked a little bit about the possibility of crossing the bay. This was an idea I'd thought of a long time ago and had made the decision to not do it. It was too risky to be out on the open water over a 20-30 mile stretch. Anything could come up and there'd be nowhere to go. The moto skipas took their passengers through this every day. Motos also frequently sink out there. But here we were, for some reason, contemplating the possibility. I think it was the fact that this trip was taking so much longer than planned that motivated us to consider the possibility. We texted Chad's father who is also working in country to ask what the distance is between here and Madang. He responded with information about the forecast calling for high seas, 1-3 meter waves, 25-30 mile per hour winds. Didn't take much to dissuade us. We would later, further up the bay where the crossing was much less (only 9 miles) decide to cross... even that being a mistake... but a story for tomorrow!

It wasn't too long before people started to clear out. As they were leaving one guy came in, indicating he'd been waiting for folks to leave so we could talk. He took some time to look at and admire the paddles we'd been using. He asked how I made them and told me how he was a paddle maker, but that he makes them all out of one solid piece. We talked a little about the different styles and methods. My eyes were burning and I think I could have slept standing up there. But he kept talking. Somehow he tied my paddle making to an ability to make guitars, and he asked if I could make a guitar and send it his way someday. The connection was so absurd and out of the blue that I still wonder if I dreamt it. I declined and said I don't make guitars. I remember having to tell him that several times because he had a hard time letting go of the matter. It was odd and uncomfortable. His friend who was now standing in the room with us, caught on and told him that they need to let us go so we can sleep. Within 2 minutes I was under our mosquito net, generator still roaring, and well on my way to sleepyville. The sound of the generator, nor the strangeness of the request for luthier's skills I do not possess weren't enough to keep me awake.

I do remember that night though, and also the night previous, that as I was falling asleep, I would have these sharp, flashy mental images that would kind of explode in my mind as I started to drift. They would come and go, there one second, gone the next. The images were borderline scary, keeping me awake as I wondered what prompted the unusual occurrence of visual imagery like this. Waves crashing, faces in the water, perceiving the sea as if it had a life and will of it's own, working against us... strange indeed. But still not enough to keep me from falling into a deep sleep.