Hooking Up, Part 2

April 12, 2006

By this time I had moved on to a different island- Kon Tiki, AKA Nananua Lodge, on the island of Nanu-i-ra. Back to Random Encounter Theater:

More time on the beach today, with a sunburn to prove it on my chest and stomach. The day was undershot with anticipation, though, since one girl named Jody and a Dutchman named Melvin collected money from everyone and went into town, returning with food and BOOZE! I hiked the ridge of the island, which apparently the owners of the Kon Tiki also own. It’s actually quite a big piece of land, about 400 acres or so, and most of it is pasture; rolling grassland dotted with the occasional spreading tree. The batteries in my camera are dead, so I’ll have to try to preserve the scene in words instead. After a short walk you come to the ridgeline, above the lodge, where there is a small sort of observation deck and an electricity-generating windmill. From there you basically follow a cow path through the swaying grasses up and down the rolling landscape. The view of the ocean is spectacular, blue water in every direction, discolored where a reef lies below the surface, waves breaking where a shoal is. It’s a small taste of the scope of the Pacific, the sheer size of it. Down by the beach it’s easy to forget just how huge this is. The sunset from up here is amazing as well, stretching orange and yellow shades across the water.

At night some of the backpackers cooked a huge curry, and soon we all sat down at the end-to-end picnic tables to eat. It was like a small family had sprung up out of nowhere: we ate and drank rum and Cokes (made with the very potent and foul local Bounty rum). It didn’t take much to make everyone fairly tipsy, noisy, and happy. Joe and Oscar, two local employees, joined in the fun, and for a little while it was like we were all old mates, joking and palying CDs and just enjoying each other. Later there was a bonfire at the beach, but the combination of Bounty and the late hour made for a lot of people sleeping in the sand. I love how these things seem to happen, that in a very short period of time you can become so friendly with complete strangers.