Savo Island

Sunday 15 October

Just got back from an amazing weekend on Savo Island – a little volcanic number about one and three quarter hours from Honiara on a little 30 hp fibreglass boat. The island is only a few km in diameter, and has a number of villages around the outside. It also boasts the Kamakeza hotel/rest house, which was first established some years ago, was destroyed during the ethnic tensions, and has now been rebuilt at a new site. A bit more expensive than our choice… we stayed at the Kula Village Stay – sort of set up to be an authentic village experience, with a separate leaf house for visitors (with beds with mattresses I should note, and more comfortable than at the Rest House in Honiara too), meals provided, a sort of pit toilet, and various activity options. The couple who run most of it, Noel and Victoria Kuku, are really lovely, and the whole village is very friendly and the kids are fabulously charming.

We arrived late Friday afternoon and took it pretty easy – a couple of people were feeling a bit poorly from dodgey food/different food/something, and everyone was pretty tired from the busy week. They must have thought we were very boring, as most people went to bed at 7 on Friday and not much later on Saturday. Gave me the chance to (uncharacteristically) be a party animal, relatively speaking. They wanted to sort out what our program was, so we all decided to go up the volcano on Saturday and go to church on Sunday. Leave at around 7 in the morning to get up the volcano before the weather gets too hot. No worries… and sat down to a feast of fried reef fish, rice, sweet potato and two minute noodles mixed with beans, tomatoes, onions, tinned fish, and plenty of curry powder.

We were woken at about 5:30 by Victoria’s dad knocking on doors (or walls) and asking who wants to go to the megapod fields. Not sure where that fit into all the previous night’s planning, but Fiona and I struggled out of bed and wandered off for a tour of the mysterious critters. I assume that the name refers to the size of the eggs (showing my ignorance of things Latin – maybe someone can enlighten me?), as the birds themselves are smaller than chickens. They are wild, and the spot we visited was a big enclosure, cut in half by a partial fence. The first half contained people digging up eggs. Holes are dug the night before, and the birds then go and dig a bit deeper (sometimes more than a metre) and lay an egg, then cover up the hole. While the people are in half the enclosure digging the eggs up again, the birds run away to the other half of the enclosure (they’re very shy, hence the fuzzy, long distance photos) and keep laying, up to three eggs a day. In the wild they dig the whole nest themselves, and apparently the eggs are still good for eating up to two weeks from being laid. The eggs are bigger (esp. longer) than chicken eggs, and have a bigger yolk. For all the digging and fence building I think the chicken probably still comes out ahead though. We took one back for brekkie, which was cocnutty bread (pretty good with shiteloads of vitamite/peanut butter), left over sweet potato, a little sample of fried megapod egg (pretty tasty as far as I could tell) and starfruit.


We eventually departed for the volcano at around 9, and seemed to wander along at a pretty relaxed pace for the first hour or so of flat walking. Stopped briefly by a stream, then crossed over for the ‘difficult’ bit, which consisted of scrambling up a slippery, slidey slope assisted by tree roots and any unfortunate bits of vegetation that came to hand. After the difficult bit there was a mere two hours of pretty-darn-steep and fairly slippery terrain to negotiate, before arriving at the crater in the middle of the day. It was pretty amazing – bare whitish rock with sulfuric colouring, boiling hot water and well heated ground. The experience was only slightly tainted by meeting three Sweedish doctors who were staying at the Kamekeza place and had managed to take the shorter route, which had been ruled out by Noel because of difficulties with land ownership and royalty payments. I think our hard work payed off though – we all managed to get back in one piece and resisted the temptation of walking on to another higher vantage point on the way back, where (we heard later) one of the Swedes slipped an hurt his arm. Lucky they were doctors. The walk through the forest was really speccy too – good views across valleys, lots of nice ferns (sorry, no piccies of these, Jim), some cool fungi, and constant entertainment from our entourage of kids, the spunky mute guide (sigh), and Noel. All chewing betel nut and/or smoking the whole way, and looking like they could turn around and do it all again by the end.

Were rewarded on return by a refreshing swim (I didn’t realise the others were eating first, jumped in the water, then realised on getting out that I should have moved further to avoid the preferred toilet location), cold shower, and meal of rice and megapod omelette with tomato, bean, onion, and, creatively, two minute noodles and curry powder. Drank litres of water, sat around feeling bloated, and was surprisingly hungry for dinner a couple of hours later. Rice, sweet potato, chunks of fried tuna (I think I ate about half a fish), more omelette, pumpkin tips in coconut milk, and greens with two minute noodles and curry. Was almost driven insane after a few nights of broken sleep by the generator running late into the night next to my room, running a screening of Tristan and Isolde I later discovered. I guess there have to be some perks for having your home invaded every weekend by weirdos.
Today we got up for the Sunday service at the local Anglican church. The singing was beautiful, but I can’t say I really appreciated all the standing, sitting and kneeling given that my legs were making a few comments about the previous day’s exertion. Very special though, really. The first hymn almost made me cry, and I embarrassed myself again (getting very good at this) by asking if they were singing in language and being told it was English…
I went for a big snorkel after brekkie (fried coconutty bread with more vitamite, greans with noodles, curry and tinned fish, greens with noodles, curry and tinned corned beef, coconutty rice) and saw some very cool huge blue starfish with lighter blue spots, a few biggish fish, a few littlish colourful ones too, some cool coral, etc. etc. (very technical, I know). The boat trip back was very wet but not too cold, and I managed not to think about how impossible it would really be to swim either way by half way across.
Now it’s my first night in the pure luxury of the house I’ll be minding for three weeks (very grateful to Kahlee and Steve for this!).