Menseng Mwao,
This weekend I went on a men's only camping this trip. Except one guy brought his wife and Trieste was going to come but she got sick at the last minute. Like a good husband I selflessly went on the camping trip anyway to give her time to recuperate and take care of herself.
The canoe was an outrigger, which means that it has a stabilizing side bar to prevent capsizing. Traditional canoes are very narrow because they are usually made from dug out tree trunks and thus need a little more stability. These things are extremely complicated to operate, and although I've done a my fare share of canoeing and kayaking I still couldn't make the damn thing do what I wanted it to. Plus you can only reasonably hold three people plus luggage and if there is a third person the paddlers are very angry at that person for getting a free ride. We had six people which meant that three of us had to swim.
We got to Joy Island which is a coral islet that's on the barrier reef of Pohnpei at about 1:00 or 2:00 and met Herbert and Rambo, the guy and his dog who live on Joy island. You heard me, one guy and his dog live on this stunningly beautiful island off a stunningly beautiful island in the middle of the pacific. We made camp and swam a half mile back to the area where we could start spear fishing.
Spear fishing is hard. Spear fishing is very hard. Spear fishing is also dangerous. I will only say that on my 20th attempt I got one fish that was too small to eat and I had to bite it's head and send it to Davy Jones. You have to bite their heads or they attract sharks. Spear fishing is hard.
We made a shelter out of fallen limbs and palm fronds, which in hind sight is laughable and had it not been 80 degrees outside one of us surely would have gotten hypothermia or succumbed to exposure. I say this because we live in the rainiest place on earth and of course it rained all night and into the morning. At one point at about 5:00 in the morning Tony and I just laid in the ocean because it was warmer than the rain.
The important thing is that I slept on the beach and got chicken pox, or what I thought was chicken pox for three days until I went to the doctor and she told me that it was either sand flea bites or scabies. I'm still not sure which it is.
Finally the crocodile has caused enough of a stir that people have closed all the swimming holes in Nett including our favorite, Awak Pah. So far I haven't caught the croc, but I'm not giving up now. I've got a load of dynamite coming full steam from Chuuk, and I'm not going to let that croc get away next time.
Later days, better ways,
jp
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