Blue Lagoon Beach Resort: The Real Slice of Paradise

The last time I wrote about Paradise, I was being more than a little ironic. PNG was far from my idea of a good time- however pretty the pictures look. The post was hard, I struggled with the culture and the professional isolation, and for all the good diving and some of the good folks I spent time out there with, it was still a relief to move on to a different stage in my personal and professional life.

I went to Fiji in July. It was my fourth trip to the little island nation. I went once for a family holiday in 2001, followed by a couple of work trips in 2008 and earlier this year, and this latest trip was a combination work-play. The first two weeks were to be spent helping manage an interagency disaster simulation for NGO staff in the Pacific across half a dozen agencies, as well as Fijian government representatives. The third week I was to be joined by my [now] fiancee for a bit of relaxation on a small island.

I’ve always figured Fiji for a nice enough place, without being really special. It’s a bit synonymous with package holidays and honeymoons, a sort of upmarket Bali with fancy hotels belying a fragile national economy. We booked into a resort hotel based on input from TripAdvisor, and despite the glowing reviews I was a little dubious. The idea of packaged meals and a resort-style trip (something I’m not at all familiar with) left me a little uneasy.

Besides, I’ve been to a lot of places. Over 50 countries worldwide. A whole bunch of beautiful beaches and coastal holiday areas- Cairns, Noosa and Sydney in Australia, dozens of places in New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Haiti, Hawaii, Tahiti and Mombasa- to name an incomplete list. I’ve snorkelled or dived in most of those places, swum and relaxed or sunbathed (to some extent) in all.

So when I say that the Blue Lagoon Resort in Nacula is as close to beach paradise as I’ve come across, I know what I’m talking about.

Overview

Where to start? I’m a bit overwhelmed really.

Well, first off, an overview. A brand-new resort, Blue Lagoon pitches itself as a mid-range option to independent travelers that suits budgets of better-off backpackers and flashpackers and young families. It’s quite boutiquey- probably around sixty guests at any one time- and it’s a ways out there too- some four and a half hours’ boat ride from Nadi, and at the top end of the Yasawa group of Islands off Vitu Levu’s west coast.

Nacula is a decent-sized island about 10km long and maybe 2-3 wide at its widest. The resort is situated on a beach shared with one other low-key resort on the west side of the island, giving it stunning views at dusk as the sun sets over the Pacific.

And the beach is the one you’d create if you had a drawing board and 10 million years of geological time at your disposal.

It’s an arc of white sand sloping from a green verge into a turquoise lagoon of calm warm sea. The lagoon itself slides away on a shallow gradient where a natural channel has formed through the coral reef, while small waves lick quietly at the shoreline.

More on the reef presently.

I’d heard nice things about the resort, but had a feeling that, based on the slightly backpacker-ish pitch of some of the material I’d read (they have a backpackers dorm as an accomodation option) I was concerned that maybe the rooms would be a little pokey. I’d settled myself with the thought that even if the rooms were a bit small and/or run-down, the main attraction was being out and about on the beach, so I steeled myself for the worst.

Unnecessary.

The Place

The rooms are delightful. We booked a Delux Garden View room, set back a row from the beach among lush and flowery growth, riddled by sandy footpaths. Stepping inside, the bure was large and spacious, with a high open ceiling, fan, wooden slat-blinds that allowed free-flow of air, and an open-air bathroom with magnificent shower. It was clean, new, well-built, and smacked of simple quality.  It was light. It was airy. And sitting on the foot of the bed, you could look straight out of the front door and (despite not being an sea-view room) see the irridescent aqua of the lagoon itself.

Really, once you hit location and accomodation, you don’t need too much more than that to go right to have a good time. None the less, there was more.

I’m not a fan of Pacific cuisine (sorry to any of my island readers out there). A year in Melanesia didn’t overwhelm me with vibrant culinary experiences, so I was a little suspect at having to package all our meals in with the accomodation, and face the prospect of not getting to choose off a menu. But again, this was completely unnecessary.

The food is great. A wide variety of styles- curries, fish, western, asian and Pacific- is on offer, with meals varying each night of the week, and a limited a-la-blackboard menu option at lunch time as well. The dishes themselves were nearly universally tasty, and the variety and volume left nothing to be desired. You do need to plan ahead a little, as meal-times are set and there aren’t stacks of between-meal options, but we had a little heap of biscuits with us that we never made it through, testament to being well fed. Communal eating didn’t really appeal at first (dinner takes place at shared tables- gasp!), but the barefoot vibe of the place (and the travellers frequenting it) facilitates a really chilled-out opportunity to get to know people.

The Experience

Never a package-holiday traveller, I wasn’t particularly interested in the daily activities that the hotel lays on, but in fact they had some fantastic little trips available, of which we partook several. Snorkelling trips to explore other nearby reefs, sunset and drinks on the sandbar (we missed this one, sigh), a hike up to the island’s highest peak (beautiful views), and a handful of cultural visits as well were all on the menu. A must-do trip is to the Nacula Caves, which involves a series of swim-throughs of saltwater limestone caves at the top end of the island- not for the claustrophobic, but otherwise a unique and fantastic morning which everybody enjoyed.

An aspect of the resort which we really appreciated was the attitude of the management. Run by Australasian expats, the management are accessible, friendly and helpful, and mingle easily with the guests. The local Fijian staff are warm, welcoming and hospitable, as well as being very professional. It’s the sort of place where you get to know the staff by name- and they you.

More to the point, the resort prides itself on its links to the local communities on the island- something that we found especially important in terms of our own values in this area. As well as trips which incorporate, employ and interact with villagers, the resort runs a scholarship fund for students on the island to which cover costs of fees, uniforms and school supplies, as well as contribute to the maintainence of the school facilities. Guests are invited to contribute to the fund, and the resort will match dollar-for-dollar whatever is donated. There is a sense of respect and interaction between the resort and the village, which I hope the management will be able to maintain as the resort ages.

I would be wrong not to return to the lovely reef. Quite aside from the access to a number of dive-sites in the area via the on-site dive-shop (do the shark dive), the snorkelling is, well, unlike any other beach snorkelling I’ve done. While I’ve seen a handful of reefs that are more vibrantly coloured close in to shore (but only a handful), the diversity and volume of fish-life was a delight, and never this accessible, anywhere. If I reel off a bunch from memory, there were Triggerfish, Moorish Idols, Parrotfish, Chromis, Anthias, Unicornfish, Sweetlips, Jackfish, Dascyllus, and a host of other reef favourites. The more special visitors included a shoal of Reef Squid, Stingrays, a huge Octopus and a metre-long Barracuda- all within 10 metres of the beach itself! The reef is accessible at high- and low-tide (and in fact the reef life differs at the two extremes, worth checking out), and more to the point it’s a joy to swim along; the channel provides a shallow sandy-floored passage that drops to a couple of metres in depth for a long way out into the lagoon and which is very comfortable to swim along, and the reef raises a wall along the southern edge of that passage where most of the action is. It’s a safe, enjoyable way to investigate the sea life, and we did it every day, and loved it.  For sheer accessibility to a really exciting reef, this can’t be emphasised strongly enough.

As I referenced in an earlier post, I proposed out at Blue Lagoon (and would have been hard-pressed to chose a better location for it). Before heading out, I dropped Kylie (one of the managers) a note letting her know my intentions and asking if there was anything a little special I could arrange with the hotel’s help. She was most supportive and immediately gave me a list of options, including a lobster dinner for two on the beach (away from the horde), and the option of having a picnic on a secluded private island nearby- both of which I seized upon and both of which were thoroughly enjoyed.

Some Balance, Please?

Words of moderation? Well, a couple probably. First up, once you’re on the island, you can get away without paying much more, but the temptation will always be to do things and have drinks, and these will add up. You don’t use cash out there, everything gets recorded in a book and you pay up at the end, so if you’re not keeping track you could be in for a bit of a surprise- nothing (except some of the activities) is particularly cheap- although it’s not extortionate by resort standards either. That said, having food taken out of the equation is a pretty good thing, and we managed just fine with our bill.

My biggest fear for Blue Lagoon is that as word gets out, the place will get a little overrun. The reviews on Trip Advisor are pretty rave, and with good reason- this is a very special place right now, and somewhere that we will never ever forget (not just because we got engaged out here). It’s been open less than a year. I’d love to think that the management will be able to maintain the relaxed vibe several years into operating with high demand and through-flow, but it’s not impossible to imagine it getting a bit worn-out, so I’d recommend getting in sooner rather than later.

And, well, the cocktail list could probably be improved on. But really, when you’re four and a half hours from the mainland and everything has to come by boat, you can understand why these things might be a little lacking, if that’s your thing.

All up, this was probably my best single hotel/resort experience, mixing a lovely blend of quality, relaxation, activities and experience, all at a very reasonable price. My hat goes off to the team running the place as they’ve created a really special location with a perfect unpretencious vibe. Great for travellers, flashpackers and families with a reasonable budget, this goes right to the top of my list of ‘places you should visit in the Pacific’.

Verdict

Accomodation- 5/5 Light, fresh, new and spacious. The open-air shower has to be experienced to be understood. A range of really pleasant options from budget through laid-back comfort, this isn’t the Denerau Hilton, but why would you want it to be? Ask for Garden Villa 11 and get sea views thrown in for free.

Food- 4/5 Great taste, decent lunch options and a good range of evening meals, despite not having any control over the dinner menu. This would be a total win if there were more between-meal snack options and a wider range of drinks at the bar, but really, I’m just looking for things to quibble about because there’s really not much else to add balance.

Location- 6/5 Amazing reef, gorgeous beach, sunsets and tropical vibe- this has to be one of the best-located resorts in the Pacific. What can I say to the Blue Lagoon’s detractors? Would you like the hotel moved a little to the left?

Activities- 5/5 Relaxation is key here, and relaxation and swimming are free, but the creative options for daily activities mean that for those unable to entertain themselves still have an option to keep busy. Do the cave trip. Not for adrenaline junkies- but hey, this is Fiji. If buzz is what you’re after, Queenstown is to the south. And there’s always the shark dive.

Vibe- 5/5 Just brilliant. Beanbags in front of the open-front bar, barefoot dresscode, bonfires on the beach, and a general emphasis on chill-out throughout. And small enough to keep it personal. Really, really lovely.

Management- 5/5 Friendly, accessible, helpful, flexible and professional. What more would you ask for?

Ethics- 4/5 It’s refreshing to see a resort pay more than just lip-service to supporting local communities. It’s hard to know what impact a throughflow of western travellers will have on the island’s economy and environment, but the fact that they invest in local education is a great thing, and the friendly disposition of both local staff and local villagers we interacted with suggested that the attitude is more than just a marketing ploy for the time being.

Value- 5/5 Value is an entirely subjective term. I appreciate every dollar we spent at Blue Lagoon and don’t have any regrets, as we came away with a set of beautiful memories and a great time. It’s not the cheapest option out there, but my word do you get what you pay for in terms of location and vibe.

Blue Lagoon also gets an extra 5 points from me for that little extra something for laying on a really special time for us as we got engaged. Just fantastic.

Thanks guys for an amazing stay.

Details

You can check the Blue Lagoon website here for tarrifs.

Room rates start from FJD 40 per night for a dorm bed, through lodge rooms at FJD 140, and villas ranging from FJD 209 through to the delux ocean-front villa at FJD 449. Food packages are included at FJD 70 per person per day, and return transfers to the mainland, FJD 276. (FJD 1 = AUD 0.57; FJD 1 = USD 0.51)

All up, it means a mid-range stay option for two adults for a week comes in at around FJD 2,000, so if you couple that with a good flight deal from Australia, it can be quite accessible- though is by no means at the bottom end of the price scale. Worth every penny, in my opinion, but everyone values different things.

Of course for a different extreme in the travel stakes, check out a couple of my tales from West Africa. Now there’s a cheap way to have a travel adventure…

Forgive Me, Interwebs, For I Have Sinned

It has been 4 weeks since my last post.

It is a cardinal law, all but set on tablets of stone, that attainment of Blogospherical Salvation rests on regular written communion with the faithful readership. In this mission, I have trespassed catastrophically of late.

Be they the faithful unto Blog, devotees of the Great FB, or members of the Church of Twit, congregations connect to the messages shared from the pulpit of QWERTY and HTML. Without these pressed words, followers begin to drift.

I have my justifications, of course. From mid-July I was preparing for my third overseas trip in six weeks. I then spent two weeks in Fiji helping to manage an emergency simulation exercise. Not only was this flat-out exhausting, but internet communications in Fiji were devlishly poor. From there, I spent a blissful ten days on vacation, during which I was completely disconnected from the interwebs (being, as I was, on a small heavenly tropical island five hours from the Vitu Levu mainland). As an added blessing I even dropped my phone on the first day of that vacation, and which now no longer works as a result. This has some drawbacks now that I am back in civilization (such as the loss of my entire phone contacts list) but it was truly glorious for the time away.

In Fiji, I was joined by my girlfriend who, as happy providence would have it, agreed to become my fiancee while we were away.  This (I confess with only limited penitence) meant I had slightly more pertinent issues to fill my head and heart with than what to post as my next blog commentary on aid trends or complexity theory. I now come home with just four months in which to plan a wedding- a fact I’m extremely excited about, but also thoroughly overwhelmed from an administrative perspective.

(Admin and I are not good companions; in fact I tend to acknowledge myself to colleagues as an ‘administrative black hole’. They don’t take long to realise what I mean.)

And as if that isn’t enough, I come home to find my portfolio popping off (typical that this would be the week I choose to disconnect from the world). I look after emergency situations in the band of nations from south Asia all the way to eastern Europe, with Somalia and Haiti thrown in for good measure (because the first semi-continent doesn’t leave me with enough to do). While I was away, Pakistan managed to sink itself into one of the largest humanitarian emergencies of the last decade, while there have been significant security incidents in both Afghanistan and Somalia which require attention around the way in which we do business in those countries.

I’m on my knees here.

To further distract me, I also picked up my long-awaited iPad on Monday. I have already taken an evangelical liking to it, and will be prosletysing its wonders shortly on this blog no doubt; already a follower of Apple, it took no time at all to convert me to the beauty of this new device. Setting it up this week, I can see it’s going to be both a fantastic tool, and a terrible distraction. I’m looking forward to constructing some of my blog posts on it and seeing how that works…

So I hope you can find it within your hearts to forgive me this temporary transgression. We all know that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but I do have a canon of posts up my sleeve to impart when time and circumstance allow, not least of which some words to share around the upcoming World Humanitarian Day. There are a few photos from the trip to Fiji (although I confess my mind was on other things than my photography for much of that trip, both while working and while on holiday).

And the one grace in all of this is that, perversely, my average daily readership these past four weeks has never been higher. Should I be reading into the fact that when I’m not posting anything, that’s when most people seem interested in Wanderlust? Not to develop an inferiority complex or anything…

At any rate, thanks for your patience and your continued visits to this site. I hope you can continue to find things here that you enjoy, as it’s certainly a joy for me to share them with you.

Till next time, Peace, Shalom, Salaam (and for my Muslim Brothers and Sisters, Ramadan Karim)

PS- I’ve never been one to share much personal stuff on this blog, and that’s not about to change now. However, lest any should ask, yes, the proposal involved all the proper components: ring, bended knee, beach and sunset, followed by champagne & lobster for two on the beach, and a picnic the next day to a small deserted island.   It also involved that all important word, ‘Yes’.

Who knew getting engaged could be so much fun?

Flying Paradise

(Note: Click the photos for a larger view of the scenery)

For a guy who pretty much spends his life in airport transit halls, I’ve never been fond of flying. As a kid I was a nervous flier. As an adult I’ve learned to relax on flights where I know the chance of pieces dropping off the plane are relatively slim (ergo Qantas gives me the heebies), although on some of the world’s more dubious airlines (Air Ivoire, Air Burkina, United Airlines) I’ll still crack a sweat. Planes which rock up without even a tail ensigna (thank you Air Mauritania), I’m pretty much up to giving myself the last rites.

So the thought of flying Air Niugini, PNG’s national carrier, as my only way around that particular little slab of paradise, didn’t fill me with glee. In fact, I didn’t have a lot of options. I was stationed in Madang, on the North Coast. It is connected by road to Lae and to Goroka, but not to Port Moresby, where the country’s international airport is situated. In principle you can travel to Moresby by boat. But it’d take you days and days. Most people opt for the one-hour flight.

Air Niugini has, against all the odds, an impeccable safety record. Impeccable in that PNG has some of the most aircraft-unfriendly terrain on the planet. It is effectively a massive range of spiny mountain peaks wrapped in dense jungle, ringed by a thin strip of flattish ground near the coast. During World War II, when aircraft were unpressurized, limiting flying at altitude, PNG was known for its “rock-studded clouds” as huge spires three and four thousand metres high cloaked in tropical mists jutted into aircraft flight-paths. Dozens of airmen and women lost their lives to the unmerciful terrain.

A couple of factors contribute to Air Niugini’s safety record. The first is the terrain itself. It’s so dangerous that to fly it, you really have to know your stuff. Weather can be violently unpredictable, landing strips short. Because everything away from the coast is jagged and steep, there’s no place to put an aircraft down in an emergency- unless you fancy pancaking a struggling jetliner on a 45-degree forested mountainside. If something goes wrong, you’re up the proverbial creek, with neither a paddle nor a parachute.

Air Niugini, while state-owned and run by a Papua New Guinean, also employs the habit of partnering a white Australian in the cockpit alongside every national pilot or copilot flying, the theory being that the Australians know how to fly better. I won’t comment on either the policy or the theory underlying it. However a late friend of mine intimate with PNG flew on an Air Niugini flight some years back where this policy was not observed. Upon landing, the pilots, presumably forgetting protocol, did not use the reverse-thrusters to decellerate the aircraft, but used the hydraulic brakes on the wheels. The hydraulics, unable to cope with the speeding aircraft, promptly burst with a loud bang, and the plane ended up careening down the landing strip and barely avoiding a serious accident. As the aircraft sat ticking over once the crisis was managed, disgruntled Papua New Guineans could be heard muttering to one another in Tok Pisin, “If a white man had been in the cockpit this would never have happened”.*

 

Stories about Air Niugini’s minor mishaps are rife. Friends of mine were on a flight travelling into Madang that, through pilot error, experienced a sudden violent depressurization at 4,000m, and the plane touched down with blood pouring from everybody’s ears. A few years back, a Fokker F100 ran off the end of the runway in Madang and plopped into the sea. Nobody was hurt, and crew and passengers walked off the plane along the wing back onto dry land. It turns out that the pilot had had to land without any ground support because the staff in the control tower had simply gone out and left it.

Worse perhaps than the safety risks were the delays. Air Niugini’s flights were so notoriously unreliable that if any of us were flying to leave the country on a connecting flight, we would generally book two or three flights earlier out of Madang than necessary (there were generally two flights per day out of Madang), just to ensure that we wouldn’t miss our onward leg. Such events were referred to as “TANG-FU”s- Typical Air Niugini Stuff-Ups. It was an acronym we used frequently, and with heavy bitterness.

Over the twelve months I was stationed in Madang, I spent days and days worth of my time in the tiny airport building- a single room with a grubby lino floor and a few rows of plastic bucket seats. Air Niugini operated two types of aircraft- Fokker F50s and Fokker F100s- the number designating roughly the number of seats on the aircraft. Louver windows opened onto the apron, so that when the planes taxied up to the building, a blast of ear-shredding noise would pound the waiting passengers. On more than one occasion I have spent hours and hours trying to get either myself, or colleagues for whom I was responsible onto one of their aircraft.

The story that in my mind typifies the mind-blowing simplicity of Air Niugini’s mismanagement occurred around July 2008. Several colleagues were due to fly to Port Moresby following a disaster simulation. The flight they were booked on was listed up on the whiteboard (no, of course there was no automated screen) as being an F100, coming in from Wewak and continuing to POM. A total of 100 passengers were booked on the leg to the capital. Only when the plane landed, despite having accepted 100 bookings to Port Moresby, Air Niugini had scheduled an F50 with exactly half the number of necessary seats on it.

In my mind this is a pretty simple set of mathematics, wouldn’t you say? But somehow it outfoxed (routinely) the cerebral giants who managed Air Niugini’s flight schedules.

However the one thing that Air Niugini delivered (for which it really couldn’t take much credit) was the scenery. I’ve noted elsewhere that for all its foibles, PNG is a jawdroppingly, brain-explodingly beautiful country. The jagged mountains that scream “you really shouldn’t be flying over me” are dramatic and awe-inspiring, real heart-of-darkness sort of stuff. Views of the coastline landing in Madang are simply tremendous. Coming in from POM over the Rai Coast, the plane plummets thousands of feet down the face of the Finisterre Mountains, straight out of the pages of Jurassic Park with verdant cliffs dripping with thick foliage.

Even the touchdown (or take-off) in Madang is magnificent. The runway is on the mainland, about four feet above sea-level, jutting out into a pocket of Madang Harbour. Madang itself sits on a series of small inlets and peninsulas, and even spreads out onto the dozen or so little islands plopped in the sea nearby. Outrigger canoes and banana-boats (fibreglass hull outboard motorboats) ply the channels like taxis. The water is azure and palm-trees lean out over the raised reef shoreline. And the aircraft cruises straight down the harbour, views on both sides of the charming waterways and seafronts, until as a passenger you’re sure that the wheels must be churning up a creamy wake in the glass sea.

It’s really quite splendid.

If I never have to fly Air Niugini again as long as I live, I will probably cope with this fact. I do genuinely admire the skill of pilots in PNG- not just those of the small jets and turboprops who do navigate some of the most challenging commercial airspace in the world, but those like the small missionary air companies like MAF whose little single-engined planes are the lifeblood of many remote villages in the hinterlands, and who place their aircraft sans assistance into clearings in jungles or onto steeply-angled landing strips on yawning mountainsides.

And much as I hated it all at the time, flying paradise sure did leave me with some memories.  Maybe someday I’ll tell you about the time flying Solomon Airlines that I spent 8 hours in Honiara because somebody put toilet-paper down the toilet, and a passenger disappeared…

*(It’s worth noting briefly that their colonial history has sadly left much of PNG with something of an inferiority complex, whereby many Papua New Guineans will express feeling less adequate than whites. Colleagues would periodically apologize to me for the state of their country with genuine shame, and the impact on the national psyche was quite plain to see. While some whites do still behave as though PNG is still an Australian colony, it’s saddest of all to see nationals upholding this mindset while they struggle to establish a stable national identity and find pride in their country).

 

All photos except 1 taken on Air Niugini flights between Port Moresby and Madang.

 

Note: For those readers among you who have your own experiences of Air Niugini and the various TANG-FUs you’ve enjoyed, please feel free to share them below- I’d love to hear about them!

Moments in Time and Space #7: Wongat

It’s no secret that I didn’t really love my time living in Papua New Guinea, for a variety of reasons. However the one thing that did make the place special were the weekends. Saturday mornings we would jump onto Jan’s dive-boat and head out into Madang Harbour, easily one of the prettiest pieces of tropical real-estate in the Pacific. A large natural harbour surrounded by an outer reef wall many miles long, the harbour’s shallow waters are home to a diversity of marine life, not to mention interesting dive sites and historic wrecks. A smattering of islands can be reached within ten minutes of the jetty, among the prettiest, Wongat Island, a tiny little blob of rock, sand and palm-trees that would fit well inside a football stadium.

I liked Wongat because it had perhaps the nicest sand beach in the harbour, and a lovely shallow run-out into the warm sea. The water stayed a balmy 29 degrees centigrade through most of the year, while shoals of colourful fish played among rock outcrops, which snorkellers could explore leisurely beneath a hot sun.

I found this little outrigger (yeah, I know, it’s kind of familiar) bobbing around the corner from the main beach, tucked behind a few rocks. The shot itself was taken with my little Canon Powershot G9 (the same camera used for my underwater photography- Jan used the G9, and now has the G10, for his underwater shots as well), and to take the photo I held a pair of polarized sunglasses over the lens (as I couldn’t fit a polarizing filter over the front) to capture the clarity of water and contrast in the sky. The result was one of my favourite photographs from the year, and made my list of favourite photos. Coupled with the beauty of the environment it was taken in, this one’s a keeper for me.

Longtails

The longtail boat is an icon of the beaches of southern Thailand, and no good tourist comes away without at least one shot of the boats framed by the dramatic karst limestone features of the landscape.  They’re very distinctive and photogenic, and I would have taken more shots of them if the weather had been better (this shot taken during the one 2-hour slot we had of bona fide sunshine and blue skies).  I particularly enjoy the way the bow gets exaggerated when using the 12mm wide-angle on my Canon EOS 400D (I was probably all of eight inches from the nose of the boat here).  The scarf of colour wrapped around the base also adds a nice splash of vibrance to an already spectacular setting.

Despite their picturesque and fitting image, the longtails are a menace for anybody looking for solitude and tranquility.  They cart tourists in and out of the beaches by their thousands each day.  At any given time two or three of these marine minibuses are beaching themselves on the sand and disgorging two dozen pasty white Europeans to bake beneath a tropical sun for a few days.  They clutter every seascape, moored by the score in the shallows just off the waterfront, and their aggressive little two-stroke engines have them buzzing up and down the coastline like wasps, sounding for all the world like lawn-mowers on PCP.

I don’t mean to complain.  And I mean that honestly.  Any destination, however seemingly idyllic, has its idiosyncrasies and quirks, and the reality of life intervenes no matter how hard you try to pretend it won’t.  More importantly, the vessels are a source of income to literally thousands of boatmen up and down the shores of southern Thailand, still recovering following the devastation of the 2004 Tsunami.  I think it pays, sometimes, to look behind the picture and sidestep the tropical cliche for a few moments.  Equalize the expectations and enjoy the colourful, sensual reality of life for what it is.

A Weekend on Wongat

It wasn’t really a weekend, just a sunday morning, but I like the alliteration.

Last weekend, Dave, Juliana and I hitched a ride with the Resort’s dive boat to Wongat Island.  Madang Harbour has about a dozen good-sized islands scattered around the reef, and one of the perks of living here is being able to pop out to them for a day and enjoy our own little tropical paradise.  The Resort charged us 38 Kina a head (USD 14) for the return transfer.

The MTS Aquaventure dumped us in chest-deep water just off the beach and we waded ashore, the three of us the only living inhabitants on the place.  The water was 29 degrees (84F), the sunlight was rippling on the shallow sand, the palms were hanging still, and it was pretty much as perfect as you could imagine it.

I’ve been bemoaning the lack of a polarizing filter for some time, given the spectacular views and bright sunlight we get here.  This weekend I decided to take matters into my own hands and began sticking my polarized glasses over the front of the camera.  This would never work with a DSLR, but with my Powershot G9, the lens is only 15mm across and it’s a perfect fit.  I was thrilled with the outcome.

I’ll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.

After about an hour or so, a canoe pulled up with some local kids.  Their clan actually owns the island, but the Resort pays a fee to drop clients there and dive the waters so we didn’t get any hassle.  I really like this shot- combines a nice set of elements, with the hint of a smile on Dave’s face, the kids in the water, the boat, and the scenery.  I also like the artsy self-indulgent crop…

The water was pretty clear.  My favourite thing about taking photos when I’m snorkelling rather than diving is that the sunlight is still very strong- it gives great tones on a sunny day, and I love the rippled effect of the sunbeams on the sand.

This outrigger was bobbing by itself just around a little headland.  My favourite shot of the day.  You may have seen it somewhere before…

There were shoals and shoals of these tiny little fish, no bigger than my little finger, but massing in their thousands.  I spent quite a while chasing them and trying to capture their swarming on film.

I complain about this place, but it certainly has its perks.  I’m gonna miss this stuff for sure…