Middle of Nowhere

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I just spent a month in, quite literally, the middle of nowhere. You know you've spent too much time in a remote region like Papua once you start to look at any inanimate object as 'currency'. Any time that there is something that I am about to throw out, that I do not need, but that could still be used by someone else for something else, I stop and think about what I could trade it for. Not that I need anything really, but it's just fun to trade for things instead of using money. I haven't used an ATM, or even seen one for that matter, in well over a month now.

You know you've been in the middle of nowhere for too long when you consider seeing a couple of dugout canoes as being in 'traffic'.

The coastline seems so remote, where you can go for miles and miles and not see one single structure of any kind, but if you hang out near shore long enough, you'll begin to see people slowly appearing out of the jungle, out of nowhere.

In the remote areas of Papua, the locals are fishing purely for subsistence. They often like to come up to the boat at night to fish off the stern of our boat, because the underwater lights attract a lot of fish. There are 'commercial' fishermen that area traveling all the way from Sulawesi to fish the waters of Cenderawasih Bay, but most of the locals are hand-lining all of their fish, and it is really impressive to see the size of some of fish that they've pulled up by hand--I'm talking 50-60lb+ yellow fin tuna, caught on a hand line and pulled into an outrigger canoe. I even saw a couple of guys who had pulled in, by hand, what looked like a 6-8ft reef shark. They tried to sell it to us. Weren't really interested.

Indonesia is a nation made up of 17,000 islands, and even though I feel like I've seen so many islands that I can't even remember which ones are which, I've hardly seen even a fraction of them. The deserted tropical islands looked like they could be out of a postcard, but I can assure you, that, in person, there is quite a raw side that is missed in photographs. The islands are natural to the extreme, where you will find all sorts of insects, lizards, birds, bats, and other sorts of rodents......not exactly a Corona commercial. At one of these islands in particular, right at sunset, as if on cue, the sky above it completely filled up with bats, just as if the Batman 'Bat Signal' was in the air. I mean hundreds upon hundreds of bats. Big bats, that looked like eagles in the night. It was wild.

The region is full of history, and there are still many reminders of it's past, from the effects of World War II and the settlement of missionaries, to the cannibalism that only stopped a relatively short time ago. There are several dives in the area of wrecks from WWII, but one can only imagine how many others there might be in this relatively unexplored bay.

I had one of my best dives ever was just off of a former U.S. Navy fueling station called Mios Wundi. There is a seamount near the island that comes up to within 40 feet of the surface, and drops off drastically to over 1000 feet, but is facing a strong South Pacific current that is full of life. The next closest landmass to the north is Japan. The current is very strong, and you really had to hold on to anything you can grab onto to witness the show. There were sharks, rays, big mackerel, big yellowfin tuna, big groupers, barracuda, large schools of batfish and unicorn surgeon fish, etc. etc.

We were able to have a traditional Thanksgiving meal with turkey and all. We had the only two turkeys within 2000 miles............the Indonesians thought that they were just reallllllllllllly big chickens.

Wild and amazing is what this place has been, but I really can't wait to get to civilization.......a westernized civilization.

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Photos

Greetings
Villagers from a really remote fishing camp that we anchored near.

Ripping Current
You can see by the angle of our bubbles how strong the current was.

Desperate times call for desperate measures
From what I gathered, the locals in this remote fishing outpost would let coconut juice ferment for a few days in order to make their own alcohol. I tried it.....you could definitely get drunk off it...if you had to.

Shark Meat
Smoked shark anyone? At least they didn't just cut the fins off to sell to the Chinese, but rather are actually utilizing all of what they took out of the ocean.

Jetski Rides
We anchored off of an old dock on Mios Wundi and launched the jetskis to run them and make sure they worked. A large crowd from the village gathered on the dock, and we began taking them for rides.

Good timing
We made a run for this remote atoll in hopes of some epic diving for the guests, but had to turn around as the weather deteriorated....and, in the process, we crossed the equator twice.

Warm dead fish anyone?
Rigor mortis had fully set in---you coulda hammered in nails with those fish.