Chapter 13: Baliiiiiiiii Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

I’m sitting on my rattan-covered balcony of my room at the Mushroom Beach Bungalows, on Nusa Lembongan, a tiny island off the east coast of Bali. I am the only guest here. (The tourist industry is suffering hugely with Indonesia’s political turmoils, even here in quiet, lush, peaceful, Hindu Bali.) We are perched on a little promenatory at the far end of the sandy beach, and in the restaurant I can eat looking out over the sea. I think the staff here are drugging my food. Last night I slept 10 hours, and I still woke up feeling groggy and comatose. Every morning for breakfast I have fresh squeezed lemonade, pineapple slices, and eggs on toast. For lunch and dinner it’s fish, fish, fish. I have to be careful where I walk, because everywhere around this complex are placed little banana leaf baskets filled with flowers, rice and incense, placed there as offerings to the gods. Every morning, I find one placed at the entrance to my room.

There is a gecko or something monstrous hiding in my shack somewhere. At night he croaks really loudly and very suddenly Uh-Oh, Uh-Oh, Uh-Oh! It wakes me from deep sleep several times each night with a sudden subconcious sense of shame, as though I were a potty-trained toddler child caught peeing in my trousers by my mother. It rains at night, and is really humid, but the days are clear. I have been swimming every day, and the water is green and clear, like old glass. I can see the sandy bottom as I swim out far, far, from shore, but diving down I cannot reach the bottom. It’s so calm I feel like I could swim all the way to Bali, which I can see in the far distance across the straight, its high volcanoes ringed in cloud.

Yesterday I rented a bicycle and cycled around the dirt paths of the island, travelling past mangrove swamps, garbage dumps, lush groves of tropic trees, bamboo and rattan shacks, narrow white beaches, and ornate, colourful, and seemingly abandoned Balinese-style Hindu temples. In the middle of absolutely nowhere, far, far down a road that petered out into a deadend, I came across a little rattan shelter with one plastic table, very clean, and a sign saying Cold Coconut. A young Indonesian lady intercepted and virtually tackled and wrestled my bike to the ground shouting “Hello, hello, come for cold drink.” But she had a big smile and a nice vibe, and I was (a) totally lost (b) totally knackered and (c) totally sweaty, so I did. She served water, coke and coconuts. I had a coconut milk to drink. I asked her if she served anything to eat and she went running away back to her house, and brought back some rice and tuna dumplings. I was somewhat dubious about eating them, as they looked like they had been cooked several nights before, and under God knows what conditions, but they were delicious – spicy with ginger, garlic and chili. And happily, so far, no Bali belly.

She said I was only her second tourist in four days. I didn’t both to explain the logic of location, location, location. She had kept a list of the names and addresses of each tourist who had paused for refreshment at her shack, and called them her “friends”. She lamented that some of those friends had promised to come back, and had not yet done so, and was genuinely hurt by this. She pointed out each person on the list who had promised to come back at some point. It struck me rather forcefully that we in the West throw promises out without a second thought, believing that the recipients will properly distinguish between a sincere promise and something more akin to a social politeness or an expression of a desire. For other, less cynical cultures, it’s not like that. I resolved never to promise anything I didn’t have full intention of fulfilling. As I got on my bike to leave, I told her that I would probably not be coming back, but that I would remember her and Cold Coconut forever.

A sudden clouding over, and cool breeze and a huge rainstorm: everything is dripping…

Aside from tourism, the economic mainstay of Nusa Lembongan is gathering seaweed, which is left out in the sun to dry until it looks like those clear plastic jelly sandals, passed through a paper shredder. It is sold to Hong Kong as a thickening agent for cosmetics, soups, and other stuff. (Hopkins, I think this Borscht needs a touch more Clarins.) The people of Nusa Lembongan get about Rp 2000 per kilo of this stuff which they gather. Folks, that’s about 12p a kilo, for backbreaking labour in the hot sun. Investment banking is starting to look attractive again, at this ancient remove...

One of the things which I like best about Indonesia is that nobody EVER seems to get an English speaking person to proofread their marketing materials. Thus, one is always deliciously surprised by unexpectedly humorous typos. Thus, I discovered today that on Nusa Lembongan, I am staying on the Quit Beautiful Island. I thought, OK, it won’t be easy to leave my beauty behind, but if everyone is doing it… Then I wonder, what if it’s a cult?

Well that’s pretty much it for now. I decided yesterday to chat up this cute blonde boy who is staying at one of the neighboring establishments. I knew he was Canadian from the huge maple leaf he had tattooed on his back. That tattoo, and a number of other similarly ugly ones, also told me that he was straight. Nonetheless, he was very nice and he invited me to join him on his surfing lesson this morning, so that’s where I’m headed now…. I’ll report back later.

Later… Oh My God. So I’m out there on the waves. The boat has just dropped us off. The waves look pretty big to me, but not too intimidating. Yet I’m still feeling pretty nervous, seeing as I have no idea what I’m doing, and everyone else looks pretty au fait. (I can tell; it’s something about the war markings of zinc oxide on their faces) Suddenly our Balinese instructor – I heard his name as Gnome - starts shouting “Go, go, go, go!”. I turn my head to look behind me…and….it is upon me, I’m off my board, tumbling in the surf, not too frightened yet, but then the wave is so strong that it snaps the leash which ties my surfboard to my foot. When I surface, my board is far ahead, shooting away from me on yet another wave, and I’m swimming as fast as I can trying to fetch it, with another large wave about to break over me. Suddenly it’s a different ball game, because I am far, far from shore, and the waves are pretty big when you don’t have anything buoyant to hang on to like a surfboard, and you’re in the breaking zone of the waves. Gnome, who turns out to be a pretty awesome surfer, saves the day by catching a wave and riding it all the way to my errant board, just as I’m ducked under the surface by another huge wave crashing over me. I am grounded. Gnome sends me to sit on a floating pontoon for the rest of Michael’s lesson until the boat comes to pick us up.

I don’t feel so bad though. It’s beautiful sitting here in my detention spot. My pontoon is situated at the edge of a wave break which stretches for miles, from the region called Playground (where we were surfing) out to Shipwreck (where the big boys play). And as the waves crest they catch the sunlight and are transformed into a crystaline green-blue gem, set in a foaming white surf. The bigger waves are folding over on themselves, and I can look straight down the hollow tubes, I’m so perfectly situated. I watch the surfers and decide that it’s a pretty cool sport, and that I’d like to learn how to do it, but I think I need a straight month of being in the water every day. Michael and Gnome eventually arrive back, and Michael reports that he didn’t catch a single wave; they were all too big for him, and he too felt intimidated with all the experienced surfers. I feel totally, absolutely, joyously vindicated in my failure.

Back at base camp, I decide to stay at Mushroom Beach Bungalows just one more day to attend a Hindu purification ceremony which is being held tomorrow in the nearby village. Apparently there was a very auspicious birth of two children recently (I couldn’t understand if they were twins or not) and after a specified period of waiting, the whole village has to undergo a ritual cleansing. Ketut, the guest relations manager of the lovely hotel where Michael is staying, has invited him, Evalina and me to attend. Evalina is an Australian girl that Michael has been travelling with. I think they were doing the dirty together at one point, but things seem to have gone horribly sour between them and now they’re “just friends”, although from my observations of what they say to each other I would not exactly use that word to describe them! Only the fact that they have an travel itinerary seems to keep them together. I ask, “Does the village use Clarins or Kiehl products in its ritual cleansings?” but Kathu doesn’t understand. Nor does Michael. Evalina would have understood, were she paying attention, but instead her entire brain cell is totally occupied in sucking back her 11^th or 12^th cocktail of the day and staring at Michael with a look composed of equal proportions of lust and hate. I have to leave them.

Today, was a miraculous day, filled with blessings from the universe. But first let me tell you about my awesome diving trip this morning. Went on an outrigger boat to Nusa Penida. I am briefed that it’s a drift dive. Water is clear and coral looks very good. I back-roll into the water, and whooooooosssssssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh: I am flying away. Swimming as hard as I can into the current, I don’t move. Thank God the visibility was excellent, because it was kind of frightening, the strength of the current, and I could well have panicked otherwise. For some reason, the current seems to carry me much faster than it does my Balinese dive master, and I keep having to find a spur of rock or dead coral to hang onto until he catches up. The water is crystaline and very warm, and the fish and coral life was fantastic. Saw a stone fish (yes Mum I was careful and I didn’t step on it), two moray eels, some lobster hiding under outcroppings. It’s much better than the Great Barrier Reef, which Michael told me is being killed not by the tourism and diving, but rather by growth in the ozone hole which is letting too much UV light. I achieve perfect neutral buoyancy, and suddenly it’s like I’m flying in an alien world, swooping over strange coral formations, with no effort, no strain. Magic.

The diving was great, but the real deep joy today came from the Hindu ceremony I attended. We were immensely priviledged and lucky; it was one of the most wonderful things I have ever seen. We went first to Ketut’s house, where we were properly attired by his wife in Balinese ceremonial garb. Three pieces of beautiful embroidered silk were wrapped tightly around me to construct my sarong, and I also wore a shirt and a Balinese headband called an udang. Then we set off with Ketut, his wife and his four year old son, Putut. We arrive in the nearby village of Lembongan, which is thronging with all its four and a half thousand inhabitants – all immaculately dressed. We are the ONLY Westerners. There are no others. I can’t believe I’m actually seeing this.

The reason for the cleansing ceremony is quite interesting. There has been a birth of twins – a boy and a girl - an event which makes the whole village dirty by virtue of the fact that there is presumed to be incest inside the womb. This requires the village to undergo a process of ritual cleansing after a set number of days following the birth. Birth of twin boys or twin girls is nothing special, only the family, and not the whole village, must then be cleansed, as with the birth of just one infant. (The need for cleansing upon the birth of twins has something to do with a previous Balinese king having had boy-girl twins, and the ordinary Balinese having to differentiate themselves from the King somehow, but Ketut lost me on exactly how this fits in.) The only people who don’t participate in the ceremony are the families of those who have given birth to a baby AFTER the twins were born and who therefore are uncleanseable until the waiting period is over. A gamelan orchestra sounds, and proceeds down the street. The instruments in the gamelan orchestra are calling the gods to note the ceremony, in which all the symbols of the Hindu gods from all of the temples in the village (and there are many) are carried in careful procession down to the beach, and given a ritual cleansing. Later, I ask Ketut if the family who had the twins attend the ceremony. Apparently not. They are in Germany; a Balinese guy from the village married a German girl, but because he’s still considered part of the village, even though living in Germany, cleansing is required.

Ketut takes us into his family temple, and we observe his family and relations praying and giving offerings to the gods. Then we join the procession for a long walk down to the beach where the icons are cleansed. The ladies sing the whole way down. Some people fall into a mystical trance, in which they shake and yell and dance. They are thought to be communing with the gods, and so are given the masks of the Gods to wear. One comes up in front of me, just as my film runs out (wouldn’t ya know it) and he shakes and he quakes in my face. I’m fearful that he’s going to hit me. And remember, all of this is not for our benefit. Michael, Evalina, and I are the only Westerners there out of 4 and a half thousand people. Ketut tells me that only once every year does the village hold a ceremony this big, and usually it’s for something mundane like New Years Eve, not as spriritually significant. He also tells me that the “whole village ceremonies” of this type have largely been abandoned in the island of Bali proper.

No one seems to mind our presence, save for quaking trance man who is clearly carrying the spirit of one of the more violent of the Hindu Gods, and who wants to hit me. I tell him, “no thanks, no hitting required, thank you, thank you very much. I suffered big time in the year 2000. 2001 is the year when the Gods do not smack me viciously, so please move on, thank you.” He leaves me alone.

All too soon it is all over. I feel so honored and blessed and lucky to have seen this. These Balinese people live their religion intensely, and moreover they seem to enjoy it to. The adults were happy, laughing and chatting, and the children loved it. All the adults treat their children affectionately; you see fathers hugging their infant daughters, strangers patting Ketut’s son on the head or cheek, and the children never seem to cry or misbehave. I didn’t hear one toddler or infant cry during the whole two hour long ceremony. The religion is clearly part of the Balinese’s strong cultural identity, which is an intrinsic part, very clearly, of Balinese people’s personal identities as well. What a wonderful way to live. I feel, in a small way, I’ve gained something spiritual from seeing it.

Chapter 12: Devastation in Sanur, Bali

I’m devastated. I’ve checked the website for Survivor. The application process closed just two weeks ago. I can’t see through my tears of grief and betrayal. I must go and console myself with a pineapple coconut smoothie.

Sniffle.

Chapter 11: “Come back flipper, I luuuuuuuvvvvvvv you"

Brisbane. Overnight. Aussie Way hostel. Grim-eyed youths watching bad television. Fat girls yacking in the room next to me, and then shrieking with laughter like cats fighting. I leave and walk to the center of Brisbane – streets are absolutely deserted - to see The Contender with Joan Allen. Good movie, though a little bit too heavy on the moralizing, but Jeff Bridges is fantastic as a rather devious president of the US of A. On the wall of hostel is a list of Things to Do in Brisbane. Oh God, not another Botanical Garden! Take bus to Hervey Bay early in the morning. Pass exactly by the hotel where I stayed in Noosa. Stunning and depressing realization that my travel routing was so poorly planned that I’ve spent thousands of dollars in airfares that I need not have spent.

Hervey Bay. Abomination. Strip development: realtor, burger shop, minimarket, realtor, tour company, gas station, realtor, minimarket, tour company. I can’t find a juice bar anywhere, and there is no public transport so I have to walk 40 minutes to the gym where my frustration pushes me to new heights of physical endeavour. I develop an acquaintance with my abdominal muscles. Hello, sweeties!

Fraser Island: Makes me realize why I am doing all this. What a miracle! A huge island 100 km long, 25 km wide in the middle, rising almost 300m above the sea – and entirely composed of sand. Seven distinct vegetation areas, including the world’s only rainforest on sand and there are also areas of open eucalypt forest, scrub and meadow, and dune grass areas. There are also a vast number of endemic species of plants which scientists cannot even cultivate anywhere else. The main road on the island is the beach, which is registered as a thoroughfare with the Queensland Department of Highways. The beach is dotted with the decomposing bodies of the dangerous Bluebottle jellyfish. They are a fierce electric blue colour. I think they must come from outer space. It rains and then clears. I don’t care. See a huge 2 meter carpet python in the sand track crossing the island. Tour guide stops our 4WD vehicle and picks it up. Girls scream and refuse to get off the bus. Honestly! Two of the girls are in the Israeli army and yet they also refuse to get off the bus. Later I pick a fight with one of the girls about Israel’s policies in The Palestine. The python immediately wraps itself around our guide’s arm. I have to help peel him it off, and am amazed at the muscular strength in this constrictor’s body. We can’t swim in the ocean due to currents and jellyfish. We can swim however in the myriad freshwater lakes and streams dotting the island. In one lake I swim with turtles. Giant ospreys circle. We camp at a marvelous campsite in the dunes with electricity and hot running water called Cathedral Park Island Resort. Dingos sit outside the campsite waiting for handouts. They look friendly, but apparently have bigger teeth than domesticated dogs. There are no koalas on the island despite appropriate habitat, and the biologists think that the dingos ate them. (Officer, the dingo took my koala AND my baby!). In my life I have only come across a handful of truly sacred places and I feel that this is one of them. I feel so fortunate to have been here. There is a wonderful aboriginal legend about Fraser Island and its creation. An ancient spirit who created the world had a beautiful daughter who helped him with his creations. She so loved the earth that she begged to be allowed to stay forever, and the spirit agreed, turning her into Fraser Island. The myth records that the freshwater lakes dotting the island are her eyes so that she can always look up into the heavens to see her father.

Bus from Hervey Bay to Cairns. 24 hours. Video on bus? My Best Friend’s Wedding. Despite my best attempts to ignore it the volume is on too loud and I can’t. It’s compelling viewing. But it’s still about the 7^th time I’ve seen it. Bus driver tells us (repeatedly) that his pet hate is people who stick their legs into the aisles. Apparently it is a major safety hazard, though I couldn’t quite work out why. You get the tenor of the trip. The less said, the better.

Cairns. Ugh. D’ya wanna buy a digideroo or a T-shirt? If so, Cairns is the place for you. But don’t even think about trying to find a bookshop or a fresh juice bar. I stay in 1824 James Street, a gay hotel recommended by a friend (you know who you are, and you have a lot to answer for!). Unspeakable, dreadful, monstrous. I can’t go down to the poolside for fear of the old letches, who keep knocking on my door. I was typing away on my PC and made the mistake of telling one of them, who stopped by my opened door, that I was writing a story. Later that evening at 3am I was awoken by knocking on my window. A drunk old man wearing just underwear wanted to stop by to “say hi to the writer”. Ugh. But I should have pity. I could be there one day myself! I distract myself one night by going out to Cairns’ one gay club. I should have been warned by its name: Nu-Trix. It sounds too much like a protein shake to be any good. And in fact, it’s awful. Nonetheless, I play team pool for a while anyway, sinking impossibly hard shots with stunning aplomb and panache and fluffing the easy ones. My partner is not amused. For the record, then, Cairns is a dump-o-rama of note.

Port Douglas. My friend Bryan, whom I met in Capetown at Christmas, arrives from New York. Yay! I’m starved for normal company, and he’s super fun to be with and very literary. I whisk him off to cute little Port Douglas where Madonna stayed. Very sweet little town, but we don’t see Madonna anywhere! Beaches are messed up, though, by the King tides which took away about 5 metres of sand roughly a week before we arrived. We stay in Coconut Grove Hotel one night, with lurid purple and yellow paint job. Eat some nice food and catch up. Early in the morning off to Daintree National Park, the untouched Queensland rainforest, where the “rainforest meets the reef”. It is the oldest rainforest in the world and hence the one with the widest variety of plant species. It used to cover most of the upper east coast, but 90% of it has been chopped down to make way for sugar cane. We stay in the Beach House – a magical place of wooden huts set in the rainforest just a short 2 minute walk from the beach. It rains with frequent bursts of shower but it’s warm. The restaurant is a big tented deck with a pool table and 4 internet terminals, right in the middle of the jungle! Food is superb, the best I’ve eaten on my trip. Everything is damp; my clothes are growing mold, and my books and papers are disintegrating. Bryan’s day revolves around eating; an appetizer and two main courses are consumed at every meal. It’s awe inspiring. He scares me. We go sea kayaking. Waters are quite rough. Bryan capsizes, and gets washed up onto a protruding nub of reef. He looks uncomfortable. I, master of the sea kayak (having done two kayaking holidays, ya know) effect a dramatic rescue that will get me a starring spot on one of those television rescue shows. I manouever my kayak slowly into the gap, where Bryan’s kayak has washed, and promptly tip over myself. I have to walk/swim/crawl over a ledge of submerged coral to the beached kayaks, while Bryan is still clinging grimly to his nub of coral, as the swell tries to wash him off. I’m thinking: Yikes! Stonefish, jellyfish, sea urchins, reef, and other nasties apparently inhabit the murky waters near my feet. Barb, from the Beach House restaurant (all pierced tongue, big boobs and wonderful attitude) tells us later that the ferocious man-eating saltwater crocodiles (salties) have been observed swimming some 50 meters out at sea along the reef. Yikes. We are glad to get back into our kayaks.

We go horseback riding through the rainforest and onto the beach. They make us wear helmets. Mine smells REAL bad, making my skin crawl. We take saddles off and then take the horses into the salty frothy water. Very cool! It rains steadily on us, but it doesn’t matter because it’s warm. I take excellent photos of Bryan on his horse. Photos of me on the horse make me look fat. I am fat. The super restaurant at the Beach House has sundered that lovely familiarity that I had struck up with my abs. I fervently pray for a healthy dose of dysentery in Indonesia.

We go hiking through the rainforest to a waterhole where we can swim. There is mud everywhere on the path. It squelches between our toes. I am grossed out, thinking: leeches, bacteria, sharp thorns buried just below the mud’s surface, nematode worms, tropical PARASITES. Bryan marches bravely forward through the mud. I feel like a big sissy with my squirmishness. We get to the water hole. It’s lovely with river perch swimming in the clear water, which is dappled green-yellow with the hot light filtered through the rainforest canopy. Giant electric blue Ulysses butterflies are everywhere. Bryan is dubious about swimming, fearful of crocodiles. My chance to be macho here, making up for the mud: I tell him, this is Australia, not America. We live on the edge. But basically, it’s just cause I simply have to get the mud off me.

We go tropical fruit tasting at a local orchard, and decide to get there by a long walk along Cape Tribulation beach. It’s a peach of a day: sunny, high clouds, no one on the beach. We lie in the sun on the wet sand, and Bryan teaches me a new lunge exercise for firming the glutes. I’m in pain for the following two days, but I stoically don’t say anything. Then we walk through the mangrove swamp where we do Tarzan impersonations on a vine. At the orchard, we eat durian, purple mangosteen, two kinds of rambutan, mamey sapote, grapefruit, Australian wild plum, aboui (or something like that) and others. The durian has creamy white flesh and smells like vomit, though it tastes somewhat like a fragrant custard. Amos, our guide, tells us that the durian is very high in protein, but Bryan is obsessing because he’s certain it’s fat. Amos tells us the purple mangosteen is their most expensive fruit retailing for $6 per fruit in Sydney. It’s my favorite. We like them. Very much. Their taste reminds me of when Ruth and I went to Indonesia and we would buy bags of them to scorf. Amos roots around on the ground to find us a second fallen purple mangosteen to taste. Too late. We’re busy behind the trees with a huge stick knocking whole laden branches down. I don’t think Amos knew what to say. The aboui glues my lips together, with a sticky kind of juice. I can’t breathe. I die.

Just kidding.

We go out on a nite walk through the rainforest jungle. Yakety yakety yakety English girls just won’t shut up. Bryan getting very peeved. Me too, because the rainforest is full of otherwise interesting sound, which we can hear in the small gaps when the English girls are drawing breath for their next round of screetching. (Celsey, Linda, Nancy – if you are reading this I want you to know, you so do NOT belong in this dreadful category!) We see: a sleeping bird, two crickets, a lizard (which the guide spotted and tried to rev us up into a fervour of excitement by announcing that he’d “found something really, really good”, a giant cockroach (a good spot by Bryan whose well developed New York survival instincts were clearly at work here), two and a half snails and half a slug. In case you are wondering, the arithmetic in this last animal counting is courtesy of the Daintree Rainforest which is home to the missing evolutionary link between snails and slugs: the Heli-something-or-other semi-slug, whose body is beginning to consume its shell. This little critter left copious amounts of brilliant orange slime on our guide’s hands. We do not see the tree dwelling kangaroo or the cassowary. I’m, well, not upset but lets just say disappointed. After Africa, the fauna was simply not quite mega enough for me. Still, our guide was very interesting, a real biologist and not just some jumped up high-school sports jock who takes up tour guiding because it’s the only option which doesn’t involve manual labour. He told us some really interesting facts such as the reason why so many plants are poisonous to eat in Australia. It is because the continent evolved in isolation and specifically had no primates which were a key medium for seed dispersal of many plants on nearly all other continents. So, in Australia, plants and trees did not co-evolve to be palatable to and edible by primates. Bird and reptile biologies are just very different from primates. The guide also points out to us luminescent fungus, and explains that the winking fireflies all around us are able to fire up from eating the fungus, which in fact houses the source of the luminescence: bacteria which break down phosphates in a particular way, emitting light.

Back in Port Douglas we go diving. The water is very rough – a strong wind warning the night before - and most people on our fast catamaran out to the reef are sick, and badly so. One Japanese lady looks near death, she’s so green. She’s completely prostrate on open-air deck right at the bow of the boat. The boat is slamming up and down in the huge waves – causing her to bounce - and massive sprays of salt water are washing over her every time a wave leeps above the prow of the boat. She’s drenched. I’m afraid she’s going to wash over the edge if she bounces just a little further to the left next time….. (Two ladies from the boat crew are trying to help her in case your wondering whether I haven’t gone just a little overboard with my journalistic observation and impartial noninvolvement kind of thing.) Thank goodness Bryan and I had motion sickness tablets first. We arrive at the reef, and quickly break into diving groups. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the Japanese lady. She’s up, and busy, quickly putting on her snorkling gear. She’s determined she’s going to “do the reef”. I’m impressed. 15 minutes ago she was near death, and now she’s got flippers and a mask on, and she’s elbowing her countrymen out of the way to get to the front of the boat. I go up and congratulate her on her recovery, and wish her good snorkling. She doesn’t understand me, but catches my general drift of good wishes, and smiles. Sadly, the diving is so-so, the reef pretty degraded and colourless due to the leaden gray skies and the effect of the wind which has stirred up particles from the floor and clouded the water. I feel sorry for Bryan (and if you’re reading this, my friend, pay attention now) because it can be sooooo much better than this (see my comments on the Reeftel below). I hope that Bryan tries again, another time. Once back in Port Douglas we climb the bluff down at the beach front. The wind is fierce, but it has cleared the low-hanging clouds and we can see mountains of the coast receding off into the distance, layered and rolling into an ever lighter blue grey shade, until they simply merge with the sea and the sky. Bryan leaves. Boo hoo. He was great fun to travel with.

Stay in Cairns overnight, go to the gym. Pump, pump, pump. Darn, I’m still fat.

Go out on a two day dive trip, staying overnight in the Reeftel, an anchored floating hotel (OK, well basically a dive boat) anchored on Moore’s reef. Ears are playing up, but I get five great dives in anyway, though I can’t go very deep. Fantastic coral, and I see turtles, sharks, squid, huge red snapper, and wonderful tropic fish. Wish Bryan could have come on these dives! I go on a night dive (verrreeeeee cooooool!) and see the turtles sleeping in their caves at the sandy bottom of the reef formation. I also see huge red snapper who keep darting over my shoulder into path where they chow down on the small fish gathered in the cone of my flashlight. This is the closest one can ever get I think to flying in an alien world, and it’s a very cool thing.

Later, in the Reeftel saloon, I hear a Canadian taking one of the dive courses going on and on and on to his course mates about how Canada is different from the US and how special Canada is, what Canada’s main exports are and blah, blah, blah, blah. He reminds me of me, 15 years ago, and it’s frankly uncomfortable to watch. I wish he’d shut up. One day he’ll realize like I did that nobody in the world gives a toss about Canada except Canadians themselves. Everyone at his table looks either embarassed or bored. I am assigned the top bunk in a little box cabin which seems sort of glued on to the upper sun deck of hotel/boat. So basically, I am at the very utmost top of the boat, 3 decks and a bunkbed above the water. And the seas are still rough. So as a wave rocks the hull a bit, I’m a-swinging back and forth big time, like metronome (a soft of reverse pendulum used to keep the beat in piano lessons.) I bounce physically off the edges of my bunk bed and mentally between nauseous awakeness and nauseous sleep. Still, there’s a hottie in the bunk below me, and I think of him to take my mind off my stomach.

Get up at 4am to fly to Brisbane, meet my friend Duncan from Sydney and drive onwards to Byron Bay, an alternative, hippy, yoga, marijuana, fruit bar, rasta, organic kind of place which is really a heavenly place to visit. We are blessed with perfect weather. We go to the beach, and eat, eat, eat. For example, for breakfast I have ricotta hotcakes with blueberry sauce and honeycomb butter, or a wholewheat crepe with organic feta, organic roasted vegetables, and organic pesto (yeah, everything’s organic). When I’m not ordering a fresh squeezed juice (of, say, an apple, pineapple, beetroot and ginger mix) I scorf blueberry smoothies because Bryan told me blueberries are full of anti-oxidants, and I’m hoping they’ll do something dramatic for the oxidants which are so clearly going to work in the corners of my eyes. I don’t make it to the gym in Byron Bay despite the fact that it’s right beside our hotel. Coming back to the hotel, I have to pass the gym every time after gorging myself and thus am regularly shamed. Something’s is definitely working with this organic food, because everyone in Bryon Bay is so friendly.

Duncan makes me watch Survivor. I’m hooked. It’s compulsive viewing. Colby’s too smug; they cannot allow him to
win. Though he is cute. I’m rooting for Tina. She’s a nurse, tough as old shoe leather. I simply have to be a contestant on this show! How do I apply?

Duncan and I go sea kayaking in a little group. They want us to wear helmets but I refuse, since it’s totally pointless. I mean, like I’m going to bump my head on the water surface or something? Dolphins circle our kayaks and swim right under us. I desire a spiritual communion with them, but they must have sensed my lapse when I ate Skippy the Kangaroo in Alice Springs, because they don’t stay around for long. I forlornly call out to their retreating fins: “Come back Flipper, I need you” but they take no heed. In a calm spot of the bay we all slide out of our kayaks for a cooling swim. A girl (fat, English, natch) can’t get back in her kayak. Eventually I slip out of mine, and have to deep dive below the surface and then powerfully kick up to the surface while pressing both hands on her enormous bum. We tip her kayak over three times doing this. We are all laughing so much, we’re nearly breathless. Eventually we get her in. Big waves means surfing with the kayaks. Great fun, and don’t need as much skill as a surfboard. Duncan and I flip our kayak twice. We go out to Kings Beach, a quiet little cove, for suntanning. Everyone skinny dips while body surfing in the enormous surf. The water is a crystal clear green like old glass and the sand is so white and soft that it squeaks when one walks on it. The green and the blue and the rushing hiss of the waves reminds me so much of Clifton Beach in Capetown. I love Byron Bay. I could live here, very, very happily.

Well folks, that’s all for now. I’m right now on the plane to Bali, where I’ve decided to bike around the island. I’ll write more when I can get to the next e-mail facility. I don’t know when that will be.

Chapter 10: Is this an omen?

I am in Broome, on the North West coast of Australia. The region is known as the Kimberly, which raises an interesting question: Why do so many ex-British colonies have regions called the Kimberly? Two others: South Africa and Canada. Anyway, Broome is incredibly remote: an outpost of youthful hipness, caught between desert and sea, and fed by a constant stream of backpackers. There is: a home-made ice-cream parlour; two – yes, two not one - tattoo and body piercing parlours, Yuen Wing’s general store, a hospital with four doctors working in it; several internet cafes with the latest equipment; a shell shop; a gym (which closes for lunch between 11am and 2pm); a historical museum, more fantastic restaurants than all of Johannesburg; a Japanese cemetery for pearl divers; a shop called McKinneys which purports to sell clothing but which rather deters prospective clients by siting, on the pavement outside the entrance to the shop, a battered one-armed female manikin modelling an extremely ugly brown shift; more shops selling expensive pearl jewellery than I can count; a post office; several very trendy hair salons; a bead shop; one big supermarket; and, most interestingly, Bob’s Shoes – No Frills. There is something appealing about Broome. A lot of the traditional architecture has been preserved, so the town is composed principally of low-slung bungalows with peaked tin roofs which extend beyond the walls to create broad and deep veranda’s running square around each building. The sun bakes the street, but there is shade everywhere.

Some 11,000 people live here, capitalising off Broome’s history as a pearl cultivation center and its current situation as the only decent watering hole on the long, hot, barren stretch from Exmouth (where the whale sharks swim) to Darwin. The first submarine cable linking Australia to the outside world was laid from here, hence the name Cable Beach for the gorgeous stretch of sand and water right outside my backpacking hostel. The weather right now in March is unseasonably hot and dry – the locals keep asking where “The Wet” has gone. I’m not complaining; the weather has kept the deadly Box Jellyfish, also known vividly as the Sea Wasp, away from these shores, so we can swim. But it is hot. To sleep at night I have to first cool the room with airconditioner – its only temperature setting could freeze a side of beef in 20 minutes so I can’t leave it on the whole night - and then put on the overhead fan to gently sweep my body. Lying in my dark room at night, I feel like a coral in the sea, fanned by the soft currents.

The night is special here; the air is soft and balmy. Outside my room I can hear frogs. They are bright green with huge spatulate sticky fingers, which they use to climb into the toilet bowls and showers where they frighten the English backpacking girls no end! I love it. At night the cooled earth breathes, and everything starts to smell edible and delicious. Riding my bike back from the gym I pass many frangipani trees, with their dark glossy green leaves and lustrous waxy cream-coloured flowers and a heady perfume. Later on a stretch of quite barren road, with only scrub on either side, I suddenly smell honey, and then later again an earthy toffee scent. Bugs are everywhere at night, but funnily they don’t bother me. I just narrow my eyes and shut my mouth tightly. Their carapaces clatter off my bike helmet. Things rustle in the bushes; nocturnal marsupials, I hope. Above my head I can see the Southern Cross and Orion’s Belt and the Seven Sisters or Pleiades. I am remembering weekends with my friends in South Africa at Mountain Sanctuary Park in the Magaliesburg, watching the stars.

The other night, for a treat, just before sunset, I went flying in a trike. What is a trike? Well, basically it’s just a winged motorised eggbeater: a tiny bucket suspended from paraglider wings with a scrawny propeller attached. My pilot is a peripatetic Englishman named Charles. He is totally barking mad. He is building a flush toilet in the middle of an open field beside his house because he thinks it will be “nice”. He confesses that he hopes this will be the attachment he needs to drive the wanderlust out of his soul. I think he has rats living in his hair, which stands straight up. Still, the flight was glorious. We flew over the Broome peninsula, the port, the boats in the bay and then 11 knots northward up Cable Beach until we reached a controversial detention center for illegal Indonesian fisherman and immigrants. Turning back, I could see manta rays, dolphins and turtles swimming in the water, which was the colour of Chinese jade. I could hear the shouts of the people playing in the waves as we flew over them. I’m totally hooked. An ex-girlfriend of Charles, got her solo pilot license for one of these microlights after just 8 hours of instruction, so I’m highly, highly tempted.

This morning I went walking on Cable Beach; the golden sand stretched to the far horizon in both directions, gently curving out to sea. The sand was too hot, so I walked at the intersect of land and water, just where the waves licked the lips of the beach. The wet sand was soft and cool between my toes. I soon found a lucent white shell, with swirls of caramel in its perfect curves. The shell had a satiny texture. It was so perfect that I wanted to eat it. Other shells soon joined my collection. Glossy and delicately patterned poisonous cone shells, purple cowries, scallops the colour of sunsets, squat tepee-like shells with threads of pink along running up to the tips, thin brown spirals like jousts, tiny alabaster fluted conches, razor clams whose edges really could cut a filet steak, clam shells the colour of the rainbow. They were all different, all beautiful, all perfect.

I collected these shells, remembering happy times with my mother when I was very young at the Blue Coral Sands hotel in Hawaii when I was about 7 or 8 years old. Every day we would get up very early, at first light, and step outside before the others woke to comb the beach for treasure left overnight. One day I found a huge Golden Cowry, perfect, which for many years was my most treasured possession, because I had found it; it was not bought, or harvested live, or found by someone else. I, Peter Michael Worthington, aged 7 (or 8) had found a Golden Cowry, one of the rarest cowry shells in the Hawaiian waters! So, I will send these shells which I have found and collected on Cable Beach, bubble wrapped, in the parcel post from Broome across the Indian Ocean to Johannesburg, where my little friend, 5-year old Melanie Moagi, lives. I will tell her to put them in water so that she too can see nature’s infinite beauty and play. I will also tell her to lift the seashells to her ear, to hear the voice of God whispering songs of mystery to anyone who cares to listen.

From one mystery of God to another: Lunching today at the Town Beach Café, eating the most delicious Thai Chicken Salad which man could ever conceive and drinking an apple, carrot and ginger juice, something astonishing happened. I was munching the salad, staring at the beach, dripping with sweat, and contemplating my future. Suddenly, I heard a rustle in the palm tree shading my table, and – BAM! – something slammed out of the tree onto my table, upsetting my cutlery, and then rolled quickly onto the pavement. It was an astonishingly beautiful lizard - its back was patterned with concentric circles of rust, gold and black – and its mouth was clamped fiercely around the neck of another lizard about half its size. The beauty, which I think is called a sand monitor, thrashed this smaller lizard from side to side like a terrier would deal with a rat, all the while keeping a beady eye on me lest I should lose interest in my Thai Chicken Salad and take a fancy to his meal of delicious gecko instead. Still, in brazen full view of me, he manoeuvred the smaller lizard around and then proceeded to slowly gulp it down head first, even as the smaller lizard continued to thrash and struggle. I could see the movement in the monitor’s throat and sides where the small lizard continued to fight even after he was fully ingested! I ask you: Is this an omen? Opinions welcome!