Sometimes I am so freakin lucky!

On Friday (the 13th, full moon!), the lady that checked me in is now installed in my pantheon of gods. Josephine, the far too capable an individual to work at a reception of a hotel but a lady that would be equally overqualified for any job except maybe that of Princess Leah or the President of the Intergalactic federation of some other kind. Josie checked me into Hotel Gizo at 10 am on Friday 5 minutes after I stepped off the crowded boat from Noro. She swapped my room from a boring pool view to a view of all the cool Friday happenings: the market, the shuttle boat dock, the large-boat dock, the betel nut hustlers’ corner, the fishermen bringing out the latest loot, everything that you stay in a malaria- and dengue-infested town to see. Upon learning that I wanted to dive with Dive Gizo (I thought that was the only dive game in town), she suggested that I go spend time at a Sanbis resort on a nearby island coz: good snorkeling and they got a nice dive shop that is rarely used. This Eastern European skeptic had to walk over to Dive Gizo, located in a very industrial part of town, chat with the staff there, learn that they already have 13 divers for Saturday so far (there will likely be a couple more) and that there may or may not be 2 boats as well as that they would not be diving the famous giant Japanese shipwreck tomorrow or Sunday… Back to Josie I went, paid 10 Solomon $ for her phone to get topped off and had her call Sanbis. BTW, when I was trying to google what sounded to me like Sun Beach or Sand Beach the only results I was getting were in Thailand, Belize and Malta. Sanbis is the Pijin spelling for Sand Beach and it sounds like Sun or Sand Beach depending on your ears. Mine are deaf from diving and years of leaning on loud monitors. Oof sorry for another Homeric digression. Let’s get back to our scintillating story.

So Josie calls Hans the owner of Sanbis, passes the phone to me and he goes, “just come over! Our boat should be right there about to dock…” I go out on the dock and meet AJ, Hans’ right-hand man. If Josie was to be the Interplenatary Overloard, AJ would be her chancellor Bismark. Or Councelor Machiavelli. The smoothest talking, best connected, most quick-witted plan-laying glad hander you will ever meet! This dude would broker a piece deal between any warring faction. Hell, he’d have them hugging.

AJ and I stand there at the bustle of the shuttle-boat parking, shooting breeze over a couple of super juicy young coconuts which miraculously materialized in our hands, and he arranges my diving the next day, my transport, and a slew of other logistics. And next day, good 5 minutes before the arranged time, he marches into Hotel Gizo, offers me breakfast, loads me onto a boat, gives me a tour of Gizo as we make many stops to pick up resort staff, and we cross over to a few little burrs and some elaborate maze of wooden boardwalks connecting them: Sanbis. A major Aussie leygend, a surfer/diver/world-commentator Dennis, DM fresh out from the Northern Territory, welcomes us swaying in a hammock chair with a built-in beer cozy. We get the gear set up, I take a swim while the lunch is cooking and off diving we go. Just the 2 of us, to the famous Japanese wreck. Sunk during the WW2, the giant boat carrying tanks, massive ammunition and innumerable bottles of sake sank just off of a little island in front of Gizo, bottles and tanks intact. Even a cooking pot or two sit there ready for DM’s to do a demonstration for a go pro. Fascinating what nature does with a 75-year old wreck. While swimming on the port side which is now the top side and a lovely reef, we spotted a jack and an octopus hunting together. Jack split but the octo put on a major show: he was turning into a turtle, he was tiptoeing the corals, he hug a coral head and made it disappear, he changed color and texture a few times, then got tired of performing and crawled under a coral. Holy distributed brain system, that was cool!

The second dive started in some boring sand but once the garden eels popped into view, I was sold on it. I can sit and watch garden eels for hours. We swam on and got a really close encounter with a fearless humphead wrasse, huge and I mean mega massive schools of spawning blue-yellow fish that I am ashamed not to know what they are (my DM didn’t either), every kind of angel fish, damsels, parrots, fusels, anemone… the works. A super sweet spotted stingray gave us a little performance. A couple of interesting dart fish were intriguing me (note: look that up!!!!). I managed to find some sweet nudie (my bifocal mask may be leaking – the glass is too heavy for the lower thin plastic strip – but the magnifier on the bottom lets me see tiny creters; another day, I even managed to kinda see a pigmy seahorse on a gorgonia, so…)  

Our 74minute dive ended in blissful happiness. So glad this Aussie is up for long dives and enthusiastic about everything. 

The surface interval between dives we spent in the shallows of a mangrove forest, enjoying the well compacted white sand under our feet, eating rice and fresh fish, talking world politics and watching a penga of the Googlers mega yacht DragonFly bring divers to the wreck we had just left. I don’t know which Googlers but the all-knowing Aussie said that it was the “google owners boat”. Founders? Larry Page? Sergey Brin? Other? Who cares.

Did I talk about how much I adore terns? Well I do. Not only because they are the baddest-ass migraters on the planet (that I know) but also because they are always in the most remote places that I visit as well as in the SF Bay in May. I have watched terns’ incredible fishing skills in the Caribbean, all over the South Pacific, in the west of Tasmania, in the South of Chile, on Easter island, you name it.

I interrupt this program to say, I see dolphins swimming close to Dragon Fly boat in the distance!!!!

OK, I’m back and the dolphins are finally gone. A big pod of apparently bottlenose (they look like spinners to me) are swimming through here regularly. Come to think of it, I saw them from the boat coming here from Noro. And yea, Dragon Fly is parked 200 meters from my bure. We agree that this is the best view, I guess.

So back to terns. In Munda, I saw many white terns and here, almost all sooty terns, the kind I see on Fakarava and in the North of the Great Barrier Reef.

They seem a little more chill than the white variety. Perhaps they migrate less? (need to look this up if I ever get internet again.

So now back to getting back from the dive yesterday. We were greeted by an avid CNN watching Swiss guy with a heavy Aussie accent and attitude, a sarcastic view of the world, dislike for Trump and Boris Johnson (the former is in the process of being impeached and the latter was just reelected in a landslide victory). The owner of the resort for over 15 years, Hans possesses an obvious penchant for pretty local girls (he employs 4 young beauties) as well as the love of the ocean and marine life. He had lived in Australia for the previous 10 and has had a series of successful enterprises. Intelligent and opinionated, but kind. He offered me a bure in his resort for free; I just need to pay for meals and diving. Thank you very much, Hans!!!! The resort is clean and well organized. They actually have real coffee (first time I had someone else’s real coffee since the beginning of my trip. All the places I stayed in Fiji, the Solomons and Tuvalu could only offer instant.

The burrs are over the water, hugged by tall trees. This morning one of those trees had a hawk alight on it with a freshly caught shell of sorts. Another was a host to a white-headed osprey. Parrots and doves flutter about. And importantly, less bugs biting. And those that do, I am sincerely hoping, won’t give me dengue.

So I got here from the dive, met Hans, made a deal with him, hopped back over to Hotel Gizo, packed my suitcase in 5 or less minutes, checked out (the mighty Intergalactic President let me only pay for one night, not two or three) even though I had checked out at 5 p. and had reserved the place for 3 nights. I love you, Josie!

Back in Hansland, I watched as AJ negotiated a fair deal for 2 young boys in a tiny wooden canoe who dove out 2 lovely lobsters. AJ snuck them a can of Cheers from Hans’ fridge. The boys counted their pay, sipped the sugary orange beverage and paddled off grinning. And the lobster or, as they call it here: crayfish, became my dinner. With garlic and butter. I never eat lobsters (as I prefer looking at them under water) but the kitchen supplies are limited, the boys were paid, and I want Hans to make good money on feeding me. 

That crayfish was one of the best meals I had in a very long time, lemme tell ya! Damn I hate that lobsters (or as they call them here crayfish) are so freakin tasty.

I spent the night under a rapid rusty ceiling fan that threaten to decapitate you with ferocity should it come further unhinged.

Solomon nights are hot and humid and it is hard to stay inside a mosquito net so you keep the door closed but open all the shutters on the windows coz yay nets on windows! Sounds of the ocean, cicadas, night birds and the decapitator fan lulled me out at 8:30pm. Then bird calls woke me at sunrise. I am so happy! 

Now the coffee and the bananas. Then a long swim with much free diving at Hans’ house reef which features a nice 10-year old wreck, a good number of giant clams (some of which Hans planted there), a few families of clownfish on various clusters of blue-tipped golden anemone, 3 beautiful striped pipefish (some of my absolute favorite sea creatures; google it then look at the tail and the beak, please!).

I’ve been free-diving since our family trips to Hvar when I was 8 and 9. And I could go on doing it for hours. Fear of burning my butt again (see the entry on my snorkeling in Tuvalu in just a bikini which made me redder than any crayfish), I did the last bit of my snorkel/freedive in the shade under the bar bure where there were more snappers and redfish than water – all enjoying the shelter of the pylons. That’s when Dennis got me out of the water and onto the dive boat. Our captain Sonnay, Aussie leygend Dennis and yours truly dashed by the dolphins and a few islands over to our first dive site: Secret Spot. Garden eels on a sandy patch then some 14 or so eagle rays in groups of 2, 3, 4 or 5 flying over the beautiful coral, soft and hard. A baramundy cod the like of which I have not seen since the Great Barrier Reef, 4 white-tip reefs lounging at the bottom, loads of fun schools of fish toe play with, a couple of humphead wrasses (a macdaddy and a sidekick)… LOVE! We got out after 55 minutes with about 1,000 psi to go dive a wreck of a plane on the same tanks. BAck in the water after a 10-minute boat ride, we were examining an American hellcat downed by friendly fire. My Aussie guide knew nothing more of the craft but a giant green moray made the cockpit a comfy home and some opinionated clown fish plopped themselves onto a copious anemone on the left wing. So I really didn’t need more info… the wreck was well preserved if a tad eery… In general, wrecks don’t thrill me beyond the fascination with the change that nature imposes on them…

Our surface interval was spent on a little coral island covered in trees, easy to walk around only if you only step on the leaves. The coral rocks are pakokota, as the Polynesians like to say: they hurt your feet!

I chatted with Dennis about wombats, koalas, platypuses and Tassie devils. I learned that koalas are becoming endangered because they got clamedia! Whaaaa??? Apparently the little bears keep getting stoned on eucalyptus and all they do, other than sleep 23 hours, is have loads of sex thus spreading clamedia which renders them infertile. Horny bears whose horniness is their detriment… At least they will die off happy. 

The Aussie imparted another fascinating fact: most of the dive tables are based on a turn of the 20th century experiments conducted with goats. Apparently the goats would be put in chambers which would be submerged to various depths for varying amounts of time and the results would be recorded. In short, we know about decompression from a scientist who massacred goats!

Is this true? Someone please check for me!

Our second dive was at a pigmy manta cleaning station. We boated through a torrential rain which stopped as we arrived at our dive site. Viz was crap and mantas were a no-show. Garden eels, 1 eagle ray and 1 baramundi cod on the site nowhere nearly as lovely as the earlier one. OK, the lack of bright sunshine was likely a factor too. There were def some lovely coral-head formations tho.

I was just informed that my dinner will consist of a mackerel caught this morning. My guilt is growing… I apologize to all the fish! And to the mom of the said mackerel. Profusely!