Marquesa & Christmas Islands: 6 - Kiritimati, Kiribati

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Due to a slight miscalculation on my part we showed up at the airport at 7:30 AM for our noon flight to Kiritimati. The kind lady supervisor for Air Pacific invited us to put our luggage in her office until check in opened at 9:30 AM.

The Air Pacific staff both on the ground and in the air were first class. The plane was not a third full, as this flight takes longer to reach Fiji due to the stop over in Kiritimati. The flight is subsidized by the Kiribati government who do not have a plane with sufficient range to travel the 2,015 miles (4.345 km) each way from the capital, Tarawa. The flight was comfortable, the service excellent and in less than 3 hours we were on the coral atoll with the largest land mass in the world - 642 sq. km (248 sq. mi.). This is over 70% of the land mass of Kiribati, a country with millions of square miles of ocean and little land.

Only 9 of us deplaned on the island, a couple with a work permit and 5 fishermen. This is supposed to be as good as it gets for bone fishing. A couple of the fishermen had been here before, so instructed the driver of the truck we were in to stop at a local store where we loaded up on Australian beer, other less important drinks and some snacks. After passing beer around we quickly became aquainted with the rest of the group.

Our arrival at the Captain Cook Hotel was very casual - no one was worried about money for deposits and rooms were quickly assigned. We were shown to a bungalow on the edge of the ocean with a fan, air conditioning, bathroom with shower and a good sized room. A second bed was brought in at our request, as the double bed that was here would not have been comfortable with my length and Marilynn as well. The staff seem happy to go out of there way to meet guest requests.

The only other guest at the hotel is working on contract for Britain to clean up cold war material abandoned when their bases were closed. What was to be a 9 month contract has so far become three years, and some 10,000 tons of scrap have been shipped out. They pay for him to return to the US every three months for a rest period.

Raw fish with wasabe mustard was the snack at happy hour, and a delicious buffet supper was served featuring octapus, squid, lobster, tuna and a couple of other types of fish. After dinner a group of 14 islanders entertained us with songs to the accompaniment of ukuleles and guitars.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008 (Thurs, Apr 24 in Kiribati)

I am using the date as it would be in North America and Hawaii. Kiribati is in the same time zone as Hawaii, but one day later. The international date line has a jog in it so the entire country of Kiribati can have the same date, which makes it the first place in the world to experience the New Year.

Our rental car, a Toyota RAV4, arrived today as promised, and we got a bit of a tour as we drove the woman who delivered it back to London Town. We had a look at the Kiribati Divers hostel, and were glad we had not stayed there. It was clean, but very basic. A lunch had been packed for us, so after buying more water and diet pop we ate it on the hotel beach.

Back at the Captain Cook Hotel, a government owned facility with more employees than guests, Marilynn went wading inside the reef while I had a seista. None of the beaches we have seen so far are suitable for swimming due to rocks, coral and large waves on a reef close to shore.

We had been told of potential swimming places at Boating Lagoon and Swimming Lagoon, so we headed off in the car to find them. Both were deserted, but the remnants of a whart and a building foundation were at Boating Lagoon, where the military had a small marina, and signs of a building were at Swimming Lagoon, which was definitely the best option for swimming. A swim in the warm, deep water was followed by a cold beer.

Kiritimati, only 1 ½ degrees north of the equator, was found by Captain Cook in 1777. Over 800,000 coconut palm trees were planted for copra when it was leased by a French priest from 1917 to 1936. According to the 2005 census the population was 5,115 living in four towns - London, the port town, with 1,829; Tabwakea between London and our hotel with 1881, Banana near the airport with 1,170 and Poland around the lagoon from the rest with 235 people.

The island was the launching site for Britain's first H bomb test in 1957, and arial blasts by the US were Yeso- June 10, 1962 (3,000 KT), Otowi- June 22, 1962 (81.5 KT), Bighorn- June 27, 1962 (7,650 KT), Bluestone- June 30, 1962 (1,270 KT) & Pamlico- July 11, 1962 (3.880 KT). A Japanese satellite tracking station is on the island not far from out hotel - there is only a caretaker unless the station is activated, in which case Japanese technicians are flown in and then returned to Japan afterwards. Other than some football field sized salt pans, copra and fishing there is little other non-governmental employment.

A couple of new guests were at our table for dinner tonight, pilots on a Cessna 410 that had been chartered by Nature Conservancy in Hawaii to rescue 12 sponsors of the organization stranded on Palmyra Island. They had been flown in on a Gulfstream 1 turboprop, which lost an engine when it arrived back in Hawaii. The engine was shot, and they could find neither a replacement nor a large enough plane to charter, so the 410 was sent as an interim measure. It took the twin prop plane 8 ½ hours to get to Kiritimati from Honolulu, a flight which took the 737-800 we were in 2 hr 50 min.

The plan is that each pilot will do a run tomorrow, bringing 6 guests per trip - one in the morning and one in the afternoon, flying 1 hr 20 minutes each way. A third run the following day would recover the luggage. By then Nature Conservancy is to have a larger aircraft to fly their guests back to Hawaii from Kiritimati.

Thursday, April 24, 2008 (Fri, Apr 25 in Kiribati)

This morning we had breakfast with the pilot heading for Palmyra, then went exploring in the rental car. The idea was to drive around the island, but somewhere in the unpopulated south we got lost in a large coconut plantation and ended up on a road that connected back to the original road on which we started.

The paved main road is in surprisingly good condition, with no potholes. It started with two lanes, became one lane pavement and then dirt road after about 70 km (43 mi). Some of the one lane road was overgrown with bush from both sides, and grass pushed through the pavement, but it was still smooth. I'm assuming the road was built by the military between 1957 and the early 60s. There were no road signs, including for speed or directions, and during the entire trip we passed only one other vehicle.

The countryside we travelled through varied from dense coconut plantations to flat scrub brush to fields of black coral. We passed two huge tern nesting areas, each with thousands of birds. On the way back we stopped at the swimming spot we located yesterday for a beer and a dip after the 160 km (100 mi) round trip.

We had dinner with the two pilots and Mark, who is doing the clean up for Britain. In honour of the 14 extra guests the weekly BBQ was advanced one day, so was held tonight. It included whole roast suckling pig, lobsters and a variety of fish and other dishes. The meal was followed by the 12 singers and dancers in pre-missionary costumes performing with no musical instruments - a good performance.