Lots of boats

Remember my rather confusing conversation with Boat Guy before the survey? After we'd finally established that four people could fit on one boat, I made a point of asking whether there were any boats in the area, and was assured that there were lots of boats. But (silly me!) I neglected to ask whether the boats had engines. So we arrived in Gasmata to discover that there were indeed lots of boats . . . but none of them had engines. Don't worry, though, we had only spent one night there before a very kind man tracked down a boat with an engine and we were speeding off through the high seas. Well . . . OK . . . through the sea at least. We were pretty close to the shore so it probably wasn't technically the high seas. As we passed an island (the island we planned to come back to the next day) our boat driver pointed to it and said calmly, "That's where the dinosaur lives."

THE DINOSAUR!?!?!?!?!?!?

Yes, that's right, the dinosaur. Apparently it is a water dinosaur that lives in an underwater cave on the back side of the island (where no houses are), and makes a very loud noise when it walks on the coral. It was last seen a few years ago by a man's little brother and it does not eat people. Reports differ as to whether it is larger or smaller than a house, but everyone agrees that it is very big indeed. We spent a night on that island, and even went around to the back of the island to have a look at its cave, but (sadly for us) it did not choose to make an appearance that day.

Another day we were in a village that had a boat and an engine, but no fuel. Around noon the village magistrate offered to go down to a nearby logging company and buy us some fuel, so we gave him money and he set out. Three hours later, Village Magistrate still had not returned, and a Second Guy arrived in a boat and announced that he had a boat and an engine and fuel, and he was on his way to the place we wanted to go, and did we want a ride? Did we ever! But we couldn't just leave when we had already agreed to go with Village Magistrate (not to mention that he was holding rather a large sum of our cash), so we sadly thanked Second Guy but told him we'd just wait for Village Magistrate. "Well," said Second Guy, "I don't think he'll be able to buy any fuel. The logging company is so short on fuel that they're not selling it to anyone who's not doing company business, so I really doubt they'll sell any to Village Magistrate. How about this: I'll wait for him to come back, and then if he has fuel, fine, you can go with him. If not, you can go with me." It was a very generous offer on Second Guy's part, considering we had no idea when Village Magistrate would return . . . and, in fact, four hours later, there was still no sign of Village Magistrate. When it began to get dark Second Guy drove off in his boat to find Village Magistrate and see what was happening, and he came back with the fuel Village Magistrate had bought and the rather distressing report that the engine on Village Magistrate's boat had broken! We were very sorry for Village Magistrate, but glad that this problem had been discovered when he was close to land, and not when we were all in his boat in the middle of the high seas! And we were WAY thankful that Second Guy was there!

But by this time it was dark, so we figured we'd have to wait until the next day to leave. Second Guy, however, assured us that he'd made that trip lots of times in the dark, and the moon was nearly full, so it would be no problem to travel at night. Well, off we went in the moonlight, and if you've never gone boating on the ocean at night you really should . . . it is incredibly fun! After about half an hour, though, we pulled up at a dock and Second Guy said that the sea ahead was rough so we needed to wait a few minutes for the wind to die down. So we waited a few minutes . . . and a few more . . . and a few hours . . . and . . . well . . . let's just say I have now spent a night on a boat in the Solomon Seas, because we didn't leave until 5:30 the next morning. It was kind of cool though . . . I actually slept pretty well, and once I woke up with a brilliant sky of stars over me, and even saw a shooting star!