Pacific Odyssey

Gwenda Cornell

• Publisher: Adlard Coles
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781408173855
• eBook ISBN: 9781408173862
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Travel

The South Pacific Islands conjure dreams of romantic charm and escape from the pressures of modern life - but is this a true picture of real life on the Islands today? Gwenda Cornell sailed to these Islands to discover the quality of life, history and culture of the peoples who inhabit these remote and beautiful places. Sailing with her family on the yacht Aventura, Gwenda explores many corners of the Pacific that can still only be reached by sea. The odyssey takes her to the mysteries of Easter Island, to Samoa and to the descendants of the Bounty mutineers on Pitcairn. Gwenda witnesses history in the making in Tuvalu's birth as a nation and finds the last royal nose-flute player in Tonga. The exuberance with which the Pacific Islanders enjoy their lives bears witness to Gwenda's final analysis that 'the South Pacific remains a peaceful oasis in a troubled world and the "Pacific Way" can serve as an inspiration to those who live in a fast-moving, competitive society.'

Chapter 1
First Landfall

Poised high in the last lock of the panama canal, I caught a first glimpse of the great Pacific Ocean stretching far away to the distant horizon, covering one third of the entire globe. The impact was as sudden as it must have been for the weary Spanish explorers hacking their way through the torrid jungle of the isthmus, when they too were unexpectedly confronted with this vast, unknown expanse of water. They called it Pacifico, after the still and peaceful face it presented to them. Centuries later, a canal had eased our passage to this ocean, yet the tropical jungle, festooned with lianas, alive with the sounds of birds and the chattering of monkeys, stood sentinel along the banks, ready to encroach if man should ever depart.

The problem of cutting a sea level canal between the Atlantic and the Pacific defeated many engineers, but was eventually solved by damming the Chagres river and using locks to lift ships up over eighty feet to the level of the lake that was formed. Used to the perspective from the deck of a small sailing boat near to sea level, it was strange to look down from this height onto the ocean. Abruptly the water started rushing out beneath us at great speed, forming turbulent whirlpools, the ropes straining to prevent our boat being sucked into them. The ocean vista disappeared sharply from view as we sank down behind the old lock gates, then the massive gates creaked slowly open and along with millions of gallons of water we were catapulted out among swift eddies into the Pacific Ocean.

In the excitement of that dramatic entry, little did I guess that the Pacific would cast such a spell; that instead of the planned one year, we were to spend three years criss-crossing it and leave it only reluctantly, still longing for more.

There is only one way to truly know the Pacific and that is by boat. Sailing in a small boat across the wide spaces of that ocean, we caught its moods, its caprices and learned to understand its peoples, coming much closer to them than if we had flown in by air.

The first step to understanding was to comprehend the sheer size. Neighbouring island groups are hundreds of miles, often a thousand miles apart; even within a group, the next island may not be visible. This is not the Aegean, where all the Greek islands crowd and jostle into a mere couple of hundred miles, but Oceania, where some nations consist of a handful of islands, each no more than a mile or two long, scattered in half a million square miles of water. In Oceania all the nations are island nations and the sea has always been the link between them. Many of the smaller islands have no airstrips and even in this jet age rely on irregular or infrequent boat services for their contact with the outside world. It was these islands, which were difficult to reach except by sailing there in our own boat, that tempted us to forsake the normal sailing routes of favourable trade winds and strike out for less frequented shores.

Sailing for days and days on end to reach the next island, my thoughts often turned to the early Polynesian navigators who had peopled this ocean, sailing into the unknown in search of new lands. I could see in my mind’s eye their canoes laden with people, dogs, pigs and chickens, potted breadfruit and germinating coconuts. As we sailed hundreds of miles towards a speck of land a few miles long, I could only marvel at the Polynesian seafaring and navigating skills. When the first coconut palms of a landfall spiked up over the horizon, it was easy to imagine their feelings of relief that their long journey was at an end and a new life could begin.

Often, on arriving at such remote places, I sensed a special welcome from the islanders, just because we came from over the horizon in a small boat as their forebears had done. There was a mutual respect and understanding between us, the bond that links all seafarers. It was even more evident in our departures. The sea is woven into the fabric of the Pacific islanders’ lives; it is the larder providing food and income; it is history and legend; it is inspiration for music and dance, the sounds of wave, surf and reef rarely being far away. Sharing this same environment, living under Nature’s canopy and knowing the wrathful might of an angry sea, brought us closer to the islanders and them closer to us.

Travelling as a family with our two young children, Doina and Ivan, coloured our journey continually. In most parts of the Pacific, the extended family system flourishes and children are regarded with special love and affection. Often, on leaving an island, we were brought gifts of fruit and drinking coconuts, the donor invariably saying they were ‘for the children’. Being a family unit made a difference to how we were accepted into a new community. We were a social unit that everyone recognised; it made us more normal and ordinary, a contrast to the usual officials or visitors who flew in and quickly flew out again.

Carrying our home on our back like a snail meant that we could easily return the hospitality we received ashore by inviting people back into our home. Where visitors were rare, the islanders were as interested in us, how we lived, sailed and navigated, as we were in their way of life, music and traditions. Through Jimmy’s work as a radio journalist we met many interesting people we would not have come across otherwise, yet we came to love the islands through the ordinary folk we met, simply by being a family in a sailing boat. It was their warmth and generosity, their songs and dances, their zest for life and sense of humour that captivated us completely.

However, the islands had yet to weave their spells and charms as we sailed day upon day, night upon night, towards our first destination. Eschewing the usual route via the Galapagos to the Marquesas, on leaving Panama we had turned our good ship Aventura’s bow southwards and battled against the cold Humboldt current to reach Peru.

After visiting South America overland, we returned to Aventura and set sail westwards. The Pacific lived up to its name and was kind, balmy trade winds wafting us along steadily for days, without having to change sail or adjust lines, but also without seeing a single thing, not a ship, not a dolphin, not even a bird, nothing for two thousand miles of deserted, unfrequented ocean. After leaving Peru we had been at sea for three weeks on one of the loneliest stretches of ocean in the world, not crossed by any shipping lanes and not one scrap of land between us and Antarctica. Although we had lived on board Aventura for three years and were used to the routine of a sea passage – night watches, boatwork and navigation, with daily school lessons for the children – three weeks was still one of the longest times we had been cooped up in a small space with only ourselves for company. Consequently, as the miles flowed under our keel, we all took an increasing interest in Jimmy’s daily navigation and the plotted pencil positions that crept across the chart.

‘Tomorrow is the day,’ he eventually announced. ‘Tomorrow morning we should see the island.’

Dawn came infuriatingly slowly, the rising sun tinting the sky redder and redder until the sky and sea separated, the line between them hardening into the horizon. Sitting on it, far away in the distance, was land, smudged and indistinct, definitely not a cloud, but land. There was an elation in that first moment, the first sighting of the first island, a sweet satisfaction that it had appeared exactly when and where the navigator calculated it would, after so many days of anticipation. We were looking at the fabled outpost of Polynesia, Rapa Nui, Isla de Pasqua, or, as we knew it, Easter Island.

As we sailed nearer and nearer, the island took shape, hills turned into extinct volcanoes, green patches focused into trees and bushes, while binoculars revealed that the brown rocks marching up the hillside were the famous statues we had sailed all that way to see. There was not a soul in sight, for the main settlement of Hangaroa was on the other side; Easter Island was ours alone, as if we had discovered it.

The noise of a jet screaming in to land rudely cut in on my dreams, reminding me that we were in the twentieth century and not in a traditional canoe as I had been imagining. There were entry formalities, clearance papers, health regulations to comply with, before we could climb that volcano to see the statues. Our flag officer Ivan hoisted the yellow flag to signal that we came from foreign parts and were requesting clearance, while Jimmy furled the sails and we made full speed towards Hangaroa.

Topknots balanced precariously on their heads, a row of statues stood impassively along the shore, their backs turned to where Aventura lay at anchor; ignoring us, they gazed steadfastly inland. A long ocean swell rolled into the bay, breaking onto the rocks beneath the statues. Triangular in shape with few bays or indentations, the island offered no safe, protected anchorage, nor was there a harbour. Easter Island did not present a hospitable face. We had known about the open roadstead, but we also feared a cool reception from the authorities, for the island is a colony of Chile and at that time diplomatic relations between our two countries had been broken off in protest against the torture of a British doctor by the Chilean military regime. The Port Captain, who came out to the boat, however, greeted us so cordially, that those fears were quashed and the entry formalities were completed with a minimum of fuss. As had happened before, our contact with ordinary people fortunately did not reflect the politics and attitudes of our respective governments.

Nature was not so easily dealt with and it soon became apparent that she was going to dictate the terms of our sojourn. Perhaps because there was no other land for thousands of miles, the island appeared to generate its own weather system, the wind changing direction rapidly and squalls coming from various unpredictable quarters. We had to be ready to put to sea or shift our anchorage quickly to another side of the triangle at any moment and unless the weather looked very settled, someone would have to stay on board all the time.

The first problem, however, was to get ashore, for the waves looked more suitable for surfing than for landing in a rubber dinghy with two young children and several cameras. A returning fisherman disappeared from view behind some projecting rocks, so we decided to follow him. Surfing in along the crest of a wave, we were swept in to land on a small beach in calmer waters. Returning to Aventura was even more daunting, as we had to ride up over the incoming waves, judging the moment before they curled over and broke. Several times, with my heart in my mouth, I thought we were about to turn over, yet each time the little rubber boat miraculously lifted up like a cork and bobbed across. The fishermen in their long and narrow wooden boats were not always so lucky nor so cautious, and twice I saw them turn over on their way out of the bay.

The fishing boats were all drawn up on the shore fronting the beach and we drew our dinghy up beside them. A little dusty square, importantly signposted Plaza Hotu Matua, lay behind the boats, surrounded by the fishermen’s tumbledown wooden shacks. Standing guard in the centre of the square was a twelvefoot high statue, all head, with long spaniel’s ears, protruding lips and blank eyes. It was impossible to come to Easter Island and not wonder why these enormous statues had been erected in this lonely place and who were the people that had accomplished it. Were they the followers of the legendary King Hotu Matua, who had spearheaded the Polynesian settlement of the island, or had they drifted across by raft from the Inca empire in South America? It has even been suggested that they were erected by extraterrestrial beings from another planet. We were ready to consider any theory, as we stood with our feet on dry land at last and stared back at our first Easter Island colossus, one of the hundreds scattered around the island. After all, it was they who had beckoned us across the ocean to lay our anchor on this inhospitable shore.

The statues ruled the island, deigning to share their land only with the herds of wild horses that roamed free. The mere humans had to be content with living close together in the only settlement on the island, Hangaroa. Two distinct communities, the islanders, Pasquenses, and the continentals, Chilenos, lived here side by side, although from our first few conversations ashore it was clear that there was little love lost between the two communities.

Hangaroa was a haphazard jumble of houses and buildings, a village that had jumped centuries since Thor Heyerdahl had described it twenty years before. Cars rolled along the dusty roads, two supermarkets stocked expensive fresh foods flown in by the twice-weekly flight, while the swish hotel displayed carvings and craftwork at high prices. Easter Island even boasted its own radio and television station, beaming its programmes to the two thousand inhabitants. These luxuries were primarily for the quarter of the population that was Chilean, including the two hundred soldiers in the military garrison. The Chilenos were in evidence everywhere, running all the offices, the bank, post office and supermarkets.

Outside the supermarket, a yacht’s mast had been erected as a flagpole, a grim reminder for us, as it had been taken from a yacht driven ashore during a squall the previous year. By the time we had returned from our first walk ashore, the wind had changed, the anchor chain was grumbling against the coral and Aventura was rolling so much that our dinner plates slid up and down the table, forcing us to eat on our laps. Remembering the flagpole mast, we hurriedly left Hangaroa and sailed a few miles to spend the night in the shadow of the Rano Raraku volcano itself, sheltered from the wind.

High on the rim of the crater at Rano Raraku it was possible to survey the whole island, yellow savannah grass rippling away to where wild horses grazed in the distance. From the ridge, the rock dropped sheer several hundred feet and then sloped away to the shore. I could just make out the tiny dot in the centre of the bay that was our yacht at anchor, where Jimmy and Doina kept watch on the unpredictable weather. Along the outer slopes of the volcano an army of giant eyeless statues stood gazing silently across the island. Inside, the bottom of the crater was filled with a marshy green pool where once the volcano had bubbled.

It had been a long hard climb for eight-year-old Ivan and I up the inner slopes to the top of the ridge. We passed statues everywhere, standing up, toppled over, lying down, some only partly cut and left unfinished. Nearly all the rock had been worked on right up to the rim. This was the powerhouse, the quarry which had supplied statues to the rest of the island; this was where they had been born. Among the porous cindery rocks from which the statues were carved, I found a few shiny stones of black glassy obsidian and a small worked stone like an adze. It fitted smoothly and neatly into my hand. Maybe it had been left there by one of the unknown craftsmen who had toiled here all those centuries ago.

Reluctantly we started our descent through the rough terrain and long yellow grass, Ivan scampering on ahead of me. A large statue lay sadly on its face, then another, as if they had been abandoned where they fell by the men transporting them, fleeing from a merciless enemy. The standing statues were almost in a line as if on parade, enigmas posing puzzling questions.

Ivan’s attention had been caught by a sailing ship carved on the chest of one statue. Crudely and simply drawn, it had three masts with square sails and a round hull pointed at both ends. I wondered if it had been carved at the time the statue was erected or if it was a later embellishment, a ship seen at anchor where Aventura lay now, a Spanish galleon, a Polynesian canoe or maybe an Inca reed boat. The daunting questions which had been with me ever since reading Thor Heyerdahl’s Aku Aku sprang to my mind. Who were the people who had created this colossal number of statues, where had they come from and, what was more mysterious, why had they done it? As Heyerdahl suggests, they might have come from the east, the two thousand mile ocean passage from South America, a pleasant journey pushed along by steady trade winds as we had discovered for ourselves. Or maybe they were the intrepid Polynesian navigators, who had voyaged throughout the length and breadth of the vast Pacific, settling the many islands encountered on their way.

A seabird cried out as it wheeled overhead, interrupting my reverie, and Ivan pointed out that the wind had turned. The two of us ran quickly down the slopes through the long grass to the shore, where the rising wind was already topping the sea with a few white flecks. Jimmy was waiting for us in the dinghy and with apprehension we watched the surging waves, judging just the right moment to jump into the dinghy off the rocks. As the volcano disappeared behind a black squall, driven by a bitterly cold wind with a whiff of the Southern Ocean, we were forced to shift anchorage back to Hangaroa. Jimmy and Doina would have to find another way to pay homage to the magic statues.

The way they found was to hire two horses from an old man for six American dollars. The Pasquenses’ lack of interest in things Chilean apparently also extended to their currency, the peso. Six dollars seemed an excellent price, but the expedition turned out to be far more expensive than that, for while Jimmy was leading his horse through a narrow gap in a stone wall after visiting the statues, the bridle snapped and came off. The horse broke free and cantered off, scattering cameras out of the bag tied to its wooden saddle. Eventually retrieving the horse and most of his belongings, Jimmy found that one camera was much the worse for its test flight and refused to function.

‘Oh, the bridle! Yes, a strap was broken, but I forgot to tell...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Chapter 1 First Landfall
• Chapter 2 A Lonely Hideaway
• Chapter 3 Mangareva, Paradise Lost
• Chapter 4 The Most Beautiful Island in the World
• Chapter 5 Island Politics in Aitutaki
• Chapter 6 Showing the Flag in Tuvalu
• Chapter 7 Tonga, Where Yesterday Meets Tomorrow
• Chapter 8 Paying Homage to Tusitala
• Chapter 9 Wallis, a Little Known Corner of Polynesia
• Chapter 10 A Brief Love Affair with Abemama
• Chapter 11 The Electrification of Nukulaelae
• Chapter 12 Fijian Interlude
• Chapter 13 A Visit to a Legendary Hero
• Chapter 14 The Many Faces of New Guinea
• Chapter 15 Islands Where Time has Stood Still
• Chapter 16 Festival Farewell in Song and Dance
• Epilogue
• Photo Section
• eCopyright