Sunday 9th March

Not exactly the ideal way to be woken up in the morning, but it was a first for me. In response to my shoulder being vigorously shaken, I opened my eyes and saw an arm extended over my head pointing to the patio doors. My eyes slowly followed the direction of the pointed finger and focussed on, of all things, a volcano with a plume of smoke and ash pouring out of it on the far side of a small bay. OMG! (as I believe modern vernacular would have it), what are we doing so close to such a menacing looking vent? Has the Captain gone mad? It would appear so, as we are in the process of mooring alongside in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea. The town and port of Rabaul is built would you believe, inside the remains of a volcano or caldera as those who know about these things call it. Not only that, but the caldera is surrounded by active volcanoes one of which is sitting right on the edge of the very same caldera in which we are floating, looking like an angry black boil, belching all sorts of nasty’s into the sky. A bit too close for comfort if you ask me, but nobody was so I got up took a photo of Mr Nasty or Mt Tavurvur as it prefers to be called, had a shower and a shave and went to breakfast. By this time Mr Nasty had calmed down and only a couple of wisps of steam could be seen around the rim, I took another photo, so I had a before and after if you get my drift.

Rabaul has not had a happy history since its foundation in 1910. In 1937 there was a catastrophic volcanic eruption which killed 507 people and left large areas in ruin. During WWII it was home to over 100,000 Japanese troops and thus attracted a large number of American air raids. Having rebuilt it into a popular commercial and recreational centre of prominence it was again destroyed and buried under several feet of ash when in 1994 Mr Nasty (Mt Tavurvur) blew his top big style, closely followed by Mt Vulcan on the opposite side of the harbour. We didn’t need reminding that Rabaul lies on the Pacific ring of fire as the last eruption that closed the airport was in 2008 and Mr Nasty remains extremely active. Whilst we were ashore he had a big belch and we watched as a cloud of ash rose up over the ship (Paul will post the photo’s when we get them uploaded, but we are at sea for five days now).

The town from the ship looked a very sad affair following its various misfortunes. The harbour was home to quite a few semi sunken ships (victims of the heavy ash clouds) and the area in front of the ship had an oil terminal to the left an empty car park and a container park with a dozen or so containers. Right in front of the ship was an empty corrugated iron warehouse with no doors. Someone had placed a container in front of the opening to prevent theft of the non-existent goods within. A line of ramshackle minibuses queued to take passengers on some of the organised trips, missing windows covered up with polythene and tape. You have to hand it to the inhabitants of this devastated area for persevering in the face of continuing aggression from the likes of Mr Nasty.

After breakfast as we made our way ashore we encountered Graham and Janet who were ‘also exploring’ and as we left the dockyard gates we sort of followed the “ant trail” of returning passengers. As you have probably gathered, the town is not too big and it seemed like every inhabitant had turned out with a stall selling various tourist souvenirs etc. Up the road we walked turned left still following the ant trail, Graham asked one of the returning ants, “is the forage worth it?” and got the answer “keep foraging” (or words to that effect). So we ploughed on through the turgid humidity (temperatures now hitting 36°C) and by now the pool back on board was becoming almost irresistible to Janet, but she persevered and we wandered into a local supermarket. Now I know a lot of people knock Tesco, but I think the looks I exchanged with Janet said something along the lines of “phew! we don’t know how lucky we are”. For all the problems these people have, we couldn’t help but notice how they were all smiling and we were not pestered by anyone, the stall holders, the children, or the people selling trips. All we got on our walk was “good morning, hello, and other welcoming messages. As we were retuning past the stalls near the gates, one of the passengers with a young son (5 or 6) was talking to a stall holder about a necklace her son had picked up was holding and we overheard the mother saying how much? and the ladies behind the stall were saying “no no it’s ok, you take”. I have never seen that, in all the places I have visited, as we walked on I heard the mother thanking them, saying you are so nice. In the local market some of the stalls only had a bunch of sad looking bananas or a few shrivelled sweet potatoes but everywhere people were smiling.

We didn’t stay there long, we were due to sail at 15:30 but were delayed by a tour that was late returning. It was 16:00 by the time we let go and inched away from the wharf, through all the little boats with families out for a days fishing, all of them waving up and giggling when we waved back. We performed a 180° turn very gingerly before picking up a bit of speed and headed for the gap in the caldera, past the old airport now under a metre or two of ash, past Mr Nasty still puffing yellow smoke and ash and grumbling away, out through the gap and turning left we felt the engines pick up to increase speed as we sailed through Mr Nasty’s plume smelling very strongly of sulphur. I really don’t know how those people can live so peacefully and happily inside what is effectively a very live and feisty volcano. The big caldera of the first volcano has within its walls two smaller active volcanoes one of which is continuously venting. This means that the chimney that fed the original eruption is still wide open and liable to blow at the drop of a hat with little or no warning. Now that’s either very very brave or very very stupid or perhaps both.

That’s about it for today folks, oh! Except for one thing. Thanks to Ruth for spotting that I was reliving February. Days here drift by like the ports and the countries, one day merges into another, I don’t know what day of the week it is let alone what date, so I follow the auto text suggestion when I start the next days blog little realising that it was still suggesting February.

That’s how I managed to forget my 21st birthday, but an even sadder side to this is, it looks like only Ruth is reading this :’-( .