Vines, vines everywhere but not a drop to drink
May 6, 2017
“It will take about three hours” our guide Eric said with a sly smile when asked how long the first days’ hike would be. Six intrepid expats we were, about to depart on a three day odyssey through dense jungle to the caldera of Lake Erouvi (Billy Mitchell). Confident in our abilities we set off, oblivious of what we were in for. Our local guides and porters formed a squad of quads, armed with machetes, iron feet and internal access to jungle google maps. Without us to slow them down they would likely have reached camp in the estimated time, fuelled entirely on betelnut. Calculating the time it will take an amateur expat to cover the same distance is much the same as converting dog years into human.
My first taste of jungle trekking was two weeks earlier, hiking to the village of Sisivi, in the Rotokas region of Bougainville. We had started our climb to Sisivi at dusk so our world was swiftly reduced to the beam of our headlamps. With one sense dampened another became heightened. The jungle is an assembly line of onomatopoeia. The woody, drawn out croak of frogs, the mechanical shriek of insects. They mingled with other indiscernible sounds to form an aural backdrop to the invisible terrain surrounding us. Perhaps the darkness that enveloped us amplified the sounds, but they offered no clue as to what lay beyond our illumination.
Sisivi village
Our departure for Billy Mitchell began far earlier. This time I had my sense of sight. No sense, however, of what was to come. We scrambled along crumbling ridgelines, scarred by years of landslides and slid down muddy embankments. Any attempt at grace and agility was brought to a swift end as feet became entangled in vines, roots came dislodged when grabbed and ants equipped with acid filled water guns attacked exposed skin. We performed a deformed jungle dance, side stepping, wavering and spinning along the trail. Meanwhile our patient guides, laden with our packs, pirouetted, jetéd and leapt past, one hand ripping open coconuts, the other hacking away at persistent flora.
The noises that followed us were much different from our nocturnal climb. We had entered the domain of the hornbills who flung calls back and forth in an avian tennis match. Known locally as kokomo, their song was far less balmy than the Beach Boys version. More like the sound of your alarm on full blast after a night of overindulging.
But the abiding aural memory from the hike does not come from nature. Oh no. Whether trudging through thick undergrowth or bedding down for the night, the sounds of Whitesnake and Nickelback echoed through the trees from one porter's radio.
Their voices haunt me still.
The landscape of Bougainville transports you back in time. You half expect to have a Jurassic Park moment and stumble upon a herd of dinosaurs. In Sisivi, the mountainous landscape was interspersed with agriculture. As we crisscrossed our way up the river, past countless cascades, we witnessed a lush and fertile land: kumara plantations, peanut farms, cocoa trees with fat seed pods, pomelos, taro, the prickly tapioca tree, towering coconut trees and more. But the trail to Billy Mitchell was far less developed and the only signs of human life was the narrow path that had been hacked through the bush.
Vines covered everything. They crept along the forest floor, clutching at our ankles and wound their way up the native vegetation. On the main road to Arawa, vines covered plantations, palm trees and disused power lines, all was overtaken by its leafy shroud.
[caption id="attachment_1147" align="aligncenter" width="225"]The ever encroaching vines making their way up trees.[/caption]
In Sisivi we had the luxury of sleeping in a thatched house and an epic feast of carbohydrates served to us for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Accommodation on our Billy Mitchell hike was somewhat more rustic. As sunset and a rainstorm drew near we stopped at a ‘clearing’. This tangle of tree stumps and wet grass was in fact our lodging for the night. We need not have worried however, because the team from “Pimp my Jungle” was on hand and with a swing of the axe, trees were felled, foundations erected and a massive canvas draped across the whole lot to create an el fresco sleeping experience.
I slept that night as though in a cookie cutter, moulding my body in such a way as to avoid the mattress of roots beneath. I woke before dawn to the cold, blue light of a full moon. Smoke from the active Mt Bagana hovered above our destination, which still seemed an eternity away. Our hike that day formed a vertical zig zag with the earth, the ground continually rising and dropping beneath our clumsy feet. By midday we had reached the base of the crater and geared up for the most difficult part of the hike.
The crater of Erouvi, Lake Billy Mitchell
A compact tangle of dirt and tree roots lay at the base of a fresh landslide. Clambering over I tried not to think of what might happen were the earth to shift again. As we neared the summit we were enclosed on all sides by a tunnel of ferns. Emerging from this leafy womb we found ourselves on the edge of the massive Lake Erouvi. At first the landscape played hard to get, hiding beneath a thick layer of cloud. We could glimpse the metallic sheen of the water far below but little else. As we stood, exhausted and grimy, on the edge of an invisible world, I wondered if the whole trek would amount to an anti-climax. Yet as we stood waiting the clouds performed a tantalisingly slow reveal of the surrounding landscape.
There was something magical about that moment that can’t be contained in pictures or words. Standing there, I felt zoomed out, as though perceiving it from high above. Surrounded on all sides by nature, humanity felt far away. We were witnessing something that very few had ever seen. And it was spectacular. The serendipitous break in the clouds was brief and as the thunder rippled ever closer we reluctantly made our way back down.
One may wonder if walking 42km in three days over unforgiving terrain was worth it for a mere thirty minute show. It absolutely was. Both of these trips revealed another side of Bougainville. One relatively untouched by tourism and with a strong relationship to the land. I can’t help but think of the dual forces of nature and modernity. Even as the path we cut becomes subsumed once again beneath vegetation so too does the ‘development’ of Bougainville forge ahead.
In the years ahead what will happen to this hidden world beneath the clouds?
