A Few Additional Tales of the South Pacific—Part 4

When we got back from Ta’u we had Tefele F. Lia’s note translated (see Part 3 for background). For this we went to Marilyn, the manager of the airport cafe where we ate the majority of our meals. Marilyn was fluent in Samoan and English, and she’d quickly ‘adopted’ the entire NCAR crew. Any or all of us were welcome at her home in the village of Vaitogi on the southern coast of Tutuila. In addition to her long hours at the restaurant, she taught traditional Samoan crafts such as painting tapas to any Samoan interested in preserving the ancient art forms and techniques of the island. She did this at no charge for any interested Samoan, and at a stiff fee for palagis.

We already knew part of the note’s content: it said we were the personal guests of the Chief of the Village of Ta’u. The missing piece of the note was that we were described as “high government inspectors,” which might be chalked up to our brief explanation of our NCAR mission, which may have been totally lost in translation to the Police Chief in Pago. Or, there were simply no words in Samoan for ‘weather researchers.’

With the new improved cutdowns in hand we resumed launches through the end of August. I was invited to continue with the mid-latitude portion of the project in Christchurch, New Zealand, along with Chris, one of the team members from Ascension Island. (In an odd coincidence, Chris and I had been in physics classes together at the University of Colorado, and were lab partners in one; we’d both applied for the TWERLE project without mentioning to to the other, and only found out our first day of training in Boulder.)

Before we leave American Samoa an interesting airport incident is worth mentioning.

In addition to the regularly scheduled flights through Pago there were various unmarked cargo flights stopping just long enough to refuel both planes and pilots. We ourselves often had lunch and breaks at the airport restaurant, which included watching, from the large restaurant window as planes took off. After months of this, we were all familiar with what was normal during takeoff, and what most definitely was not. Our view of the eastern end runway was the last 1000 feet or so, and as mentioned previously the main runway extended well out into the sea where the Pala Lagoon met the Pacific Ocean.

One day an unmarked stretch DC-8 cargo plane landed to refuel, and the pilot came over to the restaurant. We chatted with him, and during the conversation he mentioned his load was a bit over spec. We thought nothing of this. When he left the restaurant to begin the long taxi back to the west end of the runway we went back to our usual routine.

Five or ten minutes later we heard the distant sound of the DC-8 beginning its takeoff. A moment or two later when it came into view in the restaurant window, we all gasped and ran to watch what we knew was a plane crash about to happen.

At the point departing jets appeared in the restaurant window they were usually airborne, or at least at good speed with the fuselage rising on aerodynamic lift, even if the wheels were momentarily in contact with the runway. This stretch DC-8 was lumbering slowly in comparison, still fully weighted down on its landing gear. The pilot had less than a thousand feet of runway left and was going too fast to stop but too slow to fly. It sounded as if the plane was at full throttle—it slowly gained speed as the end of the runway approached, finally beginning to feel some aerodynamic lift. But all wheels were still on the ground when it went off the end of the runway. We were horrified.

A DC-8 was a big plane: 4 turbo jet engines, a wingspan of over 140 feet, and length of 150 feet—and the stretch version we were watching go off the end of runway was 37 feet longer than the original design.

The plane immediately dropped when it ran out of runway—the runway itself was perhaps 10 or 12 feet above the water. Simultaneous to exiting the runway the pilot raised his landing gear—suddenly plumes of ocean spray shot up behind the plane—the four jet engines were so close to the lagoon’s surface they were blasting sea water into the air. With every passing second we expected it to ditch—but the plane slowly, slowly lifted—when it was halfway across the lagoon it was still skimming only 10 or 15 feet above the water. We then speculated whether it was going to hit something on the other side of the lagoon, but the pilot turned slightly southward, still barely rising as he flew off. Clearly that plane was way more than “a bit” overloaded. And the pilot was daring, brilliant. Maybe insane.

I was soon packing for the move to New Zealand, and realized there was mold growing on my leather shoes and belts—the heat and humidity of the tropics is overwhelming, and our living quarters were not air conditioned. (That said, we’d all acclimated to the tropics to the point that if the temperature dropped below 85 overnight we needed blankets to keep warm.) Whatever might already be happening inside my camera and lenses, in spite of spending a good part of each day in the air conditioned launch building, was going to get worse in Western Samoa and Fiji, where I’d be staying on my own dime (almost literally) in low-rent lodging to be discovered when I arrived in those countries.

I’d unfortunately not outgrown being an idiot about the reality of going through customs, because at the last minute I had the idea of tossing a one-kilo unlabeled canvas bag of desiccant into my carry-on to protect my camera and lenses. (NCAR had used hundreds of these custom-made rectangular bags to pack around a couple roomsful of instruments being shipped to Pago.)

Some dendrite in the back of my head started mumbling about the potential downside of going through customs with 2.2 pounds of white powder sewn into a plain canvas bag—but before I fully paid attention, another tiny voice a few dendrites to the left started complaining about the extra weight. That one I responded to: it was worth the weight to save my photographic equipment. Case closed.

My Polynesian Airlines Hawker Siddeley 748 to Western Samoa flew the entire way at 2000 feet altitude because the passengers and crew had been asked to search for a 24-foot blue fishing boat missing out of Tutuila. We saw nothing.

The flight was a journey back in time, at least regarding Samoan culture—in Western Samoa the strong American influence seen on Tutuila was completely absent, except for the fact that people happily took American currency, also true of most island countries I visited. When we landed at Faleolo Airport I went though the token customs without having to open my bags and boarded a bus for the 25-mile trip along the northern coast of Upolu to the capital city of Apia. As we drove past humble fales and sometimes partially clothed Samoans, all on foot, it seemed that Western Samoa persisted in a previous century.

The terrain was different as well—whereas American Samoa was dominated by steep mountains and shorelines composed of basaltic sea cliffs with only occasional small beaches, the northern coast of Upolu was fairly flat, and had broad, sandy beaches. On both the flight to Western Samoa and then on the bus, I was the only palagi, adding a sense of adventure to the trip.

Apia was more a town than a city, mostly low wooden buildings. My one splurge in Western Samoa was staying a night at the then-famous hotel Aggie Grey’s, which had been a popular gathering place for soldiers during World War Two, and afterward, many movie stars from the forties and fifties used to hang out there (often with Aggie Grey herself). During the making of the movie Tales of the South Pacific, the cast and crew stayed at Aggie Grey’s.

Aggie was still running the hotel when I was there, stopping to chat with clients, though she was well on in years. But all things come to an end—Aggie Grey’s was purchased years later by the Starwood Hotel Group and is now the ‘Sheraton Samoa Aggie Grey’s Hotel and Bungalows.’ With a casino.

After the one night at Aggie’s I relocated to a series of depressing backwater motels, mostly rundown houses in Apia. I bought a few meaningless souvenirs, and from the Aggie Grey’s gift shop, I lamely bought a tourist pake similar to the authentic one Falamaota tried to give me on Ta’u. As luck would have it, that pake would get me out of a jamb a couple countries later.

While walking around in Apia I ran into Mike, a captain for hire; as there were very few non-Samoans in the country one tended to greet fellow travelers, and we talked for a while. He was an American, from San Francisco, and was working on making seaworthy a 40-foot gaff-headed ketch called the Seafarer, presently moored in Suva harbor in Fiji—it had been rolled in a typhoon. He was heading over to Fiji, and by chance I’d arranged to go to Fiji in a few days—he invited me to stop by the boat if I was in the area.

When I flew to Fiji my itinerary had me landing in a different city, Nadi (pronounced Nandi). Fiji’s two main islands are Viti Levu and Vanua Levu. Nadi is on the west coast of Viti Levu and Suva is on Viti Levu’s southeast coast.

On arrival in Nadi I didn’t have a care in the world going through customs, calmly watching the Fijian agent who, after searching my huge suitcase, started going though my carry-on bag, lifting off one piece clothing after another—until he suddenly froze when he spotted the white canvas bag at the bottom of my carry-on. When he froze, I froze—the bag looked exactly like what the single smart dendrite in my head told me it was going to look like. The agent slowly turned from the bag to me and stared in silence. I didn’t know what to do—but before I could speak he smiled knowingly, slowly nodded his head, his eyes still on mine. And then he very carefully laid my clothes back down on the canvas bag. With a slight motion of his head he pointed toward the exit door.

I was stunned. He seemed to think I was carrying drugs that he—and who else—was expecting? Was there someone outside waiting to take delivery? I didn’t want to walk out that door. What was going to happen when whoever was waiting out there snorted or tasted desiccant?

But I couldn’t stay in customs either. I walked quickly out the door with my luggage—my original plan had been to ask around about a youth hostel I’d heard of, but now I just wanted to get away as quickly as possible. A Nadi city bus was standing at the curb—the door closed and I ran over to it—the door opened again and I climbed on. No one else did. I had no idea where the bus was going, I just wanted to disappear. Later, when I got off the half-empty bus somewhere in Nadi, the canvas bag of desiccant was under the bus seat. Lesson learned, I told myself. Again.

I spent a couple days in Nadi, including taking a bus trip up the west coast of Viti Levu to Lautoka, the capital of the sugar plantation region. Strangely, Indian popular music played on all the busses I rode in Fiji. I particularly liked the warning signs posted along the aisles of every bus: Mind Your Head. And I soon realized all the shop-keepers I saw in Fiji were also Indian.

I noticed as well there was a palpable tension in the air throughout Fiji. The country had been under British rule for over 100 years, gaining independence in 1970, five years prior to my visit. During the century of British rule, great numbers of people from India were brought in to support the commercial enterprises, large and small, run by the British, who basically excluded the indigenous Fijian population from any role in business or government. Early in the century of British rule, Fijians worked on huge plantations, often as forced laborers. Soon there were not enough Fijians to work the cotton fields being planted (this was during the US Civil War, when the North was successfully blockading the South, reducing cotton exports to the rest of the world).

This became the period of “blackbirding” across many islands of the South Pacific: colonial powers, including the United States, were annexing island nations by force or intimidation in order to gain control over harbors and/or arable land. The insufficient numbers of indigenous people to work in the fields led to the new/old business of ships sailing to more remote islands across the Pacific, enticing indigenous locals aboard their ships with gifts or promises of great opportunities. But then these people were kidnapped, brought back to in this instance Fiji, and sold into forced labor.

When the British finally withdrew from Fiji they turned over the government to the Fijians. So the government was in the hands of Fijians, but the economy was already firmly in the hands of the Indian population. A bizarre situation.

I found Nadi depressing—partially because of a tall thin grinning Indian man I encountered at the back of a Nadi hardware store who drew a 6-inch long needle from his clothing and moved towards me brandishing it—he backed me down an aisle until I reached the back wall of the store and had no escape. He moved closer to me and stopped a few feet away. We stared at each other, him wide-eyed and grinning, me just wide-eyed: then he half-howled, half-laughed, turned and hurried away.

I decided to fly over to Suva, which at $20 was a little steep compared to the $40 I spent to fly from American Samoa to Western Samoa. After landing in Suva I took a bus, which was of course playing delightful popular Indian music, to the harbor area. (Having now taken several busses in Fiji, I became aware that women will always take the first unoccupied seat, whereas men will sit wherever they want.) At the harbor I asked around and heard that the Seafarer might be anchored near the Trade Winds Hotel.

From the shore I noticed a beat-up ketch anchored out in the harbor. I could see a Fijian moving about the deck. I waved to him—caught his attention—he stopped and waved back with a tentative movement of his arm. I waved again and he moved aft on the ketch, got into a Zodiac, and started rowing ashore. I wondered if it was the right boat.

It was. Edward invited me aboard, and said Mike was in town.

Edward was a man of about 25 with a beautiful physique—though thin he was muscular and moved with fluid grace. When we boarded he asked me if I’d like a cup of coffee and when I said yes he offered some eggs. I hesitated—not only had I boarded the boat without the captain’s permission, I was contemplating eating lunch as well. And I did. Edward made coffee, eggs, sliced some Spam and bread. A feast—I hadn’t yet eaten that day.

Edward said there was a third member of the crew, Larry, the brother of the boat’s owner. (The owner stayed in San Fransisco.) Long story short—maybe too late for that—I became a temporary fourth member of the crew, spending three days sleeping and working on the boat. Our second night, Edward offered to to perform a traditional Kava ceremony. I had no idea what kava kava was of course. Edward brought out a package of white powder and a shallow vessel that looked like it had been hammered out of a 50-gallon drum: he laid a thin cloth over the vessel, poured the kava kava powder in, and then poured in water and let it steep. He then lifted the cloth out of the vessel, let the water seep though the cloth, and squeezed it almost dry. Edward described the meaning of the ceremony, all of which has since disappeared from my memory. What I do remember was that after we passed cups of the kava kava around, I felt has if I’d had a couple beers.

Mike invited me to join the crew and sail the Seafarer as 2nd mate back to San Francisco. The potential adventure was tempting, and looking back, I’m shocked I actually considered it, but I of course had to decline. Mike then asked me if I’d arrange, when I got to New Zealand, to have a particular size winch handle (for hoisting the mainsail) shipped to him in Suva. Before I left Fiji I went to a street market and bought a fist-sized clear plastic bag of powdered kava kava, thinking it would be fun to do the ceremony for the crew being assembled in Christchurch.

Later, Mike wrote me that he’d found hull rot in the boat and instead of sailing Seafarer back to San Francisco he had it packed up in a freighter and shipped.

I flew Air New Zealand from Fiji to Auckland New Zealand with my kava kava stuffed into a shoe in the bottom of my huge garment bag. As we approached the North Island of New Zealand the flight attendants (stewardesses back in the day) handed out customs forms for passengers to fill out—as I’d finally gotten rid of all suspicious substances between American Samoa and Fiji, I didn’t read the instructions and simply indicated I had nothing to declare. We landed in Auckland and while taxiing, for a distraction I pulled the customs instructions from the seat-back pocket where I’d stuffed them—I scanned the list of controlled substances: heroin, cocaine, … amphetamines,—kava kava.

Christ, I thought. Why not. Get it over with. Everyone’s luck runs out sooner or later.

So soon enough I got to the front of my customs line with my carry-on and my huge garment bag. The very business-like customs officer removed and inspected everything from my carry-on, and repacked it. He told me to unzip the garment bag, and started working through it the same way. I’m staring at the spot near the bottom of the unfolded garment bag where my ‘heroin’-stuffed shoe is waiting. I’m feeling nothing, resigned to whatever’s about to happen. I’ve had a good run till now.

He’s getting closer to the shoe. “What’s this!” he cries, and yanks out the pake I’d bought at Aggie Gray’s in Western Samoa.

“You can’t bring raw agricultural products into New Zealand,” he says. “We’re going to confiscate this.”

I almost laugh. Sure, go for it. Wait’ll you see what’s next.

The customs officer pulls out a form and starts filling it in, and tells me they’re going to fumigate the pake and ship it to my final destination, which he doesn’t yet realize will include a cell-block number. But I fill in my destination address on the form: GHOST Flight Station, Christchurch Airport. (GHOST was the acronym for Global HOrizontal Sounding Technique.)

After I sign the form the customs officer says, “I’ll be right back” and walks away with the pake. I wait there, several minutes. It finally occurs to me I could stop waiting—I start repacking my bag, as slowly as I can bear.

The customs officer in the adjacent line calls over to me, “Was he done with you?” I glance up and say “Yes,” and continue packing.

And I left. My flight from Aukland to Wellington and Christchurch departed 40 minutes later. When it did, the kava kava remained behind, in a restroom trash basket. “Lesson—“ no, I’m not even going to say it.

However, my brief career in accidental drug smuggling was finally over.

My first day at the “office” at the Christchurch Airport started with a brief “who’s on first” episode: I’d gone over to the terminal to get a cup of coffee at a kiosk, joining a lengthy queue.

My turn came: “Cup of coffee please.”

The middle aged woman behind the cart said, “What?”

More loudly: “A c-u-p o-f c-o-f-f-e-e p-l-e-a-s-e.”

“What??” she said again, more urgently this time.

I looked back at the queue behind me—they were all looking at me with ‘get on with it buddy!’ expressions. I panicked—something was haywire—all I could think to do was to repeat my order in ALL CAPS.

This time the coffee vendor lifted up a carton of milk and blared, “WHAT?!”

Oh! “Yes, thanks.”

As I walked back to the Ghost Flight station with my coffee I pondered having to deal with New Zealand accent and usage as a new language. The coffee vendor was asking me if I wanted my coffee “white”—with milk.

After a week or three in a motel we moved into an apartment in Christchurch, a beautiful city. We arranged for milk and bread delivery at 4 cents a quart and 5 cents a loaf. The apartment below ours was occupied by a Maori rock band who regularly practiced but only occasionally succeeded. Our apartment included a washing machine that was basically a big tub, with rollers on one side through which you cranked washed and rinsed clothes to prepare them for hanging up. I recalled that when I was about five my mother used one of these machines in the basement of our house.

Our daily commute to the Christchurch Airport was uneventful as long as we remembered to drive on the wrong side of the road, and was fairly exciting otherwise. Balloon launches proceeded as in American Samoa, although our launch windows now also depended on acceptable wind directions that didn’t interfere with the busy airport’s commercial and military aircraft. The New Zealand Air Force had a large presence at the airport, with military traffic as well as frequent ‘touch and go’ training exercises by fighter pilots on the main runway—always ear-shattering events.

A New Zealander, Erik, joined the NCAR team for the mid-latitude launches. Soon he suggested a weekend “tramp” in the Southern Alps. Chris and I were both hikers and climbers and agreed. We’d both had mid-latitude clothes and hiking gear shipped from home when we were invited to continue in New Zealand in what would be early spring in the Southern Hemisphere.

Our goal was the Edwards Hut near Arthur’s Pass in the Southern Alps, already a familiar tramping ground for Erik. It looked easy on the topographic maps (with 40-meter topographic lines), and we had a good weather forecast.

A long drive West from Christchurch across the Canterbury Plain and up the Waimakariri River valley into the Southern Alps brought us to the trailhead (except for no trail) where we parked our car. At that point we were on the West bank of the Beasley River, a tributary to the Waimakariri. Erik told us then that our first step was to ford the knee-deep Beasley, which was about 300 feet wide. Chris and I responded that he was nuts, we weren’t about to start a day-long hike by soaking our hiking boots in knee-deep ice water. Erik’s opinion was that we were acting like babies. We noticed a railroad bridge about a half-mile downstream and outvoted Erik, with the extra mile being worth it to get across the river dry.

The bridge was about twice as long as the river was wide. We listened for a while for any sound of a train, then started across. Of course when we were a third of the way across we heard a train whistle and saw the train coming towards us along the river on the far side, but it wasn’t moving very fast because of the uphill grade, giving us enough time to hurry across before it reached us. Once off the bridge the we needed to traverse the steep, forested mountainside back upstream. The trees were densely packed—at times we needed to remove our backpacks to squeeze between tree trunks, and overall lost over an hour getting back up to where Erik had wanted to ford the Beasley.

Heading upstream we followed the Mingha River when it branched off the the right and then right again along the Edwards River. As we continued, the Edwards got steeper, and we did have to ford a couple tributaries. It started raining. So far the hike had been pretty easy, but after the second tributary we encountered a series of very steep ridges dropping down to the Edwards. It seemed one was steeper than the next—the Edwards riverbed itself started getting steep with too many boulders and waterfalls to use as a trail. The ridges we were scrambling over and then immediately descending the other sides of were difficult—a couple would have been technical except for the tree trunks and rough rock to grab onto. The sides of two of the ridges were so steep that steel cables had been draped down the faces to give hikers a bit to hang on to.

The rain became heavier and the air colder as the afternoon progressed. Erik, a classic tough-as-nails New Zealander, seemed unfazed but I was exhausted and beginning to wonder what we’d gotten ourselves into.

Finally, in the failing light, the valley widened and flattened out—before us we could see what looked like a swamp speckled with some kind of thick gorse bushes. We leaped from bush to bush and as each sank into the water we leaped to the next one until we reached solid ground and continued up the shallow valley to the Edwards Hut. Fortunately there was room for us as it only could sleep 16 people and was first-come first-serve.

The next morning we saw the rain had turned to snow overnight. A few Kiwis who’d left early in the morning returned hours later, reporting that the tributaries and Edwards River were flooding and uncrossable. Thus we spent an extra day and night at the hut, with no way to report to NCAR why weren’t showing up for work. I have to admit I was feeling a little depressed at the hut, not knowing how tough the descent and river crossings were going to be.

*Beginning our descent after waiting at the Edwards Hut an extra day.*

After we descended the following morning, we followed Erik’s lead and forded the now-deeper and ice-cold Beasley. Almost immediately our legs went numb in the swift-running water, and we all struggled to stay on our feet in the fast current. But in ten minutes we were at our car, headed back down the Christchurch.

Unfortunately there’s no graceful way to end this narrative, for not long after our Edwards Hut adventure, a family emergency had me resigning and leaving for the States. I left with just a suitcase, flying a 30-hour marathon from Christchurch to Auckland to Honolulu to Los Angeles to Denver to Philadelphia, and then via train to New Haven. NCAR packed and shipped to me a considerable number of large boxes with my clothes, climbing rope and gear, and accumulated souvenirs.

Several weeks later I received notice that the shipment of my belongings had arrived at the New Haven railroad station and I went to the station to receive them. When I arrived a customs officer was waiting with what amounted to a car-full of ‘stuff’—my heart sank thinking about the time it would take customs to search through it all. The customs officer looked me over—I was still, shall we say, a little rough around the edges. Then he looked over to the pile of boxes.

“How long were you out of the country?”

“About six months.”

He looked at the pile again, then turned to me: “Get outta here,” he said and walked away.

A Few Additional Tales of the South Pacific—Part 4

Keno

A Few Additional Tales of the South Pacific—Part 3