24 Oct 2016

Bougainville - Visit to the setting of the Novel, 'Mr Pip'

This morning there was a beautiful view of the mountainous spine of Bougainville as we approached the anchorage in Arawa.  One volcano was being particularly active with large amounts of ash billowing from the summit.  

Shortly after 7am we were all ashore and into mini vans for the ride up into those spectacular mountains, the road itself runs up to the base of the mountains through a fertile valley filled with crops of banana and cacao but then climbs abruptly through a series of switchbacks to nearly 1000m elevation.  Climbing from the vehicles it was noticeably cool, pleasantly cool, at the summit of the road.  Here the birders stayed and began birding at the higer elevations, a rare treat in Melanesia and they were able to get sightings of a number of Bougainville endemics during the morning.  The rest of us continued down into what remains of Panguna mine - just the scale and magnitude of the undertaking is impresssive, an entire mountain was in the process of being removed to extract the copper and gold contained within.  There was evidence of the conflict and the destruction it brought but also the destruction of the environment caused by the mine was very evident.  

Returning back to the Spirit of Enderby for lunch and to refresh from the mornings exertions we then ventured forth once again for a visit to Arawa and a chance to see some of the cultural groups perform as well as visit the library donated by Lloyd Jones, author of Mr Pip. We ended the day with a swim beside the ship and are now underway enroute to Choisul in the Solomon Islands.