Climbing Kolombangara

  Kolombangara, Solomon Islands
Tuesday, June 19, 2007

My last serious trekking experience was in Nepal and I think I was still a bit spoiled by all the crisp, arid mountain air and having a staff to feed me, put up my shelter, etc. The journey started off easy enough for about the first 30 minutes, just hot and wet with all the jungle leaves drenching me every step of the way.

Next we got to what I called the "valley of the vines." It was a long, wide pathway where lava had flowed years ago. Now, the entire area was grown over with vines so you had to high step with every step and still ended up tripping half of the time. It made the uphill much more tiring!

01 valley of vines

After about 2 and a half hours battling the vines it turned into an incredibly steep and slippery climb up to base camp. I don't mind the uphill that much, I just kept remembering Kinabalu in Borneo and how much the downhill sucks for me! Not to worry though, we made it to base camp where I set up my "white girl" tent while my guides made one out of the natural materials.

02 guide's shelter

03 guide's shelter

I felt a bit like a looser at this point. Not to worry, and I had brought some rice and noodles for us to cook up that evening so we would have plenty of energy the next day. Silly me--that was what I was paying the guides with!!! We literally didn't have a pot to piss in so even if I we had wanted to cook the rice, it was not an option. Instead we would survive these 2 days on the canned chili tuna and crackers I had brought along washed down with vodka (yes, I carried a bottle of vodka up with me, you seriously think I'm going to sit around a campfire at night without a nightcap--AS IF!!!) It was a beautiful sunset that night however. The island you see under the cloud is Gizo. And of course the stars that night were breathtaking!!

04 sunset

We got up bright and early the next morning to get to the summit before it got cloudy. There were some beautiful views along the way of Gizo and the surrounding islands.

05 view

I was a bit disappointed at the top, no panoramic view as we were still below the tree line. The climb was made more challenging by landslides and massive uprooted trees from the earthquake.

06 earthquake

07 earthquake

The downhill was not as bad as I had imagined on the way up. The ground was so wet and spongy that slips and falls only bruised my ego and made me incredibly muddy. With my energy waning and running out of water on the way back down, by the time we reached the bottom I was about spent. All I wanted was to find a store where I could get a drink with some sugar in it. Of course the little village where I was had no such thing. The locals could see that I was hurting so one of the guys climbed a tree and got some coconuts so I could drink the juice inside and some of the ladies brought me some bananas and corn--how sweet and caring they were!! I tried to pay them and they would have none of that. Luckily I carry balloons in my backpack for just such an occasion. I asked if I could give their children gifts and I ended up giving every kid in that village a balloon.

08 local kids

09 local kids