Gizo Week 4

Again spent most of our time in ED. An particular highlight this week was a referral for someone with ‘retirement syndrome’, another new one for me! Other interesting cases were various fractures (they really need to be more careful with their machetes here!), a case of domestic abuse, a couple of people injured in fights and a very undernourished baby.

Outside of the hospital, we hosted another dinner party, serving stuffed squash, followed by bananagrams- again interesting with the input from French Polynesia and Italy! One afternoon, ED was pretty deserted so we hired some (extremely dodgy) bikes and cycled the (extremely poor) coastal “road” around the island. It was really nice to get away from the town and see a bit more of the “real” solomons, passing through many villages and some gorgeous untouched beaches. We were greeted with many waving children each time we passed through a new village. I also developed my skills as a BMX biker, valiantly trying to tackle the potholes! I attended my final hula class (cry), where we learnt a new dance, of course followed by pizza upstairs at the Gizo hotel. Amelia and I thought we’d do some lovely baking and attempted to make some banana bread ready for our upcoming trek. However, on adding the flour, Amelia observed that the flour seemed to be moving. It had weevils in it. LOADS of weevils. We tried sieving it and also picking them out with tweezers, but effectively gave up in the end and made a dense banana concoction with very little flour (and a bit of extra protein….).

We had quite an adventure over the weekend! We’d been recommended to go and hike on Kolombangare- a nearby island which is effectively a massive volcano. The plan was to hike to the summit of one of the mountains near the centre and look down at the crater. On the Friday evening, we had a lovely time at Hambere Village Stay situated on a little bay right on the edge of the island. We were greeted with lovely head garlands and an amazing feast. It was so peaceful sleeping in the huts right on the sea, hearing only the waves and the sounds of birds. We also had excellent views of the stars and moon.

We set off for the trek early on Saturday morning, after some amazing pancakes for breakfast. The hike was rather challenging! We had to cross rivers, squeeze through a pretty non-existent trail with various jungle jutting into it (the guide was using his machete to try to clear the trail for us- it came dangerously close to cutting through me at points…), ascend and descend some very steep slopes, climb over tree trunks in the way and deal with some extremely muddy ground (Amelia got stuck at one point!). My trousers (Amelia’s trousers that she’d kindly lent me- I’m so sorry) got dramatically torn apart from the knee down by a spiky vine. It also gave me a big cut! With the jungle being so dense, there weren’t really that many views to reward our efforts ascending, but we did see some cool plants and animals as we passed though the jungle and got the occasional glimpse down.

At long last we arrived at the campsite, excited to see the view, only to be greeted with complete whiteness from the clouds and 3x3m patch for camping amidst the dense jungle. Luckily the clouds cleared later to give an amazing view out over kolombangara, the sea and the surrounding islands. The porters set up a fire and we cooked ourselves some pasta and sauce, which was passable. A particular low point was drinking some milo (an Australian hot drink) out of a rinsed out pasta sauce jar. We endeavoured to dry out clothing and shoes by the fire, with little success. We squeezed into our tent ready to ascend the last stretch to the summit the next morning.

We woke next morning to Jade popping her head through the tent door; “do any of you have any anti-venom….”. Jade had been bitten on the finger by an unknown creature whilst peeing! Her hand was excruciatingly painful and had swollen up. She could feel the venom spreading up her arm. Trying to remember a bit of my expedition medicine from a project last year I wrapped a bandage around the arm to stop any venom spreading and gave a bite a wash. Luckily for us, Nikita (the doctor from aus) was with us and has some experience with bites, so I referred to her when we realised the bite was getting worse rather than better. She decided that it would be best if we started to decend ASAP. At this point the nearest point of access was a logging track 5 hours trek away and being in such dense jungle and with no signal a helicopter evacuation would have been out of the question should the bite progress. Not completely trusting the guides that there was nothing harmful (our friend who did the trek before us had been assured there were no poisonous snakes only to be stopped by her guide as there was a poisonous snake on the trail…) we were not taking any risks. We stocked Jade up on painkillers and anti-histamines and began the descent as soon as we could. This unfortunately meant foregoing the final stretch to the summit of Mt Rano for the view of the crater.

The descent was crazy. The path was so steep and we kept on slipping, which was rather disconcerting considering the steep drop-offs at points. Once we reached this logging track, the guide arranged for one of his mates to come and rescue us. We piled into the back of the truck along with our stuff and the porters. Ironically, this probably posed more risk to us than the risk of Jade’s bite. The track was narrow and bumpy with steep slopes on either side. The driver seemed not to care about this and powered on much faster than would have been sensible. We, fortunately, made it unscathed to a local coastal village where were able to catch a boat back to Gizo. By this point the pain had become excruciating for Jade. We felt frankly relieved to be back in Gizo and alive (and trust me I’m not being overdramatic)