The Camp Compound at Kri Island
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I found myself on a boat to Kri Island. The boat's battery was dead and the boatman had to pull the covers off the outboard motors and start them with a piece of rope. Let me correct myself, I mean to say "try" to start them. We drifted on the current for a while as the trying continued and then the shop's owner, Mr. Max, who was too busy "answering his e-mail" to accompany us, commandeered a Papuan longboat and came to our aid. I went ashore with him and we scrounged up a set of sparkplugs and a few spares. Then, I was off to Kri.
We pulled up to the dock at Kri and unloaded. Kri's about fifty miles from Sorong, and it was a long, rough and wet ride out there. I met up with my dive guide, Nic Son, and after dumping my stuff in my room, we dove a divesite called Mike's Reef.
The Camp Compound at Kri Island
I went to Irain Jaya in August. The place was booked solid in September and October, but I was the only customer for this week. I had two cooks, a boatman, a skipper, Nic Son the divemaster, a compressor operator and a manager there to make sure everything worked out Ok. Nic Son spoke some english, and Duane, the manager, was fairly fluent. But nobody else spoke more than a few words of the english language.
The diving is great. Every dive was a drift dive, and there were plenty of times when Nic Son would look at the water and say "the current is too bad", so we'd go someplace else. I found out that he was a fearless diver, so I couldn't figure out what he meant by "too bad", but I found out eventually.
The next day we dove Wai Island, where Nic Son's dad lives. We dove a WWII fighter plane at Wai, a P-47 "Thunderbolt". It turns out that a flight of P-47s went down there. From what I gather, they were dispatched from the VII Air Force base at Morotai on a routine mission to pound down the Japanese at Jefman, where the Sorong airport is today, and ran into bad weather. By the time they got around the weather they didn't have enough fuel to make it back, so they all ditched at Wai and a PBY picked the pilots up later. So far, three of the P-47s have been found and there are more where that came from.
This was My House for a Week
Irian Jaya Page 1 Irian Jaya Page 2 Irian Jaya Page 3 Irian Jaya Page 4