Things that grow out of the soil...: Return to the Indian Ocean

On Tuesday, 2 June, we had the unveiling of W's wound and found that it was finally closed. Since it was that stubborn wound that had been keeping us away from the beach, we immediately scheduled a beach trip for Saturday, 6 June. For this trip, we headed back down to the Indian Ocean, this time hoping to hit a snorkeling beach called Pantai Gglambor, which we've read has an island that keeps the waves at bay, letting you see the fish and coral. This was the beach we were trying to get to the first time we made it to the Indian Ocean, when we had the magical mistake of finding ourselves on the deserted beaches of the Pacitan area.

Here we are, having driven 3 hours to Pantai Gglambor. Now we're walking the half kilometer to the beach from the parking area. To the disappointment of the good people at the parking area, we didn't want to get on their motorcycles to make the half kilometer trip, even though it would have only been 40 cents a person. I would have paid 40 cents a person not to ride a motorcycle on the trail.

Ten minutes later, we got our first view of the waves that were blocked by Pantai Nglambor's island. Look at those break!

And there's the island, blocking them.

But the surf was up today and the island wasn't working like it was supposed to work. Watch the white water cruise on in past the island. And look at those acres and acres of white water. This would have been like trying to snorkel at Shark's Cove in Oahu on a February day. Click here (and scroll down) to see some pictures of two men trying to do this.

They weren't even letting people in the water at Nglambor, so we went over to Pantai Siung, nearby. Here's N walking out toward the beach. Our driver Andi stands a bit closer to the camera. (He says he doesn't like the beach or the ocean.)

But S and W do!

Looking to the right at some cliffs.

Zooming in on them.

Someone wanted to take our picture, and after he took our pic with his camera, I asked him to take it with ours.

Looking in the other direction, to the right.

We walked to the right until we came to a stream entering the ocean. But where was N? What was she doing?

She was finding seashells, kerang in Indonesian. This was a good shell-collecting beach, but only N knew it yet.

I was still looking at this rock. Thinking about it's story, how it would go something like this: in the first year, .2 centimeters of its base washed away; in the second year, .2 centimeters of its base washed away;in the third year, .2 centimeters of its base washed away;in the fourth year, .2 centimeters of its base washed away; in the fifth year, .2 centimeters of its base washed away. And if you think that sounds interesting, wait it get more interesting, because it keeps on going like that. Until it tips over 300 years in the future, and then begins again.

We didn't have the beach all to ourselves like in Pacitan. But it was still pretty sparsely populated.

We fell in among a group looking back over toward that cliff. What were they looking at?

Oh wait let me zoom in to the base of the cliffs. That's what they were looking at!

Up on top of the cliff there were some people who no doubt we taking selfies of each other.

We started walking over toward those cliffs.

N was still dedicated to shell hunting, and soon we all joined in. It wasn't long until I said that this was the best shell collecting beach I had ever been to.

The ocean says to the rock, "Last year I eroded .1 centimeter of your base, but this year I'm going erode .1 centimeter."

We got over toward the base of the cliffs and the waves crashing up onto the rocks made great waterfalls as they streamed off the old lava.

I said we should watch the sea boiling for a second and W wondered if it was really boiling and how it could do that.

W found some abalone shells.

It's not every abalone that has such a cool pattern on it.

Looking back at the congregation of boats, I thought about the lonely Harum Manis that we saw in Pacitan and wished it well.

Still, these crazy rocks and crazy waves

These were the stairs up to the place where we has seen the selfie takers.

Look at this scattering of flotsam and jetsam. There's shells in that flotsam and jetsam!

We found rocky point in the beach, frequently washed by the waves, and we set about looking for shells between the pounding waves.

She was collecting so many good shells, as were we all.

What W? You found another abalone shell?

We met a young man who had a boat he was going to send out into the waves. He even decked it out with the Merah Putih.

There it is, sturdy and uncapsiza--

But then he fished it out because it flipped over in a wave

Setting it back adrift

Now waiting and watching.

We met a man from Nusa Tenggara, though we didn't catch which island he was from. He was studying in Jogja and would only speak English to us, even if I had hoped to hear if a person from Nusa Tenggara spoke Indonesian with a different accent than a person from Jawa. He took N's bag of shells from her and looked inside and told us that Indonesians don't like collecting shells because "they're not good." I was surprised at the idea that Indonesians wouldn't like sea shells, since the word for shell is kerang, which I had always assumed was related to the word karang(an), which without the -an means coral, and with the -an means either a literary-type essay or a bouquet of flowers. I had a hard time believing he was right about Indonesians not liking shells, but he was insistent. He said a shell is useful if there's something to eat inside, but other than that, who care's about them? (Later, I asked our driver Andi his opinion about shells, and he didn't like them and didn't seem interested in seeing any that we had found. I asked him if it was true that Indonesians didn't like shells, and he said it was. I was still skeptical though.)

S, looking out into the infinity of the ocean, contemplating the meaning of a world where shells have no meaning.

This yellow suit seemed like a far cry from the song about yellow swimwear that I had heard on the oldies station long ago. We met up with these women and talked with them for awhile and they took pictures of (and with) us and we took pictures of (and with) them.

Here we are, having our picture taken with them.

Good-bye, but first lemme show you this water.

Rather than walk through this river, we took a bridge.

Now we were back to the area we started at

S and W started playing in the ocean. S enjoyed the waves so much that she said, "We should always swim when the tide is coming in!"

A look back at the cliff and the steady stream of selfie takers.

Others on the beach were just as enthusiastic as S about the rising tide.

Before leaving the beach, I took a pic of one of the shells N found. (Our driver Andy wasn't impressed with even this one though.)

You can see I was impressed with it, in the face of his disregard.

Later we went looking for an even more isolated beach and found Pantai Indrayanti, which wasn't quite what we were looking for, but was an interesting place to visit.

A lot of people were interested in our arrival, and we began among a frenzy of people and shutter clicks.

As our new acquaintances were instructing us on how to pose, I took pictures of them.

Here we are, having our picture taken.

And after the frenzy of our arrival, we were given a little more space.

Walking as always to the cliffs.

N met someone on the beach and was in conversation.

And I also made some acquaintances.

N looks like she's getting a little aggressive in this conversation, but I think I just caught her at tough moment.

We hiked up the side of the sloping cliffs, where there were locals collecting voluntary contributions, and I apologized that I hadn't brought money with me on this walk. They still let us pass.

I looked out onto the miles of acres of white water.

I talked with my Indonesian tutor the other day who said that hiking had become much more popular these days. But not among people who are really interest in hiking. People hike so they can post their selfies to the social media. I wondered where I would be right now if I didn't have a camera. Would I have even come to the beach or would I have been pining at home, looking at people's beach pictures on social media, wishing I were at the beach with a camera.

Somehow, even though the waves have no camera, they manage to stay motivated.

We hiked to the other side of the cliff, where we found you could get to another beach if you had a little money to go on a zipline. We didn't have any money, so we contented our selves asking W how going on a zipline feels, since he had recently been on a zipline at Kiddy Playland. He vividly described all of the sensations. Going to Kiddie Playland will be a deep well that he and S will draw on for the rest of their lives.

We saw some aquaculture. I wouldn't have know what was going on here, except I saw a man throwing food pellets into the vats. So I'm assuming he was feeding fish and not seahorses.

After Indrayanti, we went to another beach

N's enthusiasm for the task at hand set us all looking for more shells!

The water was shallow over the lavaflow. And the algae was so luxurious that W said, "This green stuff is so soft!"

We took the long walk to the other side of the beach.

Let me put some shells in that bag.

From here, we got into the car and drove to a beach called Baron (no pics). It was in a bay full of beached perahu and at the mouth of a big muddy river. We decided not to get in at this one, even though it seemed like such a popular beach. N wanted to change in the changing area here, so I sat with W and eventually S waiting for her. During that time, a crowd of maybe eight people gathered to talk with us. I asked them if they liked sea shells and they didn't. I showed them that shell that N was so proud of and our main interlocutor warned us that the spines are poisonous. They enjoyed teasing W and S about not speaking Indonesian, and W and S responded with a variety of humors good and frustrated sometimes.

When we got home, our neighbor had prepared dinner for us. She was wearing a shirt we had given her, way back when we first moved in, when we were arranging for her to pick S up from school. We wanted to make sure S recognized her, so we asked her to wear the shirt when she picked S up. At this point of course, the shirt is obsolete for those purposes.