TOTAL BLISS OR BUST

It has been nearly two weeks since I last had access to the internet, and so much has happened since then! It may take several posts for me to write it all down...so bear with me and be patient. Ah...patience. I quickly learned the importance of patience on a trip such as mine. When things are looking bleak, just be patient and they generally tend to come together. Patience, which I learned at a young age while shopping with my mother, is what took me from a lonely room in Port Blair, to a camp site in a remote corner of Little Andaman Island on a tropical beach, surfing some of the better waves I've ever surfed, while watching out for sharks, saltwater crocodiles, the world's most poisenous sea snake, and...oh yes, native tribal people notorious for shooting foreigners with their bows and arrows. But that's getting a little ahead of myself.
The night before my planned departure to Little Andaman, I stopped in an internet cafe to write Michelle one last letter and wish her luck on the beginning of her journey to Budapest. On my way out, I saw a young western traveller and said 'hello'. We struck up a short conversation and quickly discovered we had quite a bit in common: he and his buddy, both from California, had been in Port Blair for several days and were trying to get to Little Andaman to surf the notorious right hand break, Kumarie Point (Little Andaman is about the only somewhat accessable island in the Andaman's with surf). I told him about my difficulties aquiring a ticket, and suggested he show up an hour before the ferry the next morning to try to buy passage through one of the crew members.
The next morning, I made my way down to Pheonix Bay Jetty for my 6:30 ferry, where I found Noah, Ryan (the two californian's), Toni (a swedish guy I met the day before...did I mention him in my last post?), and Krishna (Toni's friend from India), who had all successfuly managed to purchase tickets for the 6 1/2 hour boat ride to Little Andaman. The ferry ride was very nice and beautiful from the top deck, but the Indians who preferred to stay on the lower decks were not so sea worthy and filled their quarters with vomit and aching groans...not a very pleasent place to walk through. After a long ride, we finally approached Little Andaman. Our first look revealed an Elephant hard at work on the beach moving timber. Our next look around revealed a somewhat less exciting sight: no surf. Well...one thing at a time. We all piled into a jeep with our luggage and surfboards and began the search for lodgings. ...I forgot to mention the dinner Toni and I had our last night in Port Blair. We ate with a large group who had just come from Little Andaman and had one peice of advice for us: "Do not go to Little Andaman." They said it was depressing, the people rude, and impossible to find a place to stay (they ended up spending their one night there on the floor of the school house). However, I had a connection from my hotel manager to the ANCOFED Guest House, where he said a room would be waiting for me. After asking numerous people we got our second bit of bad news (the first being the lack of surf), the ANCOFED Guest House does not exist. Great. But, we had Krishna whose linguistic skills proved invaluable as he served as our translater and, after jumping around between about 4 different guest houses, we had one room to share for the five of us. The cramped space didn't bother us one bit, we were ecstatic just to have a roof over our heads. At this point we boarded the local bus and rode it around its entire route of windy dirt roads through the jungle connecting littl communes of thatched huts and central markets. We stopped at one market and one beautiful beach where I chose to shed all my clothes and jump in the water, which was 75+ degrees and perfect.
Noah, Ryan and I knew that we needed to reach the south coast of the Island (Hut Bay, where our boat landed us is on the East side and the entire West side is a Tribal reserve for the Onge and Jarawa people) in order to find a beach that recieved swell from the open ocean. Kumari Point was located at the far Southwest corner of the island...our ideal destination. We spent the entire day speaking with fishermen about chartering one of their dhongies for several days to reach the south coast. Krishna was again very helpful in all these dealings, but no matter how hard he tried the arrangements always came full circle, from yes, no problem, to no way, leaving us exactly where we started. After so many dealings, we realized the people just enjoyed talking about the transaction, but no action ever took place. Other than these interactions, our encounters with the locals (all Indians) were long, glaring, suspicious stares that did not alter no matter how many smiles and waves we offered. The stares were quite isolating and sad. Little Andaman was completely ravaged one year before by the tsunami and with its super remote location it appeared as though reconstruction was just beginning. The people, I assumed, had grown so complacent due to the tsunami - their entire way of life had been destroyed by one wave, making them question the meaning and importance of there lives...and here we were searching out the biggest waves we could find so we could surf. hmmm... Late afternoon arrived and we were a little restless with our complete failure at finding a boat. So, Noah, Ryan and I rented bikes and headed in the opposite direction from the Jetty as Hut Bay and the bus route took us. ...we passed the ANCOFED Guest House. We by now had our accomodation set up and the bit of misinformation, which it seemed is all we'd received since arriving, only made us laugh. The pavement soon ended and we were riding on a bumpy dirt road that wound through a beautiful palm forest. Eventually, we approached a village with a sign in front that read "Harminder Bay; Tsunami relief village." It was a bunch of hastilly put together tin shacks, with dirt fields full of children - far too many children for the amount of adults, which instantly hit hard for me. These are the people whose lives and families were really torn apart. The people were all Nicobari, who (I discovered in my Andaman Tribal Book) had been moved from Car Nicobar Island to Little Andaman in the 60's and 70's. These people had all lived in coastal villages before the tsunami and the sea was their livlihood. They looked to be of a more Polynesian decent; short, beady eyes, wide features exemplified by their enormouse mouths that, to our delight and suprise, greeted each of us with huge smiles. The solace of the place at first affected our moods as we began to ride through the village, but as every single person we encountered greeted us with a wide grin and enthusiastic 'hello' we realized this was not the sad place we expected. In fact, they proved to be the happiest people I've met on my trip thus far and lifted all of our spirits with their kindness.
Back in Hut Bay, we made more attempts at getting a boat with no success. The next morning, Krishna woke us up at five saying a man had agreed to take us in his boat. We began to pack but stopped when Krishna came back saying the man had decided to back out...no suprise. We told Krishna about this village and together he, Ryan, Noah and I went back to Harminder Bay to see if we could find a ride there (Toni was still asleep). We had been in the village for about ten minutes. We were being served tea and chatting with some of the children as Krishna was off talking to some people. Krishna then aproached with a group. One man had his shirt off and Ryan commented, "Jeez, all of these people are so ripped!" It was true. Even the 70 year old men looked as though they could give us a whooping. Krishna announced, "This guy has said he'll guide us to Kumari Point (pointing to the dude with no shirt). We can leave in one hour." Just like that...a little patience and it all worked out. This guy agreed to drop everything he was doing and guide us to the south end of the Island on foot, for however long it would take, at 300 Rupees about 6 dollars)a day, a small fraction of what we were offering the fishermen. In several hours we were back at the village with all our gear and met our guide, Manu, who himself had amassed several more men and two women, all ready for the journey. From the village, we embarked into the jungle. One thing was on my mind: Total bliss or bust. To be continued...