Conversations Matter Talk to me
From the moment we touched down on the Atoll of Majuro, we knew we were an anomaly. If you need to search the map to find it, you would not be alone. No one, I mean no one visits here. Only 5000 people a year venture to the Marshall Islands, 4996 of them are here because they have to be. Then there's us (and a guy named Tim who thinks he got pranked.)
Our initial reaction was "how soon can we get out?" Honestly, we looked for flights. But alas, we were stranded. Plan B, try to figure this place out. Day 1 we found a guy with a couple of unregistered scooters, so we paid $20 each for the day and took the one road from end to end. Then we sat in the hotel restaurant people-watching & eavesdropping. We were baffled. Day 2 the strategy was to accost unsuspecting strangers and pepper them with questions. Chiefly, "why are you here?"
The answers were far reaching and fascinating. Massive tuna fishing boats pack the lagoon. Many of the Aussie guys here are helicopter pilots who spot and wrangle 10-25 tonne pods of tuna into nets. There are missionaries, CanvasBack surgeons, volunteer teachers from WorldTeach and Dartmouth, scientists studying the effects of the recent drought, a radio producer sending out the climate change warning, engineering interns building reverse osmosis machines (clean water is scarce), and a charming group of "yachties" here for safe harbour until they can cross the pacific in late May. The more people we talked to the more intriguing this place became. The pieces of the puzzle were coming together.
We were here to scuba dive, and everything we'd read said that was possible. Not so easy. The only dive master, a guy named Hiro from Japan, was 600 miles off island at the infamous Bikini Atoll (70 nuclear bomb tests were conducted here over a 12 year span. Missile tests still happen there) and no one knew when he'd return. But our conversations paid off, one guy knew another guy who'd take us out on his boat.
The dives were stellar. Healthy, untouched reefs, 200 types of coral and over 800 species of fish. We dove to a wrecked Cenpac tuna boat 120' deep, shallow reefs in bathtub warm turquoise water and a challenging tidal dive to the "aquarium" that can only be described as a fishy cirque de soleil extravaganza. Now, sadly, we have to leave. We know we won't be back, we suspect there may not be a place to come back to. At its highest point Majuro is 3 metres above sea level, and the sea is beating them. Last summer they were battered and flooded, who knows what is to come.
We are leaving with fond memories and high hopes for this little chunk of coral in the vast South Pacific Ocean.
