Week 8 – Heart of darkness

You know that scene in Apocalypse Now redux, the one where the boat arrives at the camp by the river and it is pouring with rain, the tents are falling down, everything is a mess and everyone is crazy? That is similar to Mbalisuna FOB, with the exception of the river and a few less crazies. The camp is situated smack in the middle of a palm plantation which the Islanders use for oil extraction. It is about 2km as the crow flies from Honiara so it is somewhat isolated, hopefully here we might see a croc. We soon settled into our tent, for once finally separate from the other sections which will be a sanity saver.

From here we set off on a 3 day patrol around the immediate area. This was a mixed bag with someone screwing up the planning and saying our night locations were aware that we were coming; when it turns out they have been abandoned for 10 years! Someone dropped the ball on that one. But other than that the patrol was pretty good, we stayed at schools like last time and showed the kids movies. We treated some wounded locals, shifted some coconut logs that were in the way and talked to a lot of people. Oh, and we found a huge crop of Marijuana growing not 50 metres from the road. However as we were only informed of the general location of the crop and going off a hunch we stealthed in through thick jungle and passed within 10 metres of the locals without them seeing or hearing us. This was probably the first time on the deployment I used the skills I had learnt in basic. Still, we got in and out unobserved, took some photos and a few samples and hightailed it out of there as Breidahl and I had been bitten by some somewhat poisonous spiders. Overall a success I would say, although it is likely someone else will claim the credit.

We finished the week off with a trip out to Bonegi and pebble beach, not so much wreck diving this time and more getting hammered in the surf and off the rope swing. Wrapped up the trip with a chocolate brownie, a chocolate thick shake and a game of spot the white chick at the cafe in town.