Waigeo, 2 February 2025

I was up at 4am this morning to go on an adventure. While I was doing this, Lynn went back to sleep. There was a light breakfast and on the tender at 4am to take us in to the port of Waisai on Waigeo. From there we pile in to a convoy of cars – a fleet of little hatchbacks which drove up a windy road into the hills, then turned up a muddy rutted track that I wouldn’t have believed a 2wd could manage. At about 5.30 we got out and kept walking for another 45 minutes. This was fairly slow as it was still completely dark and the steep track was muddy and slippery with leaf litter and we had to cross several creeks. Eventually we reached a set of bird hides. Really just long wooden frames covered with palm fronds and a wooden bench.

We had been told that this site got around 8-10 red birds of paradise each morning and evening which dance and compete with each other. I had to pick between this excursion and another that went to a completely different location to see the Wilson’s bird of paradise. Unfortunately, the heavy rain last night meant only one or two birds showed up. Mostly they sat in dense foliage but one came out for a couple of minutes to sit on a visible branch. It might have put on a display but if so I didn’t see it. And they do this high up, at the equivalent of what would be the top branches in a gum tree.

After an hour or so standing silently in the hide we walked back. This was considerably quicker and more pleasant in the daylight. The whole process reversed and I was back on the ship at a quarter to nine where I found Lynn having breakfast.

The rest of the morning was at leisure, so we read and I admit to catching up on a bit of sleep (during a lecture in the lounge about the Austronesian expansion). In the afternoon we were meant to go ashore on a small island, to swim and snorkel from the beach and then have drinks. This got complicated when the crew decided that the tide was too low and there would need to be tenders and then zodiacs to get to the beach. In the end we stayed aboard and took the day off. Then had drinks on the top deck looking at the array of islands around us before dinner.