Sailing the seas of Tuvalu: the universe of Te Namo lagoon

For: Laura Berdejo (Text and photos)
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When I saw from the cockpit of the plane carrying us to the geometry of its Tuvalu Funafuti Atoll, so round and film, with its islands, its birds and its deserted beaches by stepping, I promised to set foot on one of them, and had to arrive by boat, canoe, balsa or trunk, and leave the footprint of the chancleta in a pink beach, where there has been only in the last hundred years terns and crabs.

On the plane also he flew a Czech journalist who wanted to visit all visitable and, a few days of being there, He convinced a sailor dress tuvalense take us to the edge of the lagoon Te Namo up points that neither the ferryman himself had never visited. "Can we leave the atoll?”, André asked impatiently. “Nooooo. Do not leave the atoll ", Polynesian sailor sentenced without giving option argument medium.

We understood that it was his own world, a harmonious system where everything works as a perfect machine.

And one morning with sun, heat, very hot, and zero wind, we embarked on a wooden sloop left arm atoll where we lived, Fongafale, towards the limits usual.

Traqueteamos along our island driven by a weak engine to lose sight Fongafale and commit to us slowly, no shadow covering us nor sense of direction, in a turquoise sea where turtles dived, stripes and blankets, and even prawns and shrimps, I had only seen moving in a bar in San Sebastián.

We understood that it was his own world, a harmonious system where everything works as a perfect machine. And it is that everything is organized around an atoll biodiversity, spatial arrangement and resource management, enough to run a single cosmos, tiny, stunningly beautiful, with few altercations and much mildness.

But what is an atoll?

Atoll actually by a volcanic island is formed around the surface grow corals forming a circular figure. When certain conditions are given corals grow more and more and the island sinks and disappears until the ring of coral is only.

Sometimes the rings are partially sink or sea level rises and then, and Funafuti, make a series of islands which are arranged around a circular shaped lagoon.

When certain conditions are given corals grow more and more and the island sinks and disappears until the ring of coral is only.

The boatman suggested that we had no hope of finding many people as, of 22 islets called there in the lagoon (there are many, but they are so small they are unbaptized) Funafala was inhabited only. Some names of these coral appendices, for the reader's enjoyment, son Fatato, Funangongo, search namanu, Falefatu, Mateika, long, Avalau, Teafuafou, Equity, Vasafua, Pat ...

We ask then to stop at Funafala, to talk to people, and then, please, let us get down to a tiny islet, alejadísimo, floral pink sand and insolence.

Funafala has a hammock

When we arrived we were greeted at Funafala without fuss or surprise. The boatman was a regular and safe conduct served us in a strange land. The people showed a quiet affability, free from all imaginable tourist voltage, but I felt a sense of lack of courtesy, Infiltration in a domestic network, to reach a house unannounced.

They have fish sticks for hanging on the edge of the beach, fine sand like icing sugar, and calm music leisurely waves reaching the shore bringing conchitas.

It is a small island and absolutely beautiful. They have fish sticks for hanging on the edge of the beach, fine sand like icing sugar, and calm music leisurely waves reaching the shore bringing conchitas. Funafala has a black hammock and old enough to, the judgment of their 20 inhabitants, It is most convenient to the island and for this reason they let preference to grandma, passing day the sand hammock, the hammock in the sand, life watching and playing with two girls dressed in colorful T-shirts. It is called Fuvalu, you have 67 years and was born and will die here. It has no interest in knowing nothing.

Parrotfish do caca is coral sand

From Funafala sailed to a microislote whose name I forget, perhaps because he had no name, with a pink sand up the nerve.

My friend says Enrique, it is wise and geologist, the atoll beach are not formed by silica, like ours, or lava, such as volcanic islands, but coral. Coral eroded his death, when it is rigid and hard, some shells, and, especially, coral polyps whose parrot fish eat, They are having as a piquillo also scratch the outside. These fish engulf the polyp (soft) and coral (hard), and when they digestion, coral expel, which is calcium carbonate and just adding to the coral sand beaches Roses.

I played to lose a little in the insular and microselva, at one point I went from castaway to Doctor Livingstone

When I stepped on that sand shells and coral parrotfish I felt the same as those characters in film, after a terrible shipwreck, cuddled come to a table to an island full of birds where only hot, fire, fuzzy horizon and smells salt. I played to lose a little in the insular and microselva, at one point I went from castaway to Doctor Livingstone, divertimento and hope-fear that, Returning to shore rose, the little boat, the boatman and Czech were not more.

Slowly returned home, and that night I remembered a scene from the movie "Cast Away" I can not see without me out to shake: he, after four years alone on an island which has just abhorring, builds a raft and takes to the sea. We took an hour and half-hour film. Tom Hanks recedes, sick of the island, way to a promising future full of people and shopping centers, and suddenly you turn, see your home away on the horizon and then first enters the film music, Hans stops rowing, It stops to observe the blurred island, like a little boy, inevitably breaks to mourn.

 

 

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Comments (2)

  • Jaime

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    You can not describe or write better. While reading your text for a moment I have been surrounded by coral sharing that with you escapadita.

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