Xmas travels part III...Lovely Lola

After those first few days in Munda, we spent the rest of our holiday in the delightful bosom of Lola Island. A classic island paradise: sandy white beaches, bountiful palm trees, just a handful of leaf bungalows and an open fronted bar on the water’s edge. As always with these places, it was defined by the people who ran it, and the other lucky souls staying there. Both were lovely, and though my diary is full of notes of the unique characters we met, I won’t bore you all with the details. But to Kate and Asim, Adi and Johan and Piero and Napoleon, in case you are reading this, t’was a privilege to meet you all and share such an amazing time: Long live Lola. I was particularly impressed with the latter two, lone sailors who had sailed from Panama, and tempted by the possibility of doing the reverse journey whenever I eventually leave Solomon waters. The long-term residents/staff of Lola were equally delightful - one minute catching barracuda, the next minute hooking fresh squid for lunch, and the next jumping on a surf board and bombing around the lagoon scurfing (which I failed miserably at). So cheers Lionel, Colin, Ramona and Fillis.

These Lola days were spent doing all the simple things in life: sleeping, eating, snoozing, reading, napping, swimming, dozing, fishing, while evenings we spent drinking and joking. Strange that paradise is so boring to describe. But paradise it was and with luck I’ll find my way back at some point again in 2007 or 2008. Initially we planned to spend New Year’s Eve in Honiara, but in the end we couldn’t tear ourselves away and one swift phone call was all it took for us to change our flight. The night was a memorable classic. Our little crew (complete with some wandering pikininis) spent 6 hours warming up on the jetty, boozing and eating and playing games, while little boats full of totally spakered villagers arrived one-by-one. By midnight the place was pretty packed, and by day-break, when Fiona and I tore ourselves away from barefoot dancing on the sand to island tunes and staggered back to our bungalow for a 2 hour kip before our flight, the dancefloor was still a mess of hilarious, staggering, incoherent and occasionally scuffing spakamastas.