Pum village, our final destination on Rossel Island, was too far to travel as the reefs were dangerous to navigate at night. So we were advised by the captain that he was going to try and organise a nights stay in a village on shore. As the vessel anchored fishing canoes emerged from the shore and swarmed the boat, excited locals came out to greet the passengers and crew. It was the first boat they had seen in months.

We were supposedly one day journey away from Rossel Island, however we had now heard this same claim for four days. We had no way of verifying the sincerity of claims made by the crew and passengers (most of the time they would say what they thought we wanted to hear, rather then what we needed to hear). I had given up feeling frustrated long ago as this reaction seemed futile in the given circumstances. I instead opted for enjoying the unpredictability of the journey, and the fact I had seemingly lost my mind helped.

We anchored in a bay on an island called Nimoa and were quite excited  to go ashore. The village on the island had a canteen and this meant potentially getting some tailor made cigarettes. We overloaded the dinghy with those that wanted to go ashore... We bought some supplies and followed the captain to the Catholic parish to discuss renting a room for the night.

Fear is relative to the safety standards in the environment you travel, there are always inherent standards of safety that you cannot shake and these standards not being met will attribute to your fear. However in a country with no regulated safety requirements , the local level of fear is calloused. This became apparent after a boat trip to a remote island named Rossel.