Land Ahoy – Sailing into Christmas Island

After 15 days at sea I was desperate to see land, however the view as we sailed into ‘Flying Fish Cove’ on Christmas Island was stunningly disappointing. In the 400 years since Captain William Mynors, a fellow Brit, had first arrived on Christmas Day 1643, 2,000 people have moved to this isolated speck of land and now called it home. The scars of this inhabitation were obvious; the phosphate mining industry dominates Christmas Island, and our first view was an ugly panorama of dusty processing plants and factories, and rusty pipelines which cascaded down cliffs and into the ocean where they filled the hungry stomachs of giant tanker-ships with ore.

We moored by the jetty beside a banner which welcomed us to ‘the island of natural beauty’. I wondered if this was sarcastic, at the very least it seemed a bold marketing strategy. I stepped onto land, determined to find the ‘natural beauty’ promised by the sign. Christmas Island is irregularly-shaped like a splodge of ink, only 15 km (10 miles) from East to West and North to South, but the whole population live on a thin strip of land in the north. And so, I headed south.

Ant and Wyn were keen to join me, so we rented a car. The road soon became a gravel lane and eventually a narrow off-road track with bushes that had grown across it and vines that dangled from trees to tickle the windshield. Evidently few cars came this way; several times we had to clear fallen branches from the road. I was glad Anthony and Wyn persuaded me to rent a car, as I would have been waiting a while (days, weeks, months?!) to hitchhike around here. I didn’t know it was possible to leave civilisation behind so completely in 10 kilometres.

Caves on Christmas Island

In small italics my map mentioned the irresistibly-named ‘Daniel Roux Cave’, so we headed there. A yawning crack in the cliff-face swallowed all daylight and a chain-link fence blocked this opening, with a faded sign barely-legible; ‘Entry Prohibited - DANGER‘. But it was only a half-hearted barrier with space to easily pass under, around or over the fence, more of an invitation than an obstacle.

With headtorches strapped on we slipped under the fence and descended into the void, watching the shaft of light from the opening shrink away. The air became thick and humid, stalactites hung around us, and a steady dripping broke the silence. We weren’t the first here; surprisingly, a complex network of ladders traversed the rock and led from one cavern to the next. In places the scale was vast, and the end of the ladder was lost in the distant gloom where darkness reclaimed the light of our headtorch. At other times the cave walls tightened around us and I was sure we had reached the deepest limits of the cave - by now, 50 or 60 vertical metres of rock sat above us - but every time the ladders found a way through and guided us deeper underground.

We had been exploring 30 minutes when Ant knocked a pebble which ricocheted off the rocks below before landing with a splash that echoed around the chamber. We glanced down to see the light of our headtorches reflected back. Water! We were now gripped by the mysterious caves, so stripped to our underwear and lowered ourselves into the water, walked on tip-toes, until it was too deep and we had to swim, careful to keep our headtorches above water. The water was clear, and the light danced through the ripples of the water, bouncing and shimmering off the walls.

I would love to say that we reached the end of the caves, but 15 minutes of swimming later they still appeared endless. Concerned that Wyn might be organising a rescue party, and that our headtorches might run out of battery, we turned around and continued back the way we had come. It had been a good start to the search for ‘natural beauty’.

Christmas Island Crabs

Christmas Island is famous for its crabs. Millions call the island home, with many species found nowhere else. The annual rainy season hosts a ‘red crab migration’ as millions of pregnant crabs make an epic journey from the forests, across the rugged island to lay their eggs in the Ocean. This spectacle brings the island to a halt with road closures and a brief tourism boom. Sadly the migration was a month away, but everywhere I went, I saw crabs. A pincer protruding from the bark of a tree. A shifting mass clinging to the cliffs, and being slammed by Ocean Swell. Every shell on the beach concealed a hermit crab which scurried away as I approached, and as I hiked crabs burrowed out of the soil, disappearing as quickly as they appeared. I felt my every move being stalked by the watchful gaze of unseen crabs, feeling like the start of a horror movie.

Christmas Island is one of the only places Coconut Crabs are found. They are the largest crustacean found on land anywhere in the world.

I caught this coconut crab at night trying to break into the container I had kept my dinner in.

The Great Turtle Search

Joined by Wyn, I drove until the road petered out, and then walked through jungle until it felt like the end of the world. Turtles are one of my favourite animals, but the rugged coastline and cliffs of Christmas Island is unhospitable to them, making sandy ‘Dolly Beach’ one of the island’s best spots to see them. Many come to nest here, above the high-tide mark Dolly Beach looked like a war-zone, pocked with large craters where turtles had laid their eggs.

We had forgotten to bring a lighter to start a fire with, but the ashes of a fire from the previous night still smouldered. I rushed around gathering coconut husks and dry driftwood to keep it going, while Wyn breathed life into the embers until we had a fire. As the sun fell into the sea we strung our hammocks between two palm trees, and gathered around the fire with dinner, a beer chilled in a rock-pool, and waves crashing behind us. We sat mostly in silence, and I thought about nothing, I was simply there, soaking it in.

Sleeping anywhere is one of my superpowers acquired while travelling, and so I slept well, waking every two hours to check for turtles. Wyn, on the other hand, couldn’t get comfy in his hammock so lay on the sand, until a rogue wave washed up the beach and soaked him. He moved further up the beach, until he woke with a curious crab examining his ear. Half asleep, I went for a pee in the night, and was woken by a coconut landing on my heels; it must have fallen millimetres from my head! I feel the need to include all this for the sake of showing the truth behind the pictures of ‘paradise’.

The turtles never came that night. I suspect the waves were too large for them. But I wasn’t disappointed, I was just glad to have spent a night in Dolly Beach.

I’m lucky to still be alive!

Snorkelling

One afternoon Ant and I walked west from Flying Fish Cove and along the clifftop until we found a point where I felt confident enough to jump in. We threw our masks, snorkel and fins in first, and followed behind them. The sea was 20 metres deep, and the water so clear that I could see the sea-floor with startling clarity. Rather than swimming through water, I felt suspended in mid-air and vertigo surged through me as I feared I might fall at any moment.

We swam along the coast exploring the rifts and recesses of the cliffs, and swaying in the ebb and flow of the waves which pulled us in and out. An endless parade of fish of every shape, size and colour passed around us. A local lady had told us that this spot, just around the headland to the harbour, was where fishermen discarded their offcuts into the sea which resulted in a feeding frenzy of sharks and other huge fish. We saw a White Tip Reef Shark, snaking along the sea-bed below me, and had mixed feelings, both relieved and disappointed, that we didn’t see anything bigger.

Paradise Found

After that initial disappointing view, I found beauty everywhere on Christmas Island. I had explored its caves, and slept on its beaches, and driven all over, but I had barely scratched the surface. It is a land where waves smash against the cliffs and erupt through blowholes like the jet from a whale, and where thick jungle obscures waterfalls, and mountains are criss-crossed by footpaths that culminate in vantage points gazing out over the entire island and to the empty sea beyond. 2,000 people from many countries and cultures live together peacefully and alongside animals found nowhere else in the world. As we sailed from Flying Fish Cove I looked back on the factories and the pipelines with a sadness, knowing that beyond them lay the most perfect place, ‘the island of natural beauty.’