by Marit + Andrew Miners

What a busy six weeks it has been since our last update. In addition to all the usual hubbub, Andrew and Marit got married on 6th October in Penang, Malaysia. It was an absolutely phenomenal party, and we couldn't have dreamed of a better start to our life together.

We commandeered a beautiful old Chinese mansion for several days as friends and family poured in from four continents to wish us well. Our mothers and sisters and aunties spent a stormy afternoon festooning the house with flowers and jasmine garlands, and the boys strung the place with twinkling lights.

my terribly handsome husband

The rain tapered off into a soft cool evening. We were surrounded by love and happiness as we made our vows to one another. After the ceremony, we were met my a trishaw trailing empty beer cans. It remains unclear who is responsible for this, but I do have my suspicions...

our first trishaw ride as Mr and Mrs Miners

And it was wonderful to see the Misool Eco Resort crew get spiffied up (shoes and shirts, even ties!!) and then let their hair down as only those who live on a remote island can. Thorben, Cherry, and Ben made the long trip from Batbitim (leaving poor Jorg to hold down the fort). Our Singapore contingent was also in attendance, rounding out the ratio of dive nerds to yoginis.

We danced through the night with our bellies full of curry and hearts full of hope and joy and love.

The day after: Cherry, Thorben, Andrew, Bo, and Simon, Andrew's brother.

Following on from our petroglyph discoveries reported in our last update, Misool Conservation Centre’s French sister charity, Precious Planet, has been in contact with a leading authority on this sort of artifact. He has expressed great interest in the petroglyphs we have here in Misool, noting from our photos that there are unusual and perhaps unique designs. We are hoping he can make it out to the island in December for further study, and perhaps unlock some of the mysteries.

Towards the end of Marit’s last visit in September, we landed in Bali and began in earnest to scour the shops, markets and backstreet art shops for all the soft furnishings, lights and furniture that we'll need to make the interiors of the cottage comfortable. Slowly the picture started to emerge… a tasteful lamp shade here, some naturally dyed cotton there, a basin hewn from volcanic stone, a simple and elegant wooden chair.

After I’d seen Marit off at the airport, I set about packing the rest of the container I’d ordered to send to the island. Most of the container was taken up by six huge storage tanks, which will make a very simple but effective waste treatment system, converting black and grey water into water clean enough to slake our gardens’ thirst. The rest of the space was filled with a couple of very low power air conditioners, sheets, safes, sinks, mattresses, huge hanging lamps for the restaurant interior, curtains, cushions, cushion covers, hinges, handles and shiny fastenings for all the doors… deep breath… knifes, forks, spoons, plates, pots, pans, pillows, pillow cases, boxes and boxes of screws, bolts, nails and fastenings along with even more tools, drills, drill bits, blades for every tool known to man and a whole plethora of difficult to find bits and bobs, all that there is a dearth of in Sorong. I’m sure I forgot something…

I was very happy to arrive back on the island. I’d hitched a lift on a cargo boat which took all of two full days to make it from Sorong to Batbitim. We set off at night on Sunday and after driving very slowly around the harbour for five hours the captain declared there was a mysterious noise coming from the engine and so we were to delay our departure till the next day. A restless night’s sleep followed, aided by the over crowded boat, teeth grinding neighbors and the occasional rat sniffing at my feet. In the morning we returned to the dock; well nearly - the captain ran the boat aground on a sand bank… twice. It would have been hilarious watching the rather scraggily crew jump into the murky harbour water in their underpants to push the boat free, only I had almost no sleep AND no coffee that morning so I was hardly in the mood.

We finally set off again the next evening. The captain called to say the engine was fixed, when I asked to the problem he cheerfully informed me that the mechanic had listened to it run for one minute and declared that it was perfectly fine. With a lingering feeling of impending doom we set off into the night. The passage went smoothly until we were running along the coast of Misool the next morning. Then there was an almighty bang from the engine room as the engine began to self destruct. In the midst of plenty of groaning from the crew, I turned my iPod up to full volume and reminded myself that my impatience would do absolutely nothing to speed our journey to the island… Enshallah!

Arriving on the island was like coming home. It was a beautiful calm evening with the bay full of picture perfect blue water and the warm evening light deepening the reds of the freshly constructed roofs that I could already see from a distance. The guys had indeed been busy.

Progress on the over-water walkway which will connect the cottages on the west side of the bay had flown along and in the next couple of weeks they should have reached the end. The generator and compressor rooms now have the walls and roofs on, and with Joergs’ chip-lapped wooden wall covering they’ll blend in nicely to the natural rock cliff behind.

plastered wall of the cottage and our fledgling jasmine plants

Ben and Tadin have proven to be quite a team. Translating architect Viv Faithfull's plans into the first guest cottage involved plenty of scratching of heads, muttering, and cursing in assorted languages. The two seem to have cracked the code though, and the first cottage is nothing short of spectacular.

looking over the cottage

The steeply pitched alang-alang roof creates a roomy outdoor living area, framing the view of Kalig across the strait. The underside of the roofs is a rich golden colour of layered grass, a beautiful contrast to the clear cool blue of the water below and sky above. The walls are rendered with cement and local sand between exposed hardwood posts. This gives the structure a warm, natural feel. And perhaps best of all, this natural plaster has eliminated the need for toxic paint.

view from the back of the first cottage

looking up at the ceiling on the terrace

The Mandala roof of the restaurant, an unusual self-supporting structure that is as beautiful as its namesake, is finally standing. Twelve enormous beams, each weighing at least 150 kgs, slots perfectly together at the apex to form the whole, the roof not supporting itself till the last beam is in place. Each beam must be in the perfect position before the next one is fitted, otherwise what begins as a hair fine gap in the first joint is multiplied to an unacceptable space in the last.

Over the last couple of weeks, Thorben, Sudarmono and a group of the guys have taken every beam up and down nine times! There are 12 beams and each one must weigh over 150kg, so that’s no mean feat when you are standing on a rickety support structure twenty feet above the beach. As you can imagine, it was a happy time then when the day after I arrived they finally got the last beam in perfectly and the main construction was finished. Thorben, Jorg, Sasha and I celebrated by going for a late afternoon dive.

the generator room

After my two day adventure at sea, the dive was just what I needed. A forceful reminder of why we are all putting so much effort into building this resort. When I roll of the boat and descend underwater here, I can’t think of anywhere else in the world I’d rather be. We were diving a pinnacle I’d never before dived, just a stone’s throw from the grind of the construction site we all call home.

We dropped down and swam slowly up current to the point. The fish and coral colours were beyond my description. After hanging on the point for some time, soaking up the peaceful beauty of the reef and watching the ebb and flow of the shoals of fish around us, we let the current carry us and drifted west along what turned out to be one long ridge covered with life. Drifting in the gentle current, hovering just a few feet above a vibrant reef, rates very high up there in my “favourite things to do list.”

the dive centre with its brand new doors

I was so happy to switch my brain off from all the stresses of work and just let the colours drift beneath me as the fish dart around me. At one point, we came across a huge school of blue lined snappers. These small yellow fish carpeted the reef and gently parted around me and enveloped me in their school. For a moment I was just another one of their number, their collective consciousness swaying with the rhythm of the reef. Then I was out the other side and ascending slowly to my safety stop on the pinnacle at the end of the ridge. We hung on to a couple of big rocks using up the last of our air as gold spot trevally darted around us hunting in the diminishing light, then slowly ascended to our dinghy… a perfect end to the day.