Massacre Bay ver. 1 “Lost in the Jungle”

Melanie and several of the other mothers had a wonderful idea to go for a hike as part of their Mother’s Day presents. Unfortunately, Mother’s Day weekend did not work out for this special day. It ended up being postponed until Memorial Day weekend. Melanie wanted to go someplace new and so the prospect of a hike down to Massacre Bay was proposed. So on the Friday before I was asked to make several GIS maps of the trail and area surrounding Massacre Bay. Being somewhat obsessive and a total map geek, I took to the job with zeal. The latest IKONOS and QUICKBIRD satellite imagery, current topographical maps, and even 3D rendering of the island was incorporated into a series of seven maps.
The next day, Melanie, and her friends Carol and Deepa, went for their Mother’s Day hike. No kids, no husbands, and no time schedules. It was to be a nice relaxing day at the beach…

In hearing the story later on it was a wonderful day. Everyone had a nice hike down and enjoyed a relaxing day snorkeling and lounging on the beach…

While all this was going on Jay, Matt, and myself took our respective kids to another beach and had fun playing on the beach and in the surf. I found a large coconut, which I named Harry, and had several of the younger kids entertained for hours with our makeshift toy. After a few hours on the beach we all went our separate ways home for dinners. At around 5pm I called Jay to see if he had heard anything from any of the wives. In fact, we both spoke over each other asking the question. You see it starts to get dark here at 6pm and it is pitch black by 6:45pm. We knew the wives were not prepared to be out past dark.

Around 6pm I got the call from Jay saying that he had spoken with Matt and indeed they were supposed to be home by 5pm at the latest and he had not heard anything either. It was decided that Jay and I were heading out into the jungle to look for some missing palangi (white) women (our wives). Keep in mind that neither Jay nor I had ever been anywhere around this area. Also note that this is one of the remotest areas on our island. So Jay and I loaded up on headlamps and water fully expecting to spend the night in the jungle.

It was completely dark at this point and having never been to this area, we got to the trailhead and were still wondering if we were even in the right place. We then came across Deepa’s car and we knew two things. One was that we were indeed in the right starting place. The other was that the girls were still out in the jungle.

We started down the trail and began yelling every 50 yards or so. All we would hear in response was silence or the occasion bat flying out of the trees. We started to plan for various scenarios. Our worst fear was that the girls had started up the trail and as it got dark they wandered off the trail and were now somewhere lost in the jungle. This was the worst case for us because it meant a search area of about 8 square miles. One of the other leading scenarios was that someone was hurt and was unable to hike out. This was less of a dilemma since we would be able to get the National Park boat into the shore and evacuate them from shore in the morning. So wandering aimlessly in the jungle was the worst case.

We continued down the trail yelling all the time. After about 45 minutes we could clearly hear the ocean and we began to wonder if the girls would ever be able to hear us yelling. Then we got to a crossroads. The trail (if you can really call it that) had two very distinct paths. One continued straight, the other a sharp turn to the right. Now in preparing the girls for this hike I told Melanie that if she had any doubts, then she should turn to the right and follow the stream in the valley bottom down to the beach. Our path seemed clear. Turn to the right. About 100 yards down the very steep and muddy trail, the path disappeared. It was time to bushwhack through the jungle. It was just beyond this point that we heard a very excited and emotional response to our yells, we had found the girls. Sort of. They still sounded far off and the valley seemed to be echoing their voices so that it was hard to pinpoint their direction. Another 15 minutes and we appeared on the beach. Looking down the beach we were surprised to see a fire going and not so surprised to see some very happy wives running toward us.

After 15 minutes on the beach (and some discussion of spending the night there) it was decided to try to hike out. Headlamps were distributed and after a little exploring Jay and I found the trail. The hike out is uphill the entire way. I hiked up ahead so that if we veered off the trail at all I could double back and pick it up again before we all got lost. After two hours of Nazi death marching we appeared out of the rainforest.

Up ahead of us at the cars we saw a crowd of about 25 people. Turns out Matt couldn’t sit around the house doing nothing, so he had organized a search party to come rescue us all. So for the search party the search was over before it started. It was really nice to know that there were so many people (most of whom had never been hiking or camping a day in their lives) willing to wander through the jungle (at night) to search for some lost friends. After talking for awhile with the search party, we all headed home for a good night sleep in our own beds.

-Paul