Day 453: Kiritimati

Jun 29 - Kiritimati (Christmas Island) is the largest island in Kiribati. It sports the largest land area of any atoll in the world, at 388 square km. There are atolls much larger (in terms of outer edge), but most have very little land left inside them. The whole country of Kiribati occupies a vast stretch of the Pacific. We are in the Northern Line Islands, an arc of islands in the east, south of Hawaii. South of us are two minor groups called the Central Line and Southern Line. In the far west are the Gilbert Islands, where the capital city is located, and from where most of the Kiribati population originated. In the center is a cluster called the Phoenix Islands. Kiritimati used to have about 2,000 inhabitants, but there are now about 10,000. There is certainly room for them. Many came from the island of Tarawa Atoll, where the capital is located. Apparently, Tarawa is overcrowded, leading the government to find incentives for people to settle elsewhere.

A useful fact to put Kiribati in geographic perspective: the total land area is 811 square km, but the borders of the country enclose about 3.4 million square km including the surrounding ocean.

To disambiguate, this Christmas Island is not the only one around. The much more well-known namesake is an island territory of Australia just south of Java in the Indian Ocean.

There is a Samoan man at the hotel who now lives in New Zealand. He is here to check the accounts for one of the churches, and it also stuck for the week, like us. He says the Kiribati government is interested in developing the infrastructure here, bringing more teachers and ‘and IT guy’ to help get more businesses connected to the internet.

Kiritimati makes money from three things:

• A type of coconut that was planted some time ago all over the island. The fruit is not good for eating and drinking, but the meat of this type (called copra) is pressed to produce oil. The coconuts are harvested here but shipped to Fiji for refining.
• There are some large ships always offshore. These are Korean and Chinese fishing vessels, hauling in tuna and other big fish for sale elsewhere. Kiribati gets some money from this sale of resources, through the sale of fishing licenses.
• Salt is produced, from some series of lagoons, probably those on the southeast part of the island.

I could add tourism, though people like us are in the minority of an already small group. Nearly everyone else comes here for sport fishing.

We walk to the outer shore to see what the snorkeling is like. We have only Odette’s mask, as no one can give us leads on rental gear. The surf is a bit much for Odette, so I squeeze on her mask and make a go of it. I get out past the surf zone so I don’t bash myself against the reef. There is not much to see out here, the coral is just lumps of rock with some fish darting around. After twenty minutes I give up and write off this zone for future trips.

The beach itself is more interesting, with abundant shells of various types. Odette and I walk for a while. There is a bit of garbage washed up and stuff that clearly comes from inland where the occasional house can be seen. I know from yesterday that all the land here is property of the government, and the occupants only lease it. Hence, most anywhere is fine to walk without fear of trespassing. On the return trip, there is an old man, bare ass pointing at the sea, doing his bathroom duty. The last time I saw someone in that pose on the beach was in West Africa.

Back to the lagoon side in the afternoon. It is very convenient, being contiguous with the resort. The tide is lower, leaving a long mud bank exposed and beaching a few boats tied up near shore. There are pufferfish here, hundreds in fact, from tiny up to the size of a fist. They hang out in the shallows and either dart out when we approach, or they puff up. That is almost the only type of fish visible in the lagoon. Innumerable crabs are also here, from large specimens above the high tide mark, down to miniature ghost crabs.

I go out again far wading into the lagoon. There is always a point I reach where it just keeps getting deeper and I give up. Being up to chest level in an endless expanse of water is a bit unnerving. On my way back to shore I see what appear to be fins. But they are too floppy, and I conclude that they must be rays. I inquired about rays in the lagoon yesterday, specifically to know if I should be concerned while walking in it. Even in clear water (and this is not), they could be sitting hidden in the sand and mud. I was told there was no danger. The ones I see today are spotted eagle rays, which do not sit on the bottom and hence don’t pose a threat. I get closer and can see there are four of them. One comes toward me, so I put down my probing stick to act as a barrier. It gets close to the stick and darts away. Their tails are over twice as long as their bodies.

Kyle comes back from fishing with a big haul. Some of the bigger fish are donated to the kitchen, so that’s what we get to eat tonight.