Nightmare at Christmas

Raja Ampat, Papua
24th December

The way the Merpati aeroplane route hops down the island chain means that we had to catch our flight to Sorong, Papua, at a ridiculous 04.40 in the morning.

As we climbed the escalator in the airport, poor Ariel fell and his hand slid down the side of the moving floor. Maja pulled him upright, but the damage was done. His now grease-black fingers started dripping blood. We rushed down to get help and a quick-acting and resourceful Merpati staff member drenched the wounds in yellow antiseptic liquid and wrapped them firmly in plasters. Two fingers on his right hand had been badly cut by the mechanism.

The temporary bandaging worked, though, and the bleeding stopped, so we tried to calm ourselves and Ariel as we waited for the plane. I got chocolate peanuts to keep him cheerful, as I tried not to faint at the sight of his blood and the shock of the accident.

The first thing to do when we arrived in Sorong was to rush to the hospital, so a kindly Ivan – our 'fixer' from the Kri Eco resort – drove us to the local medical centre, where a Javan doctor had a look and got the wounds rebandaged while Ariel had a good old freak out at having his hands fiddled with. The cuts were deep, but thankfully didn't need stitches. We requested some antibiotics so any infection could be dealt with while we were on the island and then headed off to find a hotel.

As things had turned out we were going to be in deadly dull Sorong for Christmas day, and most hotels here were grubby or really expensive, so we opted for the latter – the Marriat hotel (not Marriot, note), which would normally be over our budget but at least offered a pool and a big, aircon room for the kids to play in. It also had Cartoon Network, which ensured that the boys got their education in Tom & Jerry.

The stay here also coincided with my having to upload a large file of some freelance work, but Papua has internet that is not much better than the old phone connections (ie it's crap) and I struggled to send my 89 MB file for almost three days, sitting in the mosquito-infested lobby for much of that time. At last, I managed to send it all in smaller 9 MB chunks to be rejoined at the other end. Yay.

A merry Xmas? Not really. But we did spend a quiet few days playing with the boys and give Ariel's fingers a chance to start healing. Things perked up though at the Kri Eco resort, our next stop...