The sea 2

Worn out by stress I decided to go and see the sea. This entails walking to the end of the trail system and then abandoning it to cut through the forest bearing southeast for about 2km. I am joined in the trip by Eddie, a British WCS officer visiting from Cambodia. Tall, slow, large heavy boots, GPS and camouflaged bandanna, saved by a dose of acceptable British humor. We cross the illegal road, and then up and down through hills and swamps filled with thorny bushes and noble nasty plants. We have to open our way along small rivers til we find fallen trees to cross them, and then elephant or wild pig trails to help us get through the worst thickets. It would be cool to imagine us with a well-honed machete, but as it happens we didn’t have one. It has some nobility, passing through the forest without leaving a trail of dead vegetation, but I confess that had I had machete when I was bleeding from rattan, I wouldn’t have hesitated to use it. After 2 hours of struggling (and weighing the feasibility of offering it to visiting friends, eheh), you hear the thunder closer and closer, you see a white cloud of sea spray, you smell it, you touch sand.. it is a powerful emotion. When you see it, the lungs open, maybe something happens to the heart too, and as ridiculous as it seems, you would want to scream (there is no witness to say if I did, as Eddie arrived some time later).

I am ready to pick up the duel with the waves I left at Krui, but here the sea is very different. It is powerful and dangerous. Even small waves are heavy and vicious, full of water, long; the undertow is mighty; there is no pattern to discern. I try to reach where the waves break, and still retain some control on the situation, but I am soon beaten up and dragged out until suddenly I cannot touch anymore. At which point, contrary to all the knowledge I accumulated, I waste 80% of my energy to regain that one meter, that one-second-ago, and luckily I manage to touch again. After that, I don’t risk anymore. No wonder you can hear the waves from so far away. We see where the mini-tsunami reached, all the way to the edge of the forest and inside it, leaving a trace of wooden debris..