Today I fell into a river. Tricky thing to do when you’re on a cruise ship, but I managed it. Moments later, sat on a pink rock in the middle of the river I took off my shoes and watched a zombie stumble and also fall in the river.

All of this is true.

I’d crossed the river earlier, the bridge over it just wide enough for a single car, pedestrians trekking down a dusty slope and walking across the river bed itself. I joined them, kept walking, exploring the tiny town of Alotau.

I saw a lot of locals, most of whom didn’t seem to know or care that a cruise ship had docked. I drew a lot of attention, maybe because of my skin colour or my hat. Probably because I was wearing a long sleeve white linen shirt, to avoid insects and sunburn. The locals had bare arms, mostly bare shoulders, sports vests and flipflops. They didn’t wear hats, coping with an intense sun by moving swiftly from shade to shade.

Of the 100 to 150 people I passed on shore I think three of them failed to say ‘good morning’. One of them went for ‘G’day’ instead. Their English isn’t great when you do talk to them but they’ve mastered the Good Morning in a neutral accent superbly. Even the ones in vehicles would wave at me, the men with a bent wrist raising the hand enough to be seen and acknowledged, but no further. The women would rock their wrists, waving their whole hands. I responded to the men in kind, gave the women a wriggly finger wave. Women like my wriggly fingers.

While crossing the river bed a group of women with small children had waved to me, the kids playing in the water. One child was clearly told ‘look, a strange looking man’ and his mother helped him wave at me. I waved back. I knew he was a boy, he was naked.

Wandering through the town I reached a cul-de-sac, a road leading to my left. A local approached me, held his hand as though to shake it but didn’t seem to know how to respond when I did. He jabbered at me, asking where I was going, seeming to tell me it was a dead end, just a school there. I suggested going around to the left and he jabbered some more, unintelligible. I pointed at the previoud turn, suggested that one, he shrugged. So I smiled, said good bye and just went down the road to my left.

Behind me I heard him say something to the group of men that had been sat in some shade watching, and they all burst into laughter. A hundred yards later I found out why, the road curving around, a loop back to the previous turn. So I left the road, cutting through an abandoned plot and some thick growth and found the river.

This is when I fell in. An obvious path led to it, and it seemed to have steps going down. They were much higher than I thought, not steps at all, needing to be sat on or jumped down – and there was nowhere to land. So I fell, and landed at the bottom.

That part of the river was fortunately entirely dry, but I knew I could follow it back to the main road and it had better shade and different scenery so I decided to brave the rounded rocks and walk down the centre. I immediately noticed grit in my shoes from the fall so stopped, sat on a large pink rock and took them off, emptied them out, brushed my socks and put my shoes back on.

While I was doing that I noticed a stumbling stuttering motion across the bed of the river. A small black wasp was struggling to walk, kept felling over. Looking more closely I could see it had a passenger, a small red ant stood on its head, possibly enjoying the ride but more likely controlling it, the cause of the stumbling progress. Sadly my photographs haven’t worked out, too little time and attention put into them and a camera screen inadequate at telling me I’d focussed on the rocks they were traversing, not the insects themselves.

I left them to it, stood up, walked downstream towards the shore. A short while later another track led up a gentle bank into woodland so I went exploring. A fallen tree seemed intentionally placed to block progress, and moving to the side I found barbed wire between the next two trees, someone clearly marking out a boundary. I saw movement in a house ahead, decided I must be in danger of trespassing and backtracked, returned to the river.

Despite the friendliness of the locals and their obvious relaxed state (easily the most relaxed people I’ve seen anywhere) things didn’t smell quite right. That wasn’t the first barbed wire I’d seen: every property had a high fence around it, all topped with barbed wire. It may be relaxed and calm at 8.30am but strong fences and locks on every gate suggest it’s a more interesting place after night falls.

Children 30 foot above me on a bank waved, I waved back. Below them a man and a woman exchanging something, then she left the river, started climbing the bank. She saw me and waved, so I waved back. She called to the man and he turned, saw me also. He came across as I went past, asked me if I was walking into town. I confirmed that I was and he seemed satisfied and started walking that way himself. I stumbled and he pulled ahead of me, opening a 20 yard gap ahead of me so I watched his progress, followed him into the easier places to walk – gravel rather than pebbles. That let me catch up and he veered sideways, seemed to let me past, clearly unhappy to be followed. I ignored him and kept going, and he followed me instead.

Back at the town I went under the bridge and back up where I’d been before. He must have gone up the bank before the bridge, managed to get ahead of me while I was stood in the shade of the bridge itself having a quick drink. From there it was only 300 yards back to the turning for the port, another few hundred yards and I was back on the ship.

On the docks the locals were in traditional dress, feathers and grass, most of them bare from the waist up, including the women. They had large head dresses on instead and their skin was painted. They were posing for photographs, collection boxes sat on the dock already starting to fill with Australian dollars. I think they intended to dance too, with wooden spears and drums.

We’d been warned (as though a warning were needed) that there’d be bare breasts visible. I noticed that only some of the women had taken that option, others using shells and leaves to fashion a bikini top that matched the rest of their costume but conformed to a Western modesty.

That made me laugh. Just before reaching the bridge while walking down the river I’d turned a corner, found the gaggle of women that had waved earlier. They’d moved just out of sight of the bridge and as I came into view they gave out shrieks and started laughing. I stopped and looked at some water on the other side, waiting a minute before continuing, then passed them. By that time they had their tops back on, waved sheepishly at me, the kids practicing their English. “Good morning” then a few yards later, “Goodbye”.

Back at the ship I scrubbed my once white shirt and left it to soak, let myself soak in the shower, stuck the ‘Privacy please’ notice in the door. I was too hot to even go up and find water, 5km (a third of it in a river bed) too far to walk even in the relative cool of the morning. I’d made it back to the ship before 10am, passengers just leaving asking me if I was back already. They seemed shocked I’d managed to walk that far, worried that they were too old and couldn’t do that so I reassured them, they were already halfway to the museum and most of the town.

There wasn’t much town. I did see a grocery store, a large barn with cafe seating visible through the open door, posters on the outside advertising global brands. It was a half kilometre from the ship, a long walk for the couple that got off at the same time as me, asking the security team at the ship if there was anywhere they could buy diapers (which made them American, or maybe Canadian. Australians call them nappies). I’m guessing the grocery store did, one of its posters advertised a product called Drypers, tagline “wee wee dry”. Their baby in a pushchair could’ve made it there, its elder sister, herself barely old enough to be out of nappies, would have struggled, needing to be carried.

I saw some of the local kids too, approaching the ship in the company of their mothers, mostly little girls in traditional costume, their mothers in normal clothing. I assumed they were having fun dressing up, were going to watch the performance on the docks, but on my return I found I’d been insufficiently cynical. The mothers were pimping out their children, pay for a photograph with a cute native child in traditional dress. I didn’t.

My body demanded toast for lunch but my room had no toaster. The Lido had none either, just sandwiches, pasta, salads, rice and things to go in and with them. I ended up raiding the soup counter and made my own raw toast.

Somehow on the way back to my cabin I managed to get lost. I think a door, normally closed, had been left open during the morning’s emergency training drill that had kept the crew busy. Behind it were more staterooms, the corridor immediately different to the normal passageways, functional rather than ornately decorated, a simple carpet, narrower. A door next to me offered rules for the self-service laundry but when I tried the handle I noticed it had a card reader, stepped back, saw a notice: “Officer’s laundry.”

It seemed sensible to turn around, return to the passenger areas. I found a parallel corridor, brightly lit with a handrail, patterns on the carpet, finally made it back to my stateroom.

My own laundry wasn’t going so well. The shirt still had the dirty patch from the river bank and on the sleeve I found another stain, green from the undergrowth. I smothered them with shower gel, scrubbed them for a couple of minutes through the bubbles, made little impact and left it soaking again. I have three long sleeved white shirts with me, one of which I hadn’t even worn yet, my laundry stops all sufficiently frequent for me to recycle the same few clothes, so worse case I could stuff this one in the bottom of my case, wait until I can get home and risk its linen with bleach and stain removers.

I didn’t look for internet access in Alotau. They don’t have mobile telephony, and that would’ve been the underlying source of any net access they might have had. It was lovely seeing people that weren’t walking around faces down, looking at a phone instead of the world around them. Less lovely were the red stains everywhere, presumably the betel nut eaters spitting out the nut. I only saw one man eating it, his whole mouth red, visible when he saw me looking at him and smiled back. Others were buying nuts, maybe for later, but I chose to walk past, wasn’t tempted to give it a go.

Shite. I just remembered I’ll be getting the slow treatment on my return to Australia now, walking down a river bed is right on their list of ‘not letting you in’ environmental protections. Oh well, too late to worry now. Maybe the Aussie border force will wash my shirt for me.

Sometimes you can tell the cruise line mainly caters to Americans.

Dinner was delayed, a sojourn on the aft deck to watch the sunset, a beautiful warm glow to the hills surrounding Milne Bay that then transferred to the clouds above. Lightning struck in Alotau, by then a hazy shadow in the distance and dolphins frolicked in the sea behind the ship.

They were so far away that even with my long telephoto lens you can barely make them out, but I do now have a photograph of unmistakably a dolphin: nothing else has that silhouette when leaping above the waves. Happy.

Dinner was a table to myself, my book, some lamb, some beef and some other bits. In the Lido they don’t dress the plate, just slop on the mash as though they resent you asking for it.

Back in my room I was ready for a film, but the ones on TV are too hard to plan around. Time to pull out the drive I’d brought with me for photograph backups, and rather than bring it empty, filled with films, dance videos and other media. Including, I found, a 7GB rar file of roguelikes. Over 570 of them, including five versions of vanilla Angband, 7 variants on Nethack and the original Rogue. Worse, and in case I ended up marooned on a desert island for eight years (with electricity), Dwarf Fortress. Who needs internet access.

I skipped them all, went for the video option instead. Open Final from the 2015 World Champs, and damn, Ekow and Dani were good. I noticed that Matt (dancing with Emily) led two different variants on the Hallelujah, a move that should never be led and when backled by a follower fully justifies ending the dance and leaving the floor. His variants were nice though, beautifully executed and fit elegantly to the music. It helps of course that Emily was following them.

We reach a tropical island in the Pacific at 7.30 tomorrow morning so time to sleep off the 8km walked today.