As our holiday began and the virus was an issue elsewhere, we took a little tour.
Something kept brushing my feet and ankles while I was wading across the silty flats of the Bako River estuary. Twigs or fish? I couldn’t tell, but the question occupied a large room in the back of my mind. It was impossible to see beyond the latte-stained surface to know what was actually in the water below. I willed myself to imagine lots of vegetative debris.
Apparently we’d been late for the boat, late for the tide. We met our driver at the instructed time, and he drove directly to the dock. Still, we were late and the ticket-seller indicated the water level was getting too low for a boat to reach our destination: Bako National Park on a peninsula in Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo. It would be a few hours before the tide turned and rose enough for our excursion.
But our guide, Matt, came running up, saying the boatman believed there was still time if we hurried, still enough water to get us across the flats to the beach. We could just beat the tide.
He was off by a half-mile. The beach looked far away when the prop started chewing into the tidal flats, the outboard lugging down. The boatman notched the outdrive up at an angle, and we proceeded a couple dozen yards further. Then he and Matt jumped out of the boat and began pushing from behind, talking and laughing. Soon the hull began to scrape the bottom. We shed our shoes, rolled up pant legs as necessary, and alighted onto the flats as well. Matt took the lead with a stick, poking for soft spots to avoid.
In truth, we soon got used to the soft silt oozing up around our feet, rarely sank more than an inch into it, and didn’t mind the “twigs and leaves” so much once it was clear nothing was biting. We enjoyed the approach to the beach, listening to Matt’s proud banter about the park, made possible by local families donating portions of their land to create it.
Later in the day we saw the signs warning people to stay out of the water because crocodiles were around, and we remembered Matt occasionally slapping the water horizontally with his walking stick rather than poking for holes. He had apparently been working to frighten the crocodiles away. It used to be common for tourists to swim in the bays of the park, but crocs had expanded their territory, and it was no longer considered advisable. When asked about them, Matt replied, corners of his mouth sliding up and eyes twinkling: “Don’t worry. They’re vegetarians.” Sure, and we’re broccoli.
Our half-mile stroll across the tide flats had been safe, if slightly unnerving, even fun once we leaned into it. (We were glad we hadn’t known about the crocodiles in advance.) One more boat made the run that morning, leaving just a couple minutes behind us, and they missed the beach by a long mile. We chuckled a couple times looking over our shoulders at their figures in the distance, hoping they were enjoying their wade and glad ours was shorter.
It turns out ours was not only shorter, but significantly easier. Along the trail after lunch we ran into the couple from the last boat, and they had a tale of wading woe. They didn’t worry so much about whatever brushed against their ankles because they kept dropping into soft spots, at times sinking so deep that the water came to their armpits. It was a massive struggle to free themselves from the clinging silt, even with the boatman’s help. The couple was exhausted and cranky.
And in ways this foreshadowed our experience of the pandemic: we had inconvenience and anxiety, but there were so many who had it worse.