The island hopper

I spend a lot of time in airplanes. Usually when I am traveling, I avoid blogging about the more mundane aspects of my travels – flights, airports, cab rides. However, today, I must tell you about my flight from Hawaii to Micronesia.

Carl and I left on our honeymoon the day after our wedding. We departed Honolulu early in the morning, bound for another small island in the tropical Pacific. The route we were on is nicknamed the Island Hopper because it completes short jumps between Hawaii, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Guam – six stops in all, and ours was the fifth in line. It’s the trans-Pacific equivalent of a city bus.

Our first stop was Majuro, in the Marshall Islands. Carl and I actually met a Marshallese woman in the airport and talked with her about her travels to the U.S. The Marshall Islands are a U.S. protectorate, and in the 1940s and 50s, the American military used Bikini, an atoll in the northwestern Marshalls, as a testing ground for nuclear weapons including the hydrogen bomb. The woman was from Bikini, and she explained that the islands used for testing were contaminated with radiation and unsafe to inhabit, so she and the other residents were living in exile on other islands, some of which were remote and difficult to reach with supply ships. She and the mayor of Bikini had traveled to Washington to ask the government to make good on their promise of island restoration and monetary restitution. “Because now,” she told us, “we are also suffering from climate change.” Rising sea levels have further decreased the habitable land area, making life for the exiled Marshallese that much harder. It was fascinating to speak with her.

Our next stop on the Island Hopper was Kwajalein, also in the Marshall Islands. As soon as we landed, the pilot announced it was forbidden to take photos from the plane. Kwajalein is a U.S. military base, and the only non-Marshallese to disembark at this stop were a soldier and his wife traveling on official orders. A Marshallese high school student boarded the plane and took the seat next to me. He was visibly nervous and wore a hat with a “Straight Outta Compton” parody: “Straight Outta Kwajalein.” I asked where he was traveling, and he said he was headed to China to represent the Marshall Islands in a swimming competition. An older woman seated across the aisle, maybe his mom or his coach, tried to calm him. I wished him luck.

The runway in Kosrae. Photo by Carl Kaiser.

After departing the Marshall Islands, we headed to Kosrae, in the Federated States of Micronesia. When I was younger, I never expected myself to spend much time in the tropical Pacific, nor was I aware of how many islands are out here. This is now my third trip to a Pacific island (sixth if you count New Zealand), and I’m just beginning to get a handle on how many there are, how they’re organized, and what life is like on these tiny plots of land in a hemisphere of ocean. Kosrae is one of four states in the FSM, the other three being Yap, Pohnpei, and Chuuk. Carl and I watched in awe out the airplane window as we landed on the island, because the exposed land area was only about one airplane wide. The teal-blue color of the ocean and the bright yellow-white of the sand provided a gorgeous aerial view, but the landing was like placing the plane on a balance beam. Thank goodness for skilled pilots.

From Kosrae, we stopped in Pohnpei, then Chuuk. Each flight was about an hour long, and each landing was a precision operation on a narrow airstrip surrounded by sand. When we stepped off the plane in Chuuk, we were grateful to have finally arrived. We exited the plane down a roll-away staircase into the hot tropical sun and entered the airport, which was just one large room with customs officers stationed behind folding tables. Our bags appeared one by one through a rectangular cut-out in the wall. To quote The Wizard of Oz, we weren’t in Kansas anymore.  

Friends, I am glad to be in Chuuk and excited to experience a new Pacific island on my honeymoon! This part of the world is enthralling!