Menke Ruins

The hike to the Menke ruins started down the dirt road that will, some day, connect the remote village of Walung to the hub of civilisation that is Utwe. [The construction speed of this roads appears to be similar to that of the railway line here in Okinawa, so I wouldn't be too worried about any sudden changes in the near future].

We turned at an unremarkable grassy area between two banana fields, and a small trail led up into the jungle.

After having attempted the city style for a couple of meters, I quickly gave up and went barefoot through the jungle. Having made perfectly sure there were no poisonous snakes or such, I assumed that if the locals went barefoot on a regular basis, it couldn't be that dangerous.

It wasn't.

But it was quite muddy….

The Menke ruins are a very old complex of houses, possibly temples of sorts, that are located some way into the jungle, but not on what anyone could call 'high ground'. Believed to be much much older than the Lelu ruins, an abundance of heat, humidity and weathering acid basalt has drastically reduced the chance of finding any relics and has even made dating the structures themselves difficult.

Still, with the help of some enthusiastic jungle cleaning by the Waguk family, the complexity of the housing complex is slowly starting to emerge from the undergrowth, and several teams of archaeologists are regularly up there mapping. Each structure is composed of a main room containing a square altar in the centre, with a series of antechambers leading into it. The roofs, if roofs there were, were probably light thatch, as there is no evidence of beam support structures on the walls. But then again, we're not quite sure what we're seeing really was the top of the wall, either.

Contrary to the finely cut stones of Lelu, these structures are made of rounded boulders, probably carted up the hill from the nearby stream beds.

The walk through the jungle was amazing, with giant 'Ka' trees speeding their roots around the trunk, and giant vines curling up and around anything large enough to support their weight.

Canoe and family reunion

I started out the day at the Utwe-Walung Marine Reserve, with a small tour in a traditional outrigger canoe (equipped with a not-so-traditional outboard motor).

The reserve is composed of a meshwork of small waterways winding themselves through a gigantic mangrove forest. The waterways closest the ocean are paved in luxurious corals, the mangrove trees propped precariously between the coral clumps, with multicoloured tropical fish darting amongst the coral heads and large sting rays gliding amongst the mangrove roots.

Further in, and the corals gave way to fine brown silt, the flat surface of the water being broken only by drips from the trees and the random gas bubble freeing itself from the mud below. 

Then back out into deeper canals near the reef edge, mushroom corals disappearing into the dark blue depths, while swarms of sea terns called from their nurseries in the trees.

As we skimmed across the flat waters, we got to talking, and, as always, the main point of interest was how and why I had made my way to Kosrae.

And this is how I met Tadao Waguk.

Tadao was a high-school student when my father worked in Kosrae for the Trust Territory, and fondly remembers Mr. Grossmann as being "not very tall". I took that to be a compliment, coming from a himself not extremely tall micronesian.

His father, Moris, has unfortunately passed away, but also used worked at the school.

Heading back inshore, we stopped off at the end of Utwe village, where Tadao left off and his son and I took off to the mountains to see the Menke ruins, thereby completing a 3-generation cycle.