The reds of sunrise and sunset are so short lived in the tropics compared to my regular Scandinavian latitudes, where it can linger on for hours. This amazing cloudscape lasted just a few minutes, and then the sky rapidly turned dark.
This location (the island of Kawe) is one of many extraordinarily beautiful beaches on the myriads of islands off the coast of Sorong of West Papua, Indonesia. This remote region has never before been on any of my travel itineraries, but now it suddenly turned up because of the the total solar eclipse on 9th of March.
The ship is bringing me there is servicing divers normally, so I was accompanied by fellow eclipse chasers that also had a love for diving. The islands house an amazing diversity below the surface of the Pacific, but is also stunning above the ocean. As I do not have any equipment for photographing in the ocean, I focused on what I encountered above it. Getting to the locations I wanted was facilitated by the ships friendly and service minded crew.
This beach was a narrow one, and the tide was quickly rising during my short stay here. The sad thing was that the remaining dry land was littered with flip flops and an inordinately large amount of other non-degradable waste from us humans. So from afar this looked like an untouched beach, but up close it was damaged, as usual, by our waste….
Last updated on 13 March 2024
