Klaus Scherer travelled along the date line as a reporter with his camera man and his sound man to produce a TV documentation about the islands located along the line. Afterwards, he published this book. It is written in diary format, with an entry for each of the 46 days of the trip. They start in New Zealand and travel by plane, stopping at the Cook Islands, American Samoa, Niue, Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, Wallis, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and Hawaii.
What sounds like the boasting adventure of three white men who deem themselves "well traveled" is in fact a very thoughtful and reflective text that also provides a lot of information about the history of these islands. Scherer's style is effortless and very readable, and he comes across as someone caring about the people he meets and reflecting both on the places he visits as well as on his role as a traveler and the limits of it. The topics he covers are various: He describes beautiful places and wonderful adventures such as diving with whales, seeing marvelous coral reefs and visiting picture-perfect beaches. But he also does not shy away from the topic of colonization and the effects it still has, from aspects like climate change and pollution, and the consequences of the nuclear tests conducted at the Bikini Atoll. Scherer studied sociology, so the structures of society and family often play a role, too.
Scherer shows that while these islands are often portrayed as a kind of paradise, it may not always be so for the people living there, many of them leaving to Australia and other places to get jobs, and some of them torn between the possibilities, or the lack of precisely those.
The book was first published in 2005, so I was aware that things will have changed since then, especially when it comes to the pressure imposed by climate change, but probably other factors, too. It is also apparent in the choice of some colonial words that probably wouldn't be used today.
Altogether, this was a rewarding read that was much better than I expected and I will look out for more by this author. ( )