Sailing around the world, ( presently in Savausavau, Fiji, )
A Lady
Stephen Hyde
Mon 21 Jun 2010 21:09
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SUNDAY 20th
JUNE 2010
07.30hrs Aileen, Margaret and Skipper
hopped out of the scratchers and got ready to go to the church
for a musical top up. and of course Mass for
Aileen,
We ordered a taxi for this trip , as the church was
a good few miles away.
The Church was very basic, with a corrigated iron ,
blood red roof,
It only had the back half of the church with seats,
the rest was floor seating, and you had to take off the shoes at the door and
leave them outside.
The choir was very good, and the singing excellent,
but, very much more raspy than Vava'u,
Vava'u definatly took the biscuit for their
singing.. As I said before, earth shattering stuff.
After Mass , we got a lift back to the town in one
of the organised busses that carry the locals to and from the
Villages.
a great service, in pretty worn out
busses.
The one thing that really stands out here is the
friendly people. So gentle and friendly, It reminded the
skipper
of our lovely country and how it used to be ,
before we lost the plot and got rich. however, we are poor
again,
The question is
.................. Will we become a friendly race of people again.
I'm sure we will !
Its amusing to see all the children and grannys
waving to the visitors as we drive along, they even hang out the windows of the
busses
and wave at us as they pass bye.
These Islands, including Tonga, the Cook Islands,
and the French Polyneesian Islands are generally known as the
" Paradise Islands " good what !!
thats what we referred to them in the blogs so far....
The bird life here is better than other places, and
we even saw squirrels ( or Mongoose's ) plus kingfishers, hawk's, swallows,
parrots,
lots of doves, and of course thousands of mynah
birds ( better known as Mocking birds ).
It seems that these mocking birds have displaced a
lot of indiginous birds, especially the big colourfull pattots.
12.30hrs The skipper took the scooter and
drove across the Island to labasa , 100 km away, so round trip
200km
the journey took skipper through Valleys, and
mountains, Vale's and Plains, and the scenery was awsome.
Trough pine forrests and then the Sugar Cane
fields,,
Do you remember the sugar cane lectures we used to
get at school,, If anything went wrong with our sugar crop or the price
go belly up, then it all got blamed on this forign
sugar cane stuff, Now , here we are looking at it straight in the
face.
and whats more, Yeah !
They plough the fields with a pair of Oxen,
harnessed to a plough, and whats even more interesting is,
ploughed ground
smells the same the world over.. a lovely
sweet earthy smell..............
Meanwhile , back on the boat, Fats & John are
having plenty of excitment with our neighbours and the anchor
chain,
As mentioned yesterday, they dropped their anchor
across our anchor chain, and now they
were trying to untangle the mess....
Both boats had to let go the marina and go to sea,
and then return and drop anchor and back up to the marina again,
as every thing here is stern on
mooring.
Aileen and Margaret escaped all the fuss, and had
taken off to the beach.
Meanwhile , back to the scooter, and skipper was
returning from Labasa, bombing along the road , flat out. ( as you should do
)
when suddenly the scooter died and skipper was left
scratching his baldy head.... Cripes ! whats gone wrong here
?
and skipper was still 60kms from Savausavau...and
the bike , dead as a door nail........
God , am I going to have to
walk,! 60 bloody km,s Ohhhhhh hold on, we
went to Mass this morning,
surely, the man above will sort this out,
And then , believe it or not, yes yes, along
came a pickup truck, stopped and enquired if I had a problem,
10 minutes later we were bombing along the road
again, skipper sitting in the front seat of the truck, and the scooter in the
back.....
and chatting away to the granny and the
children.......and 1 hour later, we arrived at the Y.C. in
Savausavau..
THE LUCK OF THE
IRISH, OR THE
HAND OF GOD !
Shortly after, skipper got very ill, and actually
had to go to the scratcher, god getting his own backs for rescuing
skipper.?
Terrible stomach cramps, so just had to take it
easy.
Meanwhile, the girls had lunch in the "
Cousteau Resort" , so were not interested in any more food, so while
skipper lay dying in his scratcher, Fats and John
beatling off to the local Chineese restaurant for a nosh.
They related later that they got so much food, they
almost burst.
Most dinners here would cost about 50 $ fijian. and
there are 3 F$ to 1 US$ so it must be nearly 4 to the
euro
and makes good value for us.
Thats it for now. Slan
Leath,
Signed :-
Stephen Hyde ( Skipper )
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