" ALady Trip " Sailing around the World and avoiding the recession
A Lady
Stephen Hyde
Tue 8 Jun 2010 23:32
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TUESDAY 8th JUNE
2010 ( Presently in Vava'u, Tonga
)
07.30hrs Cloudy morning, we had a little rain
overnight, but not much.
We had a light breakfast before going ashore for
our trip to the Botanical Gardens,
Fats decided to stay on the boat while we went off
on our trip, he needs lots of rest.
The bus ride to the Gardens was a laugh, the bus
was old, very old, certainly the last centuary,
It was held together with string and wire, and well
rusted.
However, it rattled along nicely for 30 mins over
the bumpy road to the Gardens, a good crowd on board, maybe 40 in
all.
We were greeted by " Lucy " one of the Matriarch's
of the Gardens, and she was good.
Lucy, took us on a 2 hour tour of the Gardens,
facinating stuff, ranging from opening coconuts,and tasting the contents,
not just the milk and coconut flesh, but the
brains, ...................that is what the milk turns into before sprouting a
new shoot,
a sort of spongy stuff, and only ok to taste. the
locals have it for breakfast most days.
Then there was the Vanilla demonstrations, from
drying the flowers ond seeds to making vanilla essence.
Of course , there were lots of different tree,
shrub and plant types to be seen, all very interesting, but hardly a bird
anywhere,
Scottty , the twitcher was very dissapointed at
that. and so was skipper. as he always had averies in his garden, so birds are
always of interest.
12.30hrs We went to the beach
restaurant for a prepared lunch, which was included in our package,
All the staff in the restaurant and gift shop, were
all the same people as in the Gardens, no demarkations
here. just happy to have a job.
Lunch was excellent, and included a baby roast
pig, corned beef wrapped in leaves, ( real tasty ) and a host of other
tasty bits,
After lunch, we had a floor show, but this was
different, this was with basically children , and excellent, and of course very
funny at
times when the real small ones did their own thing,
The girls were stunning, and beautifully dressed up
in the local costume styles.
The girls were all coverey in vanilla oil to show
that they were still virgins, ( As Lucy says, once their flower has been
plucked, then no more oil )
15.00hrs, All into the crocky bus and off
back to town, where Aileen, skipper and Margaret had some coffee in " Cafe
Trpoicana "
plus doing some cards.
17.00 hrs skipper went to the skippers
briefing , this was delivered by Paul from rally control, and basically
covered our trip to Fiji.
This lasted an hour or so, and then we returned to
the Mermaid for a beer before joining " A Lady " again for dinner.
Dinner was already cooked by " Fats" and consisted
of a lamb Curry and a Wahoo curry, bith with rice......
Skipper went to bed early, wrecked from all the
rushing around, the girls remained in the cockpit chatting about ,god only
knows,
and the other two, Fats and Scotty , went ashore
for a few beers, to the yacht club..
God ! the skipper is BOLUXED,
zzzzzzzzz
thats it for now,
Signed :- Stephen
Hyde, ( Skipper )
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