Day 48

Wednesday 17th June 2009

Uoleva Island, Ha�apai

We picked up our anchor at 8.30am to make our way further south through the islands, so many places we�d love to go and our time is running out fast now. We�re feeling sad as we can feel it all coming to an end, though the kids are looking forward to seeing their friends again. As there was no wind to head south, Charles steered us through a narrow coral channel, with Matt as lookout, round to Uiha Island, we dropped anchor at 10am and went ashore to explore. We walked through Uiha village, a very pretty village with beautifully kept gardens and street lights on the dirt roads. This is the first island away from the main centres that has had electric street lights. Some of the houses had fairy lights outside, so we presumed they might�ve had electricity too, but all houses had outside cookhouses, so we�re not sure whether it was just a few who had electricity or just electric lighting. The electricity was cabled underground. Uiha has quite a lot of history, the royal tombs are in this village and there are two beautifully painted turreted churches here. We continued walking through to the village of Felemea looking for the uncle of a friend of ours from church. As luck would have it, the first house we asked where Manu Masima lived was his house! We were introduced to his family and invited to a dance and feast this Friday to welcome their daughter back from her mission. Unfortunately won�t be here for that, and maybe that�s a good thing as we might�ve been expected to eat the turtle that had been caught and was still alive, tied up and lying on its back so it couldn�t get away. The turtle was about 1m wide and the first one most of us had seen this holiday and we were so sad to see it treated this way. It was a prized catch for them and, without refrigeration, the best way to keep it fresh was to keep it alive as long as possible. They turned it over for us to see its shell, it was so strong it moved quickly towards the sea, so it was placed on its back again to restrain it. The water was beautifully clear to snorkel in. We joined the crew of the only other boat here, a cat called Aorere for dinner on the beach. We bbq�d boerewors on the boat and took it ashore to share. They cooked green bananas and yams on a fire and served it with a spicy peanut sauce. It was very heavy to eat and whilst we chatted and learned more about cooking local foods over a fire, but we�d have preferred our boat dried mash potato and peas! And we made a gracious early retreat to return to the boat and fill up on delicious pancakes and syrup!.

Skipper