The long holidays!

It seemed like they were going to yawn out in front of us forever, back in July, but in the end the long holidays were over in a flash, a colorful and fun flash.

There were the sights and sounds of the heiva. Amaiterai "oohed and aahed" over the fireworks, won more plastic toys at the the "duck pond" than we could every really need or want.

Matotea our Rurutu allstar, danced and weaved and declamed her way through it all, winning the competition for the best market bag and making headlines, presenting orero (Polynesian orator) and dancing with the dance school's group!

Heimana turned eight, another year, another cake!

Viriamu's horse cruised home easily in first place at the heiva race.

The kids enjoyed new friends, hiking, baking cupcakes and making sand mermaid tails on our favourite beach. And then it was over....

Mato started highschool and Heimana and Amai went up a class.

Now we're staring down another busy week of school holidays, the infamous week in September. It's always chock-a-block here in Rurutu, being school holidays and whale season. This year the season is a bumper one, so at least the guests will be happy, the pressure for there to be whales is fairly intense, though at the moment there are some twenty or more whales around the island on a daily basis. Which is a lot, for our tiny island!