Our ship came in!

Some of the backlogged Christmas parcels arrived with the boat on the 26th, it was like winning the lottery at the post office! Not to mention the wine and beer arrival! Cheers!

Christmas under the palms

We're back into the saddle and have the house full as of boxing day, but we had the weekend to ourselves. So, we had all the family over for a Christmas bash, it was Punarii's christening, one of my nephews (I have a few, five at last count!).

 

It all worked out great in the end, after a bit of drama, because (predictably), the boat was late and so our champagne and beer spent Christmas day sitting on the dock in Rurutu, to be unloaded on the 26th. Fortunately, a kindly family member filled in, and I made a quite passable pineapple rum punch, so we muddled through! The girls spent most of the day shuttling between the beach and the paddling pool.....

Hotting up for Christmas

Matotea's had her Christmas party at school and is on holiday and Tuati's back with us now too. But I always find it a little tough to get into the festive spirit in the summer heat. I did managed to motivate myself, and got the Tropical Christmas pud made last week, using my home-made glacéed tropical fruits (papaya, pineapple and lychee, yum!) and some freshly dried mango. I'm hoping the pud will be as tasty as the tropical Christmas cake I made last year, though doused in brandy sauce pretty much anything tastes alright. We're going more for a Rurutu style feast this year, (i.e. we decided to forget about the turkey this time) with a Tahitian oven planned for the 25th, though I have got some mussels on order, that I should be about to collect from the plane this morning, at extortionate cost!!! The champers should arrive tomorrow, though the cargo boat has had a couple of difficult trips recently, and has lost several days on its schedule, so the boat due in on the 19th, is now in on the 24th!!!! Fingers-crossed that our beer will have time enough to chill before the big day!

More (exclusive) Beach-time!

 

It's definitely summer-time, December is as hot and sticky as November was wet. Today the sky is a vibrant, impenetrable blue and a lazy breeze rustles the palm fronds in our garden. It's a great day for the hammock! After school the long white-sand beach in front of our house is dotted with dispersed clusters of bathers and whooping children running on the beach, all making that quick outing to enjoy the last of the afternoon sunshine....

 

To avoid the 'crowds' we girls prefer to head off to our exclusive bathing spot on the south coast, we were there a few days back. Mato and 'mana had a riot......and to top it all off we had home-made brownies with pistachio ice-cream for dessert when we got back home (my first proper batch here in Rurutu, made with a secret stash of pecan nuts smuggled from Tahiti), what could be better!

After School Beach-time!

Baby steps!

It's been two months now since Rurutu started collecting recyclables to send on to Tahiti, for eventual recycling, we now have our own green bins. It's a small but significant step for us, a result of the mayor's office's efforts and a little bit of pressure from our association. Every time the cargo boat arrived you saw it unloading crates of bottled water and fizzy drinks, but the rubbish stayed here and was either being buried or burnt, quite simply unsustainable on a tiny island like ours! Now we just need to convince people to use the green bins!