Island Blues

Photo: Uschi Ringleb

At the beginning of September we made our biannual trip to Tahiti for the salon du tourisme. It was the usual social whirl with a bit of paper chasing, searching for this spare part and stocking up on luxuries. It was too good to be true, our cargo boat, the Tuhaa Pae, scheduled to arrive in Tahiti a few days before (laden with my jams) would leave the day after us - laden with goodies for the guesthouse, but, just like the best laid plans of mice and men...

The boat managed to break its rudder and has been out of service since! After a couple of weeks we were served by a small boat belonging to the local authorities, but with minimum supplies, some food for the stores, gas for heaters and cooking, as well as fuel! Things got pretty crazy, with people queuing to buy gas cylinders, within hours the shops were completely emptied - no rice, milk, sugar, flour, you name it!

Then a couple of weeks later the Mareva Nui a cargo boat that serves the Tuamotus helped us out, bringing a lot of our things, at last! Including the tiles, counter tops and new sink for my kitchen, hurrah.....but three of the containers of food were spoiled by a diesel leak, so there was still very little in the stores. What a cruel twist of fate!

Finally, yet another boat rotation was put in place to replace the spoiled food, using a boat belonging to the Territory. The news on the street, the Tuhaa Pae should finally be back in service, and leaving on November 4th.

It'll be a big relief for the stores here, though honestly, while a lot was made of the problems (particularly in Tubuai  where they ran out of chlorine to treat the tap water, and bottled water ran out too), we actually have enough to eat with fish, coconuts and taro, so besides taking cold showers and driving around a little less, we survived! it's not that long ago that the islands were plied by schooners, an even more irregular service.

If anything, it's a wake-up call to inspire me to keep going with the veggie garden, which I've actually been neglecting recently, though we have been eating salad, greens, tomatoes, christophene, squash, courgette, spring onions, herbs and string beans from there, as well as a few small carrots. Just got to keep at it!