Matotea's changing face

We've been super busy this holiday week with guests up to the eyeballs, it's great that we're so busy, but it's definitely been our toughest challenge yet, particularly as 'meme', my invaluable mother in law, who usually helps with the childcare, has been away in Tahiti and elsewhere, pursuing her ancestors and Parau family, but more about that in the coming weeks! So it was twelve guests and three kids to look after, but we managed it, though I am spending today de-compressing and having some Amaiterai catch-up time! At the end of the school half-term Matotea and Heimana brought home their school portraits, I scanned in Mato's last three school portraits, it's fun to see how she's changed

and how fast she's growing into a beautiful young girl.

Easter extravagances

The easter hols are coming to a close, and we're still very much alive after two weeks of guests, girls at home and breast-feeding 7 week old babies......it's a lot to juggle, but we're doing it, and whatsmore, actually enjoying it, in a frazzled sort of a way.

 

Over the Easter weekend we went gourmet  with an excellent passion fruit cheesecake (thanks to the highly unexpected appearance of large quantities of delicious cram cheese at our local store, miracles never cease!)
  Still on a fermented food high, I tried a sourdough fruit brioche (an interesting idea!). Brioche is a traditional French easter thing, so the guests enjoyed it, though my jury's still out, sourdough maybe shouldn't go here!

We did even get some easter chocolates, thanks to some ultra thoughtful guests, the local store had let us down on that one!

 

In anticipation of a chocolate free time I had even gone  the extra mile to do some real painted easter eggs, blowing eggs is too much fun for young and old alike!

Then we had a brief break from guests, enough to have a restorative weekend off, and get gussied up to head off to our first dinner dance en famille (this makes it all sounds rather posh - but it was just poisson cru and chow mein served in mass under a lot of tents with some local dancing and drunkenness)

 Then we've been back into guests, but we all seem to be finding our equilibrium. Amaiterai certainly has figured out where he likes to be best......

 ........and Matotea and Heimana have been enjoying some impromptu horse-riding lessons.

Tahiti iti

It's already almost two weeks since we had our little holiday in Tahiti, and here are a few pictures. We were staying on rather a magnificent country estate on Tahiti iti (the small peninsula stuck to the side of Tahiti Nui) near Teahupoo. The Vanira Lodge,  has some very original self-catering bungalows hidden in a lush tropical garden. Not to mention a swimming pool, which was the main attraction for the girls!

 

The ceiling and roof of our bungalow was made up of a living matt of honeysuckle, grown over bamboo trellis, and the bathroom was cut into the earth at the back of the house and tiled with river rocks (outdoor living indoors, complete with the wildlife! In the evening we had huge landsnails in our shower, as well as a lot of rustling on the roof)

 

 

It's a fabulously restful spot, though unfortunately, we spent most of the time zipping to and from Papeete or the main stores to go shopping, so in retrospect Teahupoo was a bit too out of the way for us!

The girls definitely were most appreciative of a few days in the big wide world, supermarkets and all the trappings of consumer society were a big hit!

Flying higher

We've just finished a grueling and extremely satisfying, week of full-house february school-holidays. The poor grandparents exiled down the road at Meme's, along with the girls and Iro, who was here for the break. It's always a bit of a challenge to deal with a full guesthouse, but juggling visiting family and the girls (who really don't like being palmed off on anyone other than mummy and daddy) has been quite an effort, for all involved. Anyway we're all still surviving and grateful for a moment to rest and recover, before heading off on our own holidays in Tahiti next week.

Among the last of our guests was none other than the ex-PSG coach and well-known footballer Antoine Kombouare, who just happens to be married to one of Viriamu's second cousins !!! I didn't recognize him immediately, I'm more of a rugby girl myself (good one Wales for this weekend!), but the local French footie fans were all of a quiver, upon spotting him running on the beach! He was rather enjoying a bit of time being relatively incognito, before heading on to New Caledonia, where he is very much the local boy made good, and hence a bit of a superstar. It's always interesting to meet more of our huge family......

November rush!

The November rush is finally subsiding to a trickle, and so I can take the time to blog a bit!
November has been as wet as it has been busy, which is great for the garden, take a load of the amaryllis out front. With the dry weather and dying cuttings I was bit discouraged, but now I'm inspired me to continue begging and borrowing new plants for the garden - the recent arrivals are geraniums and get this strawberries, not to mention the tamarinds that have sprouted up!
Matotea has also insisted that we try to sprout pink beans from the kitchen, and you know what it worked like a dream.......only snag is that there's no treasure or giant popped up, yet! Strawberries, however, almost make up for it, they give a decent give load of fruit at the neighbours house and Matotea was
over the moon to be allowed to pick a few ripe ones along with the runners that we're trying to get growing. Roll on next years strawberry jam!

Last week was a school holiday here and the guesthouse was heaving all week, whatsmore there were lots and lots of kids for Mato and Heimana to play with, just a slight compensation for the fact that everytime Mato's on holiday we are rushed off our feet (she also had the bouncy castle up and a new paddling pool to cushion the blow)!

 

This november has been the busiest I've ever seen it, and while it's a lot calmer this week it's not dead either, so it's all good news for us. We don't have much of a break before Christmas, which is already sneaking up on us. I've already done my online Christmas shopping, in the hopes that the post will get here for Santa..... I'm also hankering for a couple of days in Tahiti, enoying the 'Big Smoke' and supermarkets.......maybe for early december when we're going to close for a few days to replace our leaky roof, which will be a big relief to get done!

puppy's progress

It's already mid-august. I didn't even manage a birthday post for granny on the 15th, though we were all thinking about her and Matotea did offer to eat some cake on her behalf! The school holidays are drawing to a close, and we have a slight respite for a week or so, before the guesthouse gets busy again. The whales were here, but have mysteriously disappeared for a few days - hmmmn, I wonder if it could possibly be linked to the fact that they've been dynamiting the cliffs on the east coast.......the timing coincides.......I just hope they come back! The cold season continues, though we have been pretty lucky with the weather this year, it's been super dry, which unfortunately means that a lot of my cuttings in the garden are suffering! The honeysuckle's pretty much dead and the fig is only just hanging on in there......

However, our two puppies are growing, almost visibly, and are now up to all kinds of mischief, mostly cutting their teeth on people's feel, much to Heimana's upset. Like many tropical doggies they are rather laden with parasites, particularly as we have no vet here, Hina has contracted some kind of mange and the puppies are suffering too; not to mention their flea-load, which is just incredible, we're trying to keep it under control, treating them with some of my homemade anti-flea essential oils dog shampoo and some good old tamanu oil.......but Hina is a bit of a wanderer and the fleas seem to keep appearing as quickly as we get rid of them!

Heimana's friend

I always feel a little sorry for my two girls, as soon as the school
holidays begin we usually get busy at the guesthouse, and Matotea
tells me she's BORED of having a mummy who's always BUSY! But the upside is that the guests do often bring new friends to play with. Last week Heimana had a ball with a little boy called Nino, who is just exactly the same age as her - perfect, someone to hide in corners with! This week it's been Matotea's turn, she has a new friend called Mathilde to play with on the beach and, to do all her biddings.....

May Day.....

Saturday was May Day, in France there are large demonstrations of workers unions', but another tradition is the giving sprigs of 'Lily of the Valley' flowers. Apparently it dates back to 1561, when King Charles the IX of France was offered a sprig of flowers as a lucky charm; in the early twentieth century the gesture was adopted on May 1st as a commemoration of spring. So now people commonly offer the flowers to each other, I think in theory the sprig is supposed to have 13 bells on it to give you the maximum good luck. I suppose it's no sillier than dancing around a maypole!

But it's another one of these traditions that haven't really caught on yet here in Tahiti, along with Easter and Christmas, despite having been pushed at us pretty hard, at least on the local news report! I for one love Lily of the Valley, we had a huge bed of it in our house in Caerphilly, and I still remember the heavenly smell it would give off........still I don't think it'd grow here.....though you could probably try...... At the moment my family are more preoccupied with the preparations for the May Festivities here, which is basically the run up to whistun week (the Pentecost here).

Happy Easter!

We've had a busy old weekend, the guesthouse has been full, and is gradually emptying over today and tomorrow, before it all starts again with another busy weekend. I can't say we celebrated Easter, though I did take a quick tour around Avera just before the morning service, to admire the Easter bonnets (actually every sunday is Easter here, any good Rurutu woman has a selection of fancy hats for church). I did try making hot-cross buns on Friday, and I have to say they turned out light fluffy and delicious, even if I had to use candied ginger instead of candied peel. 

I was inspired by our guests (a couple who have already stayed with us once, and have a young baby who is just a day younger than Heimana) - they brought us some Algerian Easter brioche as an Easter present along with chocolate bunnies for Matotea. Which was great, as we can't buy Easter eggs in the store here,  they just don't have them. Matotea hasn't been able to enjoy them yet because she's de-camped to Meme's. Her cousins Meisi and Mata'i are there at the moment, so we probably won't see much of her until they've gone. Meisi is a few years older than Mato, and is at the same school, so they are firm friends, whatsmore Meisi has a swing........

The Gospel Arrives in Tahiti!

This year I didn't get to celebrate St.David's day, as we were busy doing stuff in Tahiti, and anyway there's a serious lack of daffodils! Even the more Tahitian holiday of march 5th, was a total washout in Tahiti, heavy rains drowned the celebrations for the "Arrival of the Gospel". More than 20cm of rain fell within 24h in Tahiti.....leaving central Papeete in the drink!

Oh and yes, you heard right, the day commemorating the arrival of the first Protestant missionaries is a national holiday here.

(Johnnie Williams, the famous Pacific Missionary, buried here in Samoa, but his legacy
has left an indelible footprint on the Polynesian culture across the Pacific.)

Kung Hi Fat Choy!

Welcoming you all to the year of the Metal Tiger!

But that's not all, aside from Chinese New Year, we've also celebrated St. Valentines, Carnaval in the French Caribbean, the Winter Olympics and, of course, the 6-nations rugby which is in full swing! All the excitement was a little too much for our poor DSL connection, which has been in spasms all weekend. Today it's finally sorted itself out (the technicians in Tahiti were probably all out partying/watching the Olympic Games). For those of you who don't know, the french are actually pretty good at those old winter sports, so it's quite a big deal here, which is a teensy bit weird as most of us in Rurutu have never even seen snow! But we do have our own (half-)Tahitian medal hope, the snowboarder Gary Zebrowski, he's reached aito (super-hero) status here. While surfing and snowboarding aren't so different it's still quite amusing that we even register......Go Gary!

Exodus

Matotea's fanclub has been shrinking rapidly since Tuati and Iro left last weekend (as well as Apera, who left for Tahiti and Matai who went back to Tubuai, so Meisi and Simei also returned to their home on the south coast).
The blow was cushioned slightly by the return to school on monday, but on friday grandmere and grandpere left us....back to chilly Wales, on the avion bleu.
The Christmas/New Year holidays are finally over! Now we need to get back to our old rhythmn.....

The Christmas Tree Saga

A few days before Christmas, we headed up into the mountains to pick out our tree (and have picnic too), we don't have much choice here, so we usually use a Caribbean pine, though people often also use ironwood saplings too. Tuati, Viriamu's son, who's here for the holidays, was keen to prove his strength by cutting down the tree with his machete....

Viriamu trimmed it down to size and got it into the truck....

Matotea and grandpere decorated the tree with all the decorations that we had bought in New Zealand...including the Christmas angel for the top of the tree....

Heimana and grandmere watched.....

The wind blew the tree over in the night and we started all over again. Finally the tree was moved inside and the boys decorated it, at least everyone got a turn! It stayed put there until we pulled it down yesterday...........and ate our gallette du Roi (the 'king' for the day, is the one who finds the little figure baked into the marzipan tart......but Matotea had other ideas!).

Rairoa

After our New Zealand adventure we went to another extreme and headed for the Tuamotus, to Rangiroa, the second largest atoll in the world!

It's all pretty much around sea-level, and prior to European contact the only drinking water came from rain or from coconuts! So hats off to the Polynesians who had made the place their home. The blistering sun gets you from all angles, with little shade offered by the trees.......we Brits found it all a bit too hot......sweating in the shade, nursing a glass or two of Rangiroa wine (it's the only island in French Polynesia boasting a vineyard, OK the red's not great, but the white and desert wines are quite passable)......

Viriamu and Matotea felt a bit more active...heading out to explore land and sea!

It's mainly a spot for diving and snorkelling, so we did our obligatory dolphin encounter and lagoonarium visit.....but again a whole day-trip on a boat seemed a bit much for us, so we didn't get the best out of it!

(above: Matotea spontaneously doing her 'Titanic' thing.....does she watch too much telly I ask myself!)