Birthday Floods!

My birthdays are becoming more and more difficult to handle, and it isn't just becuase I turned 35 this year! Already we have the whole birthday grinch issue (i.e. my husband, who doesn't believe in celebrating birthdays or having fun! And while it's refreshingly non-consumer society, I do like to do something a bit special on my big day, even if it's just a bit of time off with my peeps!). Thank goodness for my adorable girls, who are always willing to help me eat some cake and blow out a few candles!

Anyhow, I'm beginning to think I'm jinxed. Last year, very unfortunately, my father-in-law passed away on the 11th, this year it was a natural disaster rather than a family tragedy. A freak storm hit Rurutu on tuesday evening and we had more than 12 hours of seriously heavy rain. There were powercuts and lightning to top it all off - Matotea and Heimana, inspired by Peppa Pig, decided to provide some light entertainment while the lights were off, Matotea put on her own TV show, and Heimana just liked wearing the cardboard box!

It did eventually stop mid-afternoon, after we had watched Titanic for the second time that day (even with the powercuts), then there was the inevitable cleanup afterwards. Even our new guttering couldn't stop the terrace from getting more than a little damp.....

The airport and runway were turned into a marshland (above and below), so that the regular flight was canceled and our poor guests were stranded in Tahiti until thursday afternoon, when things had dried up a bit.....

.....it reminded me a bit of a rather amusing time I spent trying to get to Cairns in a rental car with my good friend Amy, a few years ago now. It was the rainy season and predictably enough there were very heavy rains in Queensland, we were driving north from Brisbane and suddenly got to a spot in the road where someone was kayaking towards us down the highway between stranded trucks!! Needless to say we didn't get to Cairns that day! I guess the upside of all the drama is that I got the evening off, and there was a really beautiful watery sunset!

 

However I am a little worried about next year!

State of emergency in Vitaria!

On friday, as the east coast of the states braced itself for the arrival of hurricane Irene, the humdrum, sleepy existence of our small district, Vitaria, was also thrown into turmoil, when strong swells brought 8m waves crashing directly at our driveway! It started in the evening, we'd just finished clearing up the evening meal when the sound of the surf started to really amp up, by 8:30 pm the waves had started coming up over the beach and onto the road outside our driveway.....

Viriamu surveys the surf as it breaks at the top of our beach

Fortunately it didn't come much further than our front gate. Nevertheless we were the focus of attention for the emergency services on the island. We had the police, the mayor of Avera, the fire service, the public works people and municipal police all gathered outside our front door at some point during the night, not to mention a municipal minibus, in the event that our guests needed to be evacuated!!!! Fortunately we avoided catastrophe......

The waves drenched the road bringing with them a whole pile of ironwood tree needles

Remarkably our guests slept on, oblivious of the whole situation, but I definitely feel reassured that we're in good hands here! The island has clearly been working on their emergency action plan, maybe since our brush with cyclone Oli last year. By 6:30am on saturday morning the swell had died down a fair bit.

 

The road was closed off with diggers and workmen out front cleaning up the mess, which strangely seemed to be entirely isolated to a 20m stretch out front of our place (Hmmmmn, we're starting to wonder whether it might not be something we did!).

Fortunately, we have a barrier of ironwood trees planted along the beachfront facing our house, they clearly saved our garden from a good dousing in saltwater..........

The ironwood trees along our beach, with exposed roots thanks to the waves

Our beach is now very clean and very smooth! Good thing we managed to salvage the hammock! What can you say, island life is often quiet, but never dull!

June goes by!

 

Well time really is flying by, I've neglected the blog for over two weeks now! Though I'm hard pressed to think of much to report, the weather continues to be wet and wild, but the girls don't seem to mind.
Our dog Hina has just had puppies, so that's causing some excitement. We've got two little boys, we're working on names. Matotea's rooting for Lili and Lulu, I'm more for Caramel and Cocoa.

Other than that we're getting ready for the run-up to the heiva next month. Viriamu and Tuati are busy training the horses for the big race on the 14th of july........

Flowers from my Garden

What could be more uplifting on a cold, miserable, wet day in may (read november for those in the northern hemisphere), than this cheerful little daisy smiling out of the beds, positively relishing the downpours.
OK, this one is technically a weed here in Rurutu! It's a daisy of some kind, it grows rampant in grassland, the air-strip is literally lit up by these things when they're in full bloom.

Rain, rain go away!

May has been as wet and cold as April was hot and sunny. It's not actually raining now, but it's been pretty unsettled this last week, with southerly winds, mara'amu, which all Tahitians know, blow nobody any good!

 (not the mara'amu but Heimana's raspberries)

The advantage of the bad weather, and quiet season, is that Viriamu has been busy working in the house, and bingo we have a new set of shelves made of purau (wild hibiscus) and a beautiful clock made of miro (tahitian rosewood).

All the cold weather has been giving Heimana an appetite!

And Matotea's back in her NZ boots....

Still Here!

Cyclone Oli passed Rurutu last night, there were strong winds, high seas and heavy rain, but we were safely shut in our house, with lovely thick walls between us and the gale. Now this morning the sun is shining and the red alert is lifted, so we've had a drive around to survey the damage, no big disaster to report, thankfully. We've also just been re-connected to the net and to the electric grid......hurrah!

There's a lot of debris to pick up and a lot of flattened banana palms, but it could have been so much worse. There were 6-8m high waves and in places where the reef is close the coast, it must have been quite scary.

(The Tuhaa Pae our cargo ship waits off the coast of Rurutu, in the swell, it's
been 'stuck' at sea since wednesday, not able to return to Tahiti and now
waiting to go to Tubuai to assist if necessary)

On the northeast coast the road was inundated in several places, bringing a lot of rocks and sand with it! The primary school lost its gates, and the police station might also have got some of the worst of it.

But really, no serious injuries to report, so we all feel very relieved today. A lot of the families in our district spent a tense night in a nearby cave, as they always have, in such situations.

So all in all, more fear than damage here in Rurutu, however, Tubuai got a direct hit, with gusts of wind over 200km/h. Again, from first reports, there don't appear to be any major casualties, but the islands electricity pylons have been flattened and there's apparently a lot of trees fallen across the roads. Our hearts and minds now go out to the people of Rapa, awaiting the cyclone.....

We're deeply touched by the messages we've received from friends and guests, from all over the world, in the last few hours. It's wonderful to know that you are out there thinking of us....

(Here we are in our cyclone shelter...the morning after)

It's 15h00 and we're bracing for the worst. The waves are crashing in regularly now, and the sea is inching up the beach, the rain is heavy and steady, we're expecting the electricity to be cut anytime soon, so we'll probably be offline until tomorrow, at least.

It's now 9h00 and we're still waiting for the worst. At the moment the weather is eerily calm, and while the sea is definitely a bit rough, nothing really remarkable yet. But it's coming.......In Tahiti the worst appears to be over, and from the radio we hear the reports......the roads are pretty much impassable at the moment, and there are widespread power cuts, but aside from that there are few real caualties, though a lot of people will have to repair their homes, about three hundred homes in Bora Bora sustained serious storm damage. We're sitting tight and hoping for the best! A large portion of the population of Vitaria (our district) has headed to the nearby cave to shelter.....we're sticking it out here. We're most concerned about the sea, we're only around 5m above sea level. A falling coconut palm could also do us some damage, but we have a pretty sturdy house and a second floor, so we feel as safe as is possible in a cyclone red alert zone.

Red Alert!

Oli's trajectory has changed, he's coming for us sooner and faster than expected. The Meteo's crisis center called us at 01h00, to let us know that we should expect the first signs in the next few hours and not tomorrow evening as expected yesterday. Specifically we are expecting waves of between 6-8m from about 6h00, so enough to result in some flooding, we'll see. We're preparing ourselves and getting prepared to sit tight for the next 24hrs or so. Not sure whether we'll have electricity/internet, but at the moment all is well here in Rurutu and as far as we can tell the damage from the cyclone has been mostly cosmetic in the Society Islands. We'll try to keep you up to date as we can. I know the cyclone has made French national news.

The ministerial visit that never was!

Matotea was ready..... the village of Avera was ready........

The commune had been feverishly filling in potholes and decking the roads with coconut palm fronds, but in the end the minister canceled, due to Oli, who has decided to come and visit, bringing >100km/h winds and 6m swells to the leeward islands.

So, at 8h00 this morning the commune were out feverishly pulling down all the decorations, in anticipation of the cyclone-force winds. At the moment he's doing somewhere off the coast of Maupiti, this evening Tahiti and Moorea are on red alert. Inhabitants have been advised to stay home from 18h00 and driving is forbidden after 21h00 this evening! After that he heads our way, we're still only on orange alert right now, but we're expected to go red by tomorrow morning. So there's a meeting at the mayor's office tomorrow morning to plan for the worst, which is expected to occur on thursday evening/friday, meanwhile our heart's go out to those already in the hurricane zone.......

orange alert!

Oli is officially a cyclone, and it may even attain hurricane status (winds over 64 knots, ~120 km/h), before tailing off, toward the end of the week. It's current trajectory shouldn't worry us too much, but you never know. We'll brace ourselves to experience some strong winds in the next 48h.

Now it's Oli

What is going on here! There's yet another tropical depression brewing - it's enough to give you a tropical headache. Whatsmore there's a whole blog devoted to tropical depressions! This time our depression has been called Oli, by the Fijians, and is currently in the northern Cooks, it's not clear whether it will actually make it to cyclone status, but if it does, then it will be here on Wednesday, just in time for the arrival of the french Ministre for d'Outre-Mer, Marie-Luce Penchard. Yes, you heard right she'll be right here in Rurutu on wednesday, we are part of the real world! Our works department are knocking themselves out repairing the roads and making Rurutu presentable. Maybe they could stop illegally extracting sand from our beches to fill in the holes in the road. We'll find out if she has any magical solutions for the political and economic pickle we've gotten ourselves into here in PF! (You can follow her every move and that of our second tropical depression on our French Polynesian national newspaper's site http://www.ladepeche.pf)

The cyclone that never was!

Well, after all the hype, today played out much like any other sunday, in fact the sun shone and it was a positively nice day, considering we were supposedly experiencing the tail end of a cyclone - there must be a good fairy looking out for us somewhere!

Tropical Depression Alert!

A moderate tropical depression named 'Nisha', is supposedly heading our way, and is expected to hit on Sunday. It's caused general panic in Tahiti, in particular the meteorology office has been on red alert! The possibility of a weekend in the midst of a cyclone has been enough to scare our guests off, so after getting all geared up for a full-house, we're suddenly off duty again! I suppose we should set to securing the rigging, buying in water and tinned foods - that's the official advice we're getting. The storm is currently about 1000km away, in the Cook Islands, with winds of over 120km/h, it's predicted that it'll pass somewhere between the northern Australs (that's us) and the Society Islands. But it's actually losing strength (it's almost the Ex-Tropical Depression, previously know as Nisha), and while it will cause some stormy seas, it'll probably bring little more than wet weather, fingers-crossed!

Austral Winter

Midwinter's day dawned here in Rurutu just before seven o'clock.....the stillness and beauty of the moment got me feeling all poetic.......

"In the depths of winter I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer"

-Albert Camus

Here's my invincible summer enjoying a warming cup of cocoa! Midwinter for us here at the edge of the tropical southern hemisphere is still very comfortable during the daytime, but it's definitely getting a little chilly at night for my liking. We've all got colds at the moment! So we're making LOTs of soups, lemon and honey tea and hot-chocolate....