September's here

Almost a month has flown by between blogging, and it's been a busy one, full of guests and whales and goings on! First of all we had the much-anticipated arrival of the Gauguin cruise ship, which turned into a fiasco as the guests were unable to get off the boat due to the rough seas and narrow pass in Avera......this was a huge disappointment to us all, particularly the tourist committee (of which I am the tresurer) as we'd spent months preparing a spectacular welcome, training guides, programming an activity-packed day and negotiating at great length with the cruise company. Fortunately, the day was saved to some extent, as some of the welcome committee were allowed to get on the boat (after much to-ing and fro-ing with the cruise staff), so thankfully we managed to get paid for the 325 flower leis that had been prepared by our craftswomen.......I was very grateful to have been absent, it happened to coincide with another tourism salon, and I don't regret it an instant, as we managed to fill the guesthouse for the next three months. The school term continues and Heimana is getting into the school rhythmn. Matotea is making leaps and bounds in the literacy race, she tells me she wants a desk and computer for her birthday, she'll be writing novels by next year!!! For my part the garden's coming on, though it's been a bit too dry lately so some of my seedlings suffered from my absence at the salon, but I'm stocked for fresh herbs, we've been eating my home-grown plum tomatoes, the odd cape gooseberry and are slowly gathering strawberries in the freezer, in the hopes of making some jam or a sauce for yogurt, before the end of the year......I also have been growing, there's a third and final bump, due in feburary......

August blooms!

We're still enjoying some fairly 'wintry' weather at the moment, as are the whales who are here in force, and seem to be enjoying themselves in this particularly cold season.

However, the first signs of spring are already here. the limeblossom's out, as well as the 'grapefruit' blossom, which smells just incredibly fragrant, like neroli only stronger and zestier. It's actually an Indonesian pomelo, super sweet and juicy, with little in common with what I call a grapefruit, though we still call it pamplemousse here. There are times when there are more or less of them, but we do tend to have a sufficient supply for our needs, all year round, in fact our general citrus glut is one good reason to celebrate, whatever the season or weather!

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!

Whales

We're on holiday at the moment, granny and grandpa have come to visit for a few weeks, and as it's the end of the high season we've closed for a week or two. We're very lucky this year as the whales are still with us, normally they're gone by early november. Fortunately there were a couple of females who arrived late and are still hanging around the island with their calfs, and escorted by males (they always arrive to spoil the fun). 

 Granny got to fulfill her dream of a close encounter with the whales, and I went along too, it's not the first time, but it's true that it doesn't happen too often. We were in luck the whales were just outside the harbour, and though the sea was too rough to swim with the whales we got a good show.

 

The youngsters love to leap and splash and generally show off, so we had ample opportunity to catch them on film (though this is a lot harder than you might imagine on a rocking fishing boat!).......

Journée de la Mer

The day after the tsunami was international Ocean Day! Our environmental association put on a display of posters and went into the local schools to talk about why it's important to protect our oceans, we also had Elie and Frere Maxime here with us to help spread the word, they are environmental activists from Tahiti and are here to help us get the ball rolling.
In particular, we're concerned about the whales here in Rurutu, French Polynesia is one of the few places where you can actually swim with whales, and as Rurutu is particularly well blessed with whales, the island attracts a fair number of visitors who come especially for the whales, but the activity is not regulated (or at least the rules are not enforced). It's both important from an economic and an environmental perspective to protect the whales, to insure that they continue to return to our waters, year after year. This year has been a rather disappointing year for the whales, they weren't so numerous and kept leaving for several days at a time - this coincides with heavy work being carried out on our harbor, it seems quite likely that the vibrations caused by the pneumatic drills could have scared the whales. Likewise the fact that the whaleboats themselves do not respect the rules of approach (you should cut your motor at 50m distance and never approach within 30m), they often approach the whales to within a few meters without cutting the motor, which is a great experience for the visitor, but could easily be upsetting our whales. But as no one really monitors the whales, we don't really know why some years are better than others.

September Rush

We're just emerging out from under a crazy few weeks, chock full of guests. It's always like this in september what with the whales being here combined with the school holidays in Tahiti, but this year with the added bonus of a young baby in the house and jealous sister, it's been quite a season! It's actually been a really good season for us and the house has been at max capacity for the past few weeks. We celebrated the end of the big rush with a ma'a tahiti (tahitian oven). It's been a while since we did one, so it was fun, I always enjoy the kind of festive side of entertaining a whole bunch of people (we were 18 at table yesterday) and the tahitian oven is a little bit like Christmas, the night before you bury all the food in the ground and hey presto the next day you get to dig it all up and unwrap it, then stuff yourself silly and get a bit tipsy on tropical punch! After all the excitement I'm looking forward to things calming down a little bit.....we all deserve a bit of a rest!

Backblog

A whole month has slipped by without my being able to update the blog, it's been quite busy, so I don't feel too guilty but I do need to do some blogging penance and fill in the gaps backwards!

photo: Giselle Alzina

The whales are here and so are the tourists. I'm back in Rurutu and a few kilos lighter for it - Heimana is already two weeks old and appears to be feeding and doing all the other appropriate things that a small baby needs to do - including looking cute!