The days
start early and end early. At 6.30 am, right after sunrise, even the best
sleeper wakes up. Why? Beause in the evening you’re so tired from sun, wind and
water that you hardly survive to stay awake through the dinner just after
sunset. When the dishes are done, around 7.30pm, you ask yourself: what can I
do now to stay awake….People on the island seem to be the same. Life starts and
ends early. In the morning, as of 7am, the run to the bakery, better to say to
the baker (“le boulange, c’est lui” is how I found out where I could get fresh bread), starts. What can you get
there? Baguette, only baguette – but a good one.
After
breakfast I usually go to land to discover more of the island. What did I find?
Green, lots of green. Besides the redwood trees I see the biggest (mostly
highest) trees of all different kinds I have ever seen. They seem to constantly
grow, nothing keeps them from doing so. The island behind the town looks more
like a jungle.
There are several paths to cross from this
side to the other, but I think only tourists use these once in a while. There
is so much green you hardly find the paths. The islanders don’t walk. They all
have mopeds or cars. But not just cars, the biggest, mostly modern Pick-ups.
I
don’t understand why they need them for an island of about 12km length with
probably about 25km streets in total. A bike would be more than enough. Or a
horse. But now, they all need cars. Looking for a gas station? No, not here.
People all privately order 200l barrels of gas/diesel in Tahiti. A cargo ship,
which comes here every two weeks, brings the barrels plus anything else the
people might have ordered and some vegetables for the people to buy. They could
grow everything here, but they don’t (they did grow vegetables here in the 70s,
but not since). They grow only fruits and most of these get rotten if not
sailors like me come by and ask for permission to pick up some of those fruits.
Do they let you pay for these? No, they’re happy someone is interested. They
all asked me to come back anytime to get more. Today I went “shopping” at
Gaston’s again – and at the place of the lady where I have the best source of
pomelo. Now I’ve got enough papaya, banana, pomelo, coco, lemons and some other
fruit to survive the next couple of days.
Today
Marcus walked with me along the southern part of the island a little bit. We
passed by the little graveyard, where the last king of Mangareva, who died on
20.6.1857, has his grave.
We ended up
walking through a beautiful, enchanted (verwunschen) forest with an interesting
mix of trees.
We’ll leave
the island of Mangareva tomorrow and hang around some of the beautiful other
islands here in the atoll of Iles de Gambier. On Saturday we come back here to
get Pizza at night and for me to be able to go to church Sunday morning for the
service. It’s supposed to be gorgeous – especially the singing. People dress up
and everybody meets at church.
Then we
wait for Sebastian to arrive on Tuesday. Gyuri left by plane today, but had
been on land in a hotel the last week because it’s more comfortable to be at
land without depending on someone to drive him to land with the Dinghy and to
pick him up. We had a nice good-bye dinner yesterday.
In the following picture: Marcus' construction for re-filling gas from one bottle to the other.
Fruits for Micha:
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen