Cockroach in Banana
Salsa af Stavsnas
Ellinor Ristoff Staffan Ehde
Sun 5 May 2013 21:47
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So we are getting along here, yesterday was chill
out after the dive. We have a lot of neighbours with kids so it is no problem to
be social. Yesterday we had the kids here from Miss My and we where practicing
macramé etc.
We also booked a horse tour with a french boat that
also have kids in Erikas and Andreas age.
We will go tomorrow to the top of the crater on
Vulcano Monte Negro, it erupted just 20 years ago (I think).
Today we went half way up the vulcano to a farm
called FINCA. A magnificent place that grows all kinds of fruit and
vegetables.
They where very helpful and we learned so much from
just picking the fruits ourselves. We bought ginger, pineapples, passion fruits
(that are big as grape fruits!), Water melon, Pumpa, banana stock, tomatoes, red
pepper, chile etc. It is all spread on the aft deck as usual after being cleaned
with salt water (that is supposed to kill cockroaches and their eggs) and then
rinsed in fresh water, now it is drying in the air (no there is no sun today,
overcast and that is nice).
When Ellinor pushed down the stock of bananas in a
bucket with salt water a huge cockroach tried to escape out and Ellinor was
really fast and got the whole package into the ocean and that was the end of
that animal. But you can believe us that motivation went up 300% to keep
everything cleaned and rinsed before taking it into the boat!
In the farm we also met some nuns on visit. They
told us they work with abandoned children on the mainland of Equador, they have
an orphanage and when they understood we where from Sweden they told us they
like Swedes a lot, they had 8 children adopted by Swedish couples. Now
they where in St Cruix helping out some families that are about to brake
up.
Our life is filled of small celebrations, we have
not had any home made pesto since Las Palmas, due to the simple fact that
basil is very hard to get. Suddenly we realize basil is growing here on Isabela,
so yesterday we made a big load of Pesto with the last parmegian cheese we got.
Now we are also taking the opportunity to eat fruit since we understand it is
very scarce on the islands in the Pacific.
Sorry for the link yesterday, it is supposed to be
fritthav.com nothing else.
Did we write we are considering going to Le Gambier
instead of Marquesas directly?
It is the same distance. From here to Marquesas or
Le Gambier it is 3000 nM, and that we have to do without any stop
underway.
Considering that it is 5000nM from here to New
Zeeland it feels that when we have done this leg we have done a big chunck of
sailing.
Le Gambier belong to the Tuamotos (the islands
where Villervalle lives), and according to some french experienced sailors we
will make a faster run to Le Gambier because of the wind angle, and it is
supposed to be very special, so isolated and beautyful. Not many sailors go
there. Once you are there navigation is easy, well marked etc. And that is a new
consideration we had not been taking so far, when choosing an atoll we have to
look at the conditions for entering the lagoons. Some are really hard with very
hard currents in running tide water or even because of the ocean filling the
lagoon from one side if the waves are high. We will try to stay with the easier
ones. By the way, on the way to Le Gambier you can try to stop at Bounty, the
famous island, if conditions are good you can anchor there, but most of the time
they are not good enought. We will se, but we are staying here another week at
least, so much to see and then we have to make some safety maintenance before we
go ón this long leg.
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