Love this place!
Salsa af Stavsnas
Ellinor Ristoff Staffan Ehde
Fri 30 Aug 2013 01:54
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Relaxed, friendly, what more can we
say?
Prices are more reasonable.
Yesterday we worked on board and I am editing the
book.
The kids played a lot with Miss My when they came
in. We offered Kristina and Olof an afternoon off to catch up with
sleep.
They arrived around lunchtime and took that
offer.
In the evening we shared a few beers in the cockpit
and then ate out at a burger place that is 20 meters from the
boats.
Everybody recommended us to go there. They had
happy day so there was a lot of choises "2for1"
They even had a veggie burger and to my taste it
was the best I had in my life!
They gave you buckets of french fries and the guy
who took orders was probably the planets biggest rugby player.
He looked down at you from the kiosks window, like
a giant. And he kept track of everybody and what they ordered. And we must
have been 30 people waiting!
Another thing that happened yesterday, was as I
edited the book one of the cargo ships was about to leave.
I went over to look since I like all their systems
when loading a small 200 ton ship.
One of them is their "containersystem" for frozen
food or fish.
They simply load and stack freezers, the kind we
have in basements, toploaded, big boxes.
Then they plug them into the 220 V on board from a
gen.
It is also interesting to see how they load with a
crane on the ship, with blocks and lines.
And as I learned when they unload on the islands,
they have to operate it with swell and small barges underneath.Always outside
the reefs...
As I was standing there a guy in the 60s was being
very funny with the crew. Giving them all kinds of sarchastic
comments.
His name is Taio and I asked him if he is the funny
guy on the island. -Well I try to, he responded with some laughs.
I asked him what kind of boat it was and he
responded - Its a Norwegian torpedo boat that has been refitted.
I asked if´he was part of the crew and he waved his
hands,- me? No way!
So I asked him why he knew so much about the boats
(there is another one in the harbour), -Oh, I own them, he laughed.
So we talked about shipping in Cooks and I
mentioned that it would be great to go with one of the boats and take pictures
-You can go next week, he responded. So lets hope it works out. Ellinor does not
mind that I go but we have to be sure that the wind does not change while Im
gone. This harboúr becomes very dangerous when the wind comes from the
north.
Today I went to Taios office to have a word as he
asked me to come by, and he told me stories about his career in shipping for 3
hours!
He used to be a constructionguy, building houses.
Had his own company. As the shipping business in Cooks was awfully bad, he said
quite a few asked him to start a new. NO WAY! he responded. He would NEVER ever
go in to a business where ships sank.
Even a guy from Tahiti tried to convince him to
become a partner. His wifes parents live on an outer island had not seen a
supply boat for 8 months tried to convince him. Obviusly they succeded and he
has runned this business for 20 years.
Im thinking of making a story for a magasine about
this guy. He usually buys the ships from Norway or Denmark.
His office is big as four wardrobes, filled with
filers from floor to ceiling. His employees sit in a landscape and they have 21
steps to the harbour.
For a while Taio was sitting in the goverment as
the finance minister. He told me miles of stories with crooked people and
corrupt politics.
Italians that lift a loan of 250 million dollars
from this little country, to build a super duper hotel, and then they leave with
the money and there is four walls of cardboard left...
He was not in the goverment until after this deal
and he had to deal with the bankrupsy of Cooks in 197something.
They have one jail with 30 prisoners and have now
applied the Swedish model... to treat people back to normal
life....
He built the jail.
And so on, he had all the time in the
world.
Another fun experience was when I took the bike to
the airport to get a package from Sweden.
As I enter the reception a woman smiles at me and
asks- Are you Stephan?
-What, are you into mindreading? I
asked
-Sort of, she said and handed me the
package....
Imagine a world where it would be so simple to get
something from another country...
Right now Im sitting by a playground, watching
Andreas and Gustav (same age from Miss My) play around.
Erika had her school day at Miss My today as they
had physics.
The atmosphere here is more dynamic, happier than
in FP.
A Swedish guy who lives here since 20 years (he
came in a sailboat) stopped this morning by our boat.
Maybe he had a good explanation.
He said that in FP the French keep charge of
everything, they will not let the locals take responsibiliy.
Here in Cooks it is the opposite. They have also
changed from having an economy based on 90% coming from NZ and 10% made locally
to the total opposite.
And as my father always said when I was a teenager
and wished to do things that cost money, -those who have their own money can do
what they want... That made me work when I was off from school.
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