Marvelous days in Niue

Salsa af Stavsnas
Ellinor Ristoff Staffan Ehde
Thu 26 Sep 2013 08:25
Short about what is happening. We have been ashore every day since we arrived. From early morning til late evening. So the diary is way behind.
This place is going to be one of our absolute favourites! What an island, how wondeful people!
Its a rock of limestone in the midle of "nowhere" surrounded by vast miles of ocean. And yet the island is such a beauty with a lot of forest, very flat, 30 meters above sealevel. They had a hurricane in 2004 I think (yes right now I think it was even later), a terrible devastating monster that pushed 30-40 meter waves in front of the "front" and the disaster was so big for the people living here that maný moved to New Zealand. And actually the most of the population from this island does not live here. Only 1400 people left. The amount of abandoned houses is greater than houses with people living in them.
But still, the island is extremely clean. Extremely well kept. Extremely well organised. Extremely beautyful!
You should see the limestone caves we have been into today! Unfortunally internet here is only by satellite so it will be hard to show you what it looks like right now.
The visibility in the water must be around 50-70 meters! The corals are beautyful, because they are new and have come back after the hurricane.
Today we had the best snorkeling ever on this trip.
Along the coast there are humpback wales swimming, and today we saw a HUGE tale coming up as a whale dived!
This island becomes a mental diamond in our memory!
On the dock, that is unprotected from winds from the west, there is the catamaran Blue Marble. We told you about it before.
It came loose from a mooring and ended on the reef. All the people on board are held "hostage" here on the island til all payments are settled.
The cost of taking the boat from the reef etc is about 20.000 NZD and the insurance company has been working with the process on how to deal with this damage. The damage on the boat is so big you have to do major shipyard work to get her back into a seaworthy state. The group of people that belong to this boat are exetremely good at handling the situation and they have been treated with outmost generosity. A woman with a big house lets them live there at no cost etc etc.
Hopefully we can slow down a bit this coming days, have school, clean the hullsides (yes very dirty again) do some maintanance and just enjoy swimming in this extremely clean water!