Marvelous days in Niue
Salsa af Stavsnas
Ellinor Ristoff Staffan Ehde
Thu 26 Sep 2013 08:25
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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!
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