Highlights
Salsa af Stavsnas
Ellinor Ristoff Staffan Ehde
Sun 29 Sep 2013 18:06
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We are still in Niue, today it is Sunday. Miss My
will move on to Tonga, Vavau. Probably they have to motor quite a bit. But
Kristinas mother is flying in from Sweden. Well done! We learned from
friends that are considering to come that it takes 36,5 hours to get there from
Sweden.
We will stay a few more days. Yesterday we got all
bycicles ashore and want to explore the island by bycicle.
There was a "market" day yesterday by the
highschool. Obviously there is one every saturday in one of the villages on the
island.As luck would have it it was just 2 km away from us this weekend. So we
took the bikes to go there. The politicians had their own tent, to give them
shadow, and they took turns talking and talking. Niue has 20 full time
politicians, making it the country in the world that has most professional
goverment officials per capita (1400 INHABITANS).
Then you could stroll around trying to find out
what kind of food that was sold. Soon the "show" started. It had a very
amateurish class to it. The strangest part being that when they danced people
who liked what they did would go up on stage and stick money to their
body...
Even kids dancing together, people could favour one
kid (wich they did) and stick a lot of money in that kids
garment.
No it was not turists, it was the locals who did
that. Actually there where very little turists on this event.
A few yachtees and a few people from
NZ.
Going backwards, Friday, there was a birthday party
for Gustav on Miss My, with our kids and kids from Felice. The swell was so bad
by the dock that Ellinor fell over board when trying to get in the dinghy and
holding on at the same time. That's the most dramatic I could come up with right
now.
You should have seen Kristina passing on the
birthday cake to Emil as the dinghy raised 4 meters up and then came down like
an elevator...
Highlights
Friday morning I had the honour of giving a little
intro by satellite to a conference in Quebeque. It was the annual IQ conference
and they where going to have a session about doing things DIFFERENT. And they
thought that if anybody could prove that things could be done different, it was
me.
Well thank you, Im really honored. Before giving my
little intro to them I was asked by the host if I could mention any highlight
from the sailing trip.
Taken by surprise I realised that this is a
question we will most probably get when we get back home. Probably about the
most scary things and the most fun.
I like the word highlight better than
most-of-something. Because there is no record breaking in this.
I started to think, and came to the conclusion that
highlights are about meeting people. Some meetings are highlights.
When you suddenly realize that we have much to
learn from each other. When there is a give and take.
A pig, a goat can be fascinating to feed, but there
is no give and take. A landscape can be fascinating, but you can only look so
much.
I think a highlight could be that we have
accomplished a tough leg, for instance the sailing from St Marta to San Blas
remains the hardest sailing we ever done, weatherwise. You could say it was a
highlight? No. It was hard and bad weather at sea seemes to be like a flue, once
it's over, life goes on.
The highlight of this trip for me at least (I will
ask around next monday meeting), is to realize how small the world is. How
little difference there is between humans. And how much good there is in the
human mind. Before you leave you hear all this horror stories about customs,
imigration and I do not know what that will hassle you. We had none of that. All
very relaxed. There might be some document you have to fill in that might make
you wonder what they thought when they created that but so what. By the way, I
have to write it to remember, there was a document to be filled in here at Nuie
that I have never seen the like before. The person who designed it must either
be evil or funny, I`m hoping the last.
Think of this, Im going to give you the space that
corresponds to the space given in the document to be filled in:
Vessels name____ Vessels ID ____ Vessels length
_________________ Vessels Beam ____________________
Owners name__ Adresss__ Vessels home port __
Vessels radio id _________________ (usually 4 letters)
and so on....
The forms they get in must be almost impossible to
read, and that has resulted in the following statement in the top of the
document:
PLEASE FILL IN FORM WITH CAPITAL LETTERS!
Well we meet a lot more people than
officials...
Most people we meet are proud of their village or
country and they want to share.
The only time I felt stressed about strangers was
in the Caribien, especially St Vincent where we where hassled by "boatboys".
Desperate youngsters who tried to make money for nothing.
Here in the Pacific, people seem to be concerned
about each other. You cannot stop and lay down you bycicle to rest on the ground
for long, people will stop and ask if everything is alright.
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