Tuesday 13th
September 2016
We are still in Alotau, enjoying it all quite a lot. It is a small town, accessible only by plane
or boat because it is surrounded by very (very!) steep mountains, shrouded in
mist, and reaching down into the sea.
Nobody tried to to climb aboard; it is really quite
restful.
This morning we filled up with fuel at the main
wharf. This had its moments of stress…
We had been told to get there early, 8am, if possible, and to go to the
Transport Office to fill in forms. Pete
did all of this but…he couldn’t pay by visa.
And when he went to several ATMs in the town centre none of them would
disgorge money. So he had to come back
to the boat to get my Visacard, which was more obliging. While he was gone the Transport Office man
came and said Pete would have to go back to the office to fill in a new lot of
forms because our timing was now incorrect – it was by then 9.30.
So…more forms…and more waiting for the actual fuel people
to arrive. Which they did, in the fullness
of time. Without a funnel or a correctly
fitting hose. Pete shouted a bit and
waved his arms around and bodgied up some sort of contraption so the fuel could
be loaded into the thirsty tanks. The
massed observers were very happy.
It is amazing weather.
Every now and then there is a huge downpour, which stops as suddenly as
it started. We hope our water tanks are
filling as rapidly as they should. The
local people are alarmed and annoyed with the weather. They say that it should be the dry season and
that all of this rain is making their children sick. (Germy rain??)
Our first day in Alotau we were absolutely the only
dimdims to be seen. (Dimdims = white people,
in PNG.) And our second day – there were
1500 dimdims! A big P&O cruise ship
came in for the day and disgorged cheery crowds of (mostly) Australians (mostly)
from Cairns. Many of them hopped onto little
buses and disappeared into the hills to see…no idea what they were seeing but
it is all very spectacular, here, so I am sure the tours were great. But many hundreds of them didn’t go on tours;
they wandered up and down the main street.
I went up and down the street too, following Pete to
Customs and Immigration. He was told that
he would have to go to Quarantine before we would be allowed to check out. (Not quite sure why…Quarantine is for arrival not
departure…but no point in arguing.) He
had to go right back around the bay, past the Alotau Waterfront Lodge, where we are anchored,) and along to the cruise ship terminal. So…I stopped off and went to sit in the big
shady restaurant area where I had a lovely time while Pete trudged back and
forth from office to office. He also
hunted around in some of the supermarkets and found – yes! – potatoes, and onions!
The day before we had been the only customers in the
restaurant but yesterday some of the 1500 cruisers were in there, filling up
all of the tables. There was a little band
of local men, many of them very ancient, peacefully playing island music. I sat and battled with the WiFi and made lots
of new friends. And all this time Pete
was trudging around in the heat, with his poor sore leg aching and throbbing…
Yes, too awful, Pete has another infected coral
scratch, which is sending poison all through his system. Well it is trying to do this; he is taking strong
antibiotics, yet again, and it seems to be healing and retreating slowly. I looked at him yesterday, with his big wound
glaring away on his left shin, and it reminded me of his dear mother, who had a
similar painful wound on the shin, when she was in Queenborough Rise Nursing
Home. If you asked how it was she would admit
that yes it was painful. And if you
asked how it had happened…she would say, “I was shot, at a wedding.” Apparently a perfect stranger came up to her
at a wedding, and just shot her in the leg…And now Pete looks as if he has been
shot in the leg by a random stranger!
Tomorrow we are leaving, heading towards Misima, in
the Louisiades. This should take about three
days and…no idea whether or not we will have internet connection there but…que
sera sera!
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