Bikes, visitors and tourists!

On reading the last blog our dear friend Nerida had commented on her awe of the 'once in a lifetime' opportunity to swim with the dolphins. I didn't want to boast to her that you're almost guaranteed to see them if you want to, particulalry as she was about to visit and I didn't want to build her hopes.

So the first time we went out for a dive after her arrival I mentioned to Annie that if they'd seen the dolphins around that morning Nerida would love to see them - sure enough, off we went and Nerida got to experience her 'once in a lifetime' chance to swim with the dolphins in their natural environment. She was also fortunate enough to have this experience on all of the three dives that she went out on. She even managed to get some pics before her battery died...

Unfortunately for me the one dive that I didn't join her for she was incredibly lucky to have a real 'once in a lifetime' experience and very literally came face to face with a turtle. An experience that I'm pretty much bursting at the seams for - I shall just have to stay stitched up for that little while longer... although I was lucky enough to have a passing encounter from some distance on our last dive of the week,  as I was bobbing around waiting for the others to descend, one of our group popped her head up to say "turtle!" So off I went following it out of sight, wasn't quite the encounter Nerida had managed but nonetheless it was the first time I'd seen a turtle swimming in the ocean and it was just as magical as I'd hoped.

Check Ned out though...

During the week that Nerida visited we had the annual Rally of the rock race. A mountain biking competition open to anyone and everyone who is mad enough, Paul included! They started at the Northern most village of the island and proceeded a race in stages down to the South of the island, a distance of 40-50km's I believe. The previous 3-4 days we'd had some pretty heavy rain so most of the tracks were pretty muddy, but as we met up with the race at various intervals throughout the island the atmosphere amongst the riders was excellent and seemed like a great event to be involved in.

Unfortunately for Paul (right at the limit for his age group) he didn't get a placing although it seems there were just seconds between them. One of our NZ contractors managed to bag 3rd place though and he was pretty pleased with himself.

The race was rightly finished off with plenty of beer and relaxing at the Washaway bar on Avatele beach accompanied by a beautiful evening and sunset...

The washaway is one of those great little places that's simple and perfect, it has a small crowd of regulars week in, week out, that frequent it for it's one day of opening every week and enjoy a few beers from the honesty bar and some great food cooked by the lovely Janice. We've been fortunate to have arrived over here in the summer/low season and enjoy the quietness the island has to offer. So when we arranged a babysitter last Sunday for Paul's birthday so we could go and enjoy all the washaway has to offer without the toddler to continually chase after, you can imagine our shock to find the place full of tourists!!!!! It was quite stifling - we had to escape to the beach with a few beers...

The flight last week had brought with it the highest number of tourists since we've arrived - a whopping 55! I can't say I've noticed the higher quantity of people anywhere else on the island which is reassuring and I'm fully aware I'm running quite a high risk of sounding like a dirty old hippy but there are some places that suit a crowded bar or two and Niue just isn't one of them...how will I cope with the 'high' season????

Another thing ticked off the list!

Well, we're now fully qualified scuba divers and what a way and place to accomplish this. We finished the last two of our open water dives on Saturday and were lucky enough to have a pod of dolphins swimming by the first of the dive sights. So with this we slipped in to the water with our masks and fins on and held onto one side of the small inflatable dive boat whilst Annie (our dive instructor) cruised the boat along at a slowish and steady pace. Superb - with this technique you get to follow the dolphins around with them swimming almost right next to you at times seeing them gather speed to jump out of the water and then re-enter incredibly gracefully, a truely valid use of the word 'awesome'!

We then went down for the first of our dives and successfully completed our skill tests whilst enjoying some very pretty coral and array of various fish. We were lucky to have a beautiful sunny day above the surface so the sun shining through added a quite special touch to the colours and fish.
This particular dive sights buoy is anchored relatively near to where the waves break against the coral reef so when we stopped for our 5 metrre safety stop we could see the white water from the crashing waves but couldn't hear the crashing or feel the force and power that you can from the surface, but we could feel the motion of the waves, which made you feel as if you were in a kind of state of blissful suspension, it was a feeling that was incredibly relaxing yet kind of exhilarating at the same time.

Back to the surface and back to the dolphins. This time we just slipped in and snorkelled over to where they were and proceeded to follow them around for 5 minutes or so before they left again. I guess because we didn't cause so much disturbance and excitement for them with the boat we got to see them in a much more sedate swim which was just as majestic. Paul rightly described it as swimming with a wall of dolphins in front of you...we stopped counting at 30 and think it's reasonable to say the pod was about 40 in size, with a few babies in tow. To see animals of this size in quantities like this moving so gracefully through the water was a really special moment, and one that I look forward to enjoying as much as possible!
As we moved off to the next dive site we had a more than suitable farwell as the dolphins came back for one last play in front of the boat as we glided along, they seemed to be having a ball so it felt like we moved on with smiles for everyone!

Life ticks along...

It's amazing how quickly life starts ticking along as usual when you've upped sticks and moved your entire life from one country to another. It's been 8 weeks since we arrived on 'the rock' and life has settled into it's own routine with incredible ease.
Works work, with it's own stresses and frustrations - even on a South Pacific island - in fact in this case probably more so because of being on a South Pacific island!! But when you walk out the door at the end of the day it's still very nice to be working here.

Daisy has settled into life being looked after by someone else other than me with a touch more ease than most mothers would like, after all it would be nice if she was just a little bit bothered by me not being there! We seem to have got that one perfect though - she's always pleased to see Barbara arrive and always pleased to see me come home, and that is a nice feeling. And as much as work comes with frustrations I am enjoying working again and that has to be made that much easier with leaving a contented child behind.

On to matters of a slightly more watery nature and we're now half way through our PADI course having gone out seaward and completed our 1st two open water dives last weekend. And very well it went too - what a marvellous place to spend your time! We saw a Barracuda, a rather cool looking Lion fish, some starfish, wonderfully colourful coral with all sorts of cool little things living in it. Some pretty large snakes and some huge clams along with all sorts of other wierd and wonderful fish of varying colourfulness and size. It's a very pretty place down there and I look forward to more discovery! We've got our last two confined water dives this coming weekend along with the exam, then just two more open water dives the following weekend and we're done! Just in time for a visit from Ned - superb!

Speaking of visits we're most excited to now have two more booked in with Dave and Kate coming out later in June and then Daisy's mate Isabella bringing her parents out for a bit of a jaunt in August, and not to mention our trip back to NZ at the beginning of August to introduce Daisy to snow, well that all just makes for lots to look forward to which is a pretty good spot to be in...

We were delighted to see the Tucker clan on skype the other day and as much as the quality isn't fantastic it truely is better than nothing, and without a phone of any sort without skype there is nothing so I must ask those of you who haven't already got a skype address - please set one up - it would be great to see you!

Right, that's me for now - I hope you're all really well - until next time Xx

Weddings and festivals

So, the Royal wedding has now finally passed us by and I can’t help but wonder how extreme the post wedding blues will be for a bride with a wedding that size? Or does the official entry to the Royal family with the almost certainty of one day being Queen of England counteract those post wedding blues somewhat!

Amazingly Niue was a feature in the run up to the wedding with their very own limited addition wedding stamp with a perforation line separating the happy couple.  Of all the small remote countries to have played such a part as to release a controversial stamp I had to smile that it was the small remote island we happen to be living on at the time, makes the world seem that little bit smaller!

This is as far though as Niue went in marking the happy occasion, we had no street parties, no bunting, no one dressed in drag or walking around in plastic tiaras, what we did have was the closing concert for the arts festival which has been on this week, a small (possibly the size of Wills & Kate’s reception) affair  under the stars in Alofi with many Niuen’s returning from overseas to perform in this very impressive small scale arts festival in their home country. There’s an awful lot of love and respect in Niue and for Niue, Niuen’s and visitors alike, and it was nice to witness this last night.

The top Niuen made big would easily be Che Fu, who until a fortnight ago I had never heard of.  But on Tuesday night we were treated to a private gig by him, his band and his Dad. The NZ contractors working for us had all chipped together and bid on this prize at a charity auction for the festival a couple of weeks ago and had put the night on for everyone they’ve met over here.  And a top night it was too, Che Fu was excellent and his Dad was absolutely captivating. Surprisingly Che Fu had not  been to Niue before and found the whole experience incredibly touching and has discovered a spiritual connection with the place it seems he wasn’t expecting, to the point that he decided to get married here – and did! You heard it here first!

So other than mixing with the stars and pondering the post wedding mood of the future King & Queen of England life in Niue is continuing to treat us kindly. The weather is more settled with less rain and is cooling off in the mornings and evenings (not enough to want to put a pair of jeans on or anything drastic like that though!), more and more people around the island know us now which is nice but also means I have to pay that much more attention when driving.

 In Niue it is customary to acknowledge pretty much everyone you pass when driving, a bit like you would going for a long walk in the countryside or the bush where you don’t see that many people. Sometimes this acknowledgement is just a raised finger, sometimes a whole hand with a nod or smile, and sometimes a full two handed big smiles full on wave. I find your mood varies day to day with the kind of wave you might use depending on how distracted/hot/tired/hungry you might be and how many cars you actually see. So the problem with knowing more people around the island is that you don’t want to seem rude with a mere raised finger when just the evening before you were having a great get to know each other conversation.  Sadly though I always seem to notice at the last minute that I actually know them – and everyone drives very similar cars, so I’m working on number plates at the moment and trying to recognise everyone that way as of course they all have a massively unfair advantage with me pootling along in my nice new shiny Golf sticking out like a sore thumb!

I know most of you were obviously thinking of us yesterday when the Royal’s wed in a far more formal way than we went for 6 years ago to the dot (time as well – I couldn’t believe it!) but at least they had the good grace to wed in a different time zone so we’ve had today to remember and celebrate our wedding and marriage in peace, tonight we’ll be heading out for dinner, leaving Daisy behind with the babysitter. I wonder what Wills and Kate will be doing 6 years from now – if someone had told us we’d be living in small Pacific island 6 years from our wedding I’m not sure I’d have believed them and I’d certainly of wondered how on earth that would come to be – it’s a funny old life!

Life gets busy?

Apologies again for the delay...and for all future delays in advance - life on Niue is getting busy!!

The project is fully up and running now and we have employed a lovely lady named Barbara to look after Daisy for us while I work for 20 hrs each week. Daisy and Barbara have great fun together and Daisy is taking great delight in learning the Niuen haka! We only pay $8 an hour for Barbara which is apparently generous - I think it's a bargain. Daisy is continuing to be quite the hit on the island, and seems to love it more and more each day. This morning she has been taken to church by the high commissioner and his fiance for the Easter Sunday service, I have no doubt she's having a great time meeting lots more new faces, and most likely steeling the show - not sure I'd brave taking her to church, but they were quite insistent.

I have met several people now who have only realised who I am once Daisy comes along or is mentioned in conversation "oh - you're Daisy's Mum" quite incredible how she manages to be as well known as she is considering she's only been walking for a fortnight and has no particular form of successful communication to speak of. How I love watching her life unfold!

So, busy times in Niue - in reality it's probably not actually that busy. I have my bit of work on the project and Paul works a full week finishing about 5ish each day but of course has no travel time so when he finishes he's home - so in reality a shorter week. What makes it feel busy though I think is that we're in a destination where it just feels like we should be on holiday. We should be out there snorkeling at every given opportunity, reading books, enjoying long lazy lunches and generally relaxing as much as we can. Don't get me wrong - I'm NOT complaining, but it does take more adjusting to than I expected in that regard. But what a great to place to be working and living this is. And although we don't get to go snorkeling as much as we would if we were on holiday we do seem to manage to squeeze it in at least 2-3 times a week. If the tide and the weather is right we'll usually get out once in the week and then as much as we can during the weekends. And the beauty of the coral coastline and having a toddler is at low tide lots of pools are created on the reef which are just perfect for Daisy to splash around. Yesterday at one such pool named Kalaone Paul was out on the reef and Daisy and I were splashing around when a shoal of fish came leaping out of the water right in front of us - Daisy clearly thought this was fantastic as we proceeded to chase them around the pool.

With Daisy at church this morning Paul and I had our first opportunity to go out snorkeling together since we've arrived, and to celebrate this moment we were gifted the sight of a 5ft reef shark. Well when I say sight...it was within a few metres of us and seemed quite inquisitive of our presence, I wasn't massively comfortable with it's inquisitiveness though I must admit - that's a big fish! So we thought we might head back to the wharf which the shark also decided was a good idea and trailed us for a while until something more intriguing must have caught it's fancy.
I've just realised whilst writing this that I think I may have already become a bit blase about the visibility here, I remember talking to many of you before we came over here about the rumoured 50m visibility in the waters off Niue. Well no lie, I'm not sure whether it's been that since we've been here yet but it's entirely believable. It's easily 20-30m most of the time I would say. And there's always a lot  to see. Sea snakes are another inquisitive creature of the sea, and there are a lot of them here - if you don't see one coming at you on the surface because you're too busy checking out what's underneath you they can give you one hell of a fright! They need a bit of getting to used to but are a pretty cool feature once you do. The array of fish is incredible, I can't even hazard a guess as to what most of them are, but there's a lot of all of them and they're all there just a hanging around on the reef - seriously, who needs sandy beaches when you get all this with a bit of coral?
Next week we're planning on starting the theory for our PADI tickets so we're very much looking forward to that and really getting out there exploring the waters of Niue. So with that will come many more stories of our exploration of the ocean surrounding us.

Until  next time Xx

Setting up and getting going

Well internet access at the moment is poor to say the least so you must forgive my delay…

This is apparently the only country in the world that offers free internet access – only problem being we’ve moved into seemingly the only house on the island that has a blind spot! The office is not yet set up though we hope to achieve this with a ply wood divide of an incredibly hot tin shed later this week. Once this is achieved and we finally get the banking sorted out we should have a phone line and internet access at our fingertips – never before have I felt so removed from the rest of the world, and to be honest – I thought moving to NZ was bad!

So – what have we been up to???

Things have been pretty busy with work – getting the project up and running and playing with the predictable politics involved, but we’re kind of winning and at least some of the projects will be starting tomorrow. But even though things have been busy with work you can’t help but take a slower pace with things – it’s just too hot not to! Never before have I appreciated rain so much. In the 1^st week we were here it rained a bit each day – heavy and fast to freshen things up – perfect. Last week it rained most of most days which is so much cooler which is lovely but means you can’t get the basics like clothes washing  done as even if you hang your clothes up under cover there’s too much dampness to dry but if you don’t wash most days the humidity sends your clothes mouldy – boring information there I realise but a fairly big player none the less.

Finally the ship has arrived with our personal belongings and materials for the projects, it’s arrival had already been twice delayed due to a cyclone off Tonga or Fiji (news reports seemed confused) and then the morning of said arrival a storm at sea and there’s no ship to be seen – finally the ship arrives and all is good although I was slightly disappointed not to see the wobbly disembark of my car – but it’s here now and I’m loving it – with one offer put forward for buying it before it actually landed and one other since – sadly though not the first VW on the island as already a polo here!

This whole ship thing is massively important though - in so many ways… Niue’s lifeline to survival. The supermarket shelves are running very bare in the weeks preceding ship arrival, everyone panic buys fuel for the cars every time there’s a delay in arrival, wine had run out from many restaurants, and menu choices were fiercely limited.  And then there’s the rumours that the bond store forgot to put in the beer order (wouldn’t be the 1^st time, the island has run out of beer twice before!) On a more personal note we used the last of the baby formula the morning of ship arrival, I couldn’t cope with another sweaty Daisy night in the porta cot (not sure about Daisy herself) but just to have some of our things around us again – feels more like home and that’s nice. And that’s it until the next ship…with whatever delays that comes with…

Meanwhile we’re obviously having a fantastic time exploring Niue. Last Saturday we took the drive to Togo chasm (pronounced Tongo) lovely walk through the bush brings you out to the quite remarkable landscape of pinnacled rock formations with palm trees peaking above and succulent sweet smelling vines working their way across the paths. As you follow the path down to the coast you can hear the waves pounding the coast with quite some ferocity – this isn’t a coast line you’re tempted to swim! Soon enough you get a peak of some tall palms in a sandy clearing with a superbly solid ladder to take you down to a little oasis (fresh water pool and all)  but if you take a turn to the left and  duck and weave your way through the rocks it’s not long before you can really feel the force of the ocean – follow your nose and it’s not long before you’re greeted with the sight of a quite spectacular pinky/purple algae and the full force of the waves crashing in before you (think we timed this quite well for low tide! This was a great a little spot that I think we’ll be returning to again, and again.

Socially we’re not doing too badly either – Daisy is a tremendous hit wherever we take her and often don’t see her from point of arrival to food turning up – she’s an absolute hit with the locals who constantly comment on her smile which she seems to spend most of the day practising so no great surprise there! In our 1^st weekend on the island we were cordially welcomed to the island with a fairly drunken bbq and tonight the High Commissioner for NZ invited us to his residence for a bbq, and a mighty fine place it is too .The added bonus of being  a lovely guy, with a lovely new fiancé who made us and Daisy feel incredibly welcome with a great spread of food and good company. I think living on Niue is going to treat us well…

Arrival

So, we're finally here - and we're not disappointed!

Although for a moment there at Auckland airport we did have doubts as to whether  we'd be at the other end to meet Trigger off the plane. In the build up to this trip getting the correct information from the correct people at the Niuen end has not been easy - so when I was told 'not to worry about visas until you get there' I should have have known to in fact - worry!
Just as well we decided to get to the airport early due to the ridiculous amount of luggage we had, as so began a two and half hour check in (no queueing - that's just the time we were at the desk!) followed promptly by a mad rush through the aiport with far too much hand luggage and a toddler, just in time for our final call!

On the plane - 9.15am too early for a stiff drink??


We're then treated to a small insight to our destination when the captain announces we'll be away in a few minutes but will take slightly longer due to the unique way the aircraft has to be hand loaded due to the limited equipment at the other end...

Some of you will have seen a picture on Facebook of Niue from the aircraft, well my ipod didn't quite capture it but you really can see the whole of the island from one airplane window. But what surprised us even more than that was the colour of  the sea, a blue I've never seen the sea before, we figured it must be because you would never normally see the sea that deep and clear from an airplane so low anywhere else - but we could be wrong!


Leaving the airplane we're hit with a wall of lovely heat and a very pleasant breeze - perfect!


As we head towards the aiprort building we're greeted by children singing and dancing as they welcome visitors to their tiny South Pacific Island. Normally this is something that I would receive with a slight edge of touristy cynicism but here it seems like a genuine heart felt welcome to their once weekly arrival of guests in their country. It very almost brought a tear to my eye, not sure whether that was my incredible softness or something more to do with a slight letting go of another full on build up to leaving yet another country!

First things first... Did the dog get here too? Yes, Trig has arrived safe and sound but needs to be the last thing to leave the airport, so we collect our luggage and go through to be met by the High Commissioner who helps us load all 10 of our suitcases into the van that they've hired for us. Everyone we meet is incredibly kind and welcoming although honestly - Daisy was clearly the main event! And she put on her bestest biggest smiles for the occassion.


We get the dog who does her own wooing of the locals and we're whisked away (about 3 minutes down the road) to our new home. At this point it's fair to say that the pictures we were shown and information we were provided about the house were ever so slightly misleading - it's small, dirty and and just a bit broken! Long and short of that one - we're moving again. 

Leaving the house behind us we head off into town to catch the supermarket before it closes and get our first proper glimpse of Niue. The rocky, coral coastline is dramatic and beautiful, the greenery lush and plentiful - palm trees ten a penny and sweet smelling frangipani scattered perfectly. Niue is clean, beautiful and friendly...think we're going to enjoy our new home...