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…