Helen: We had such a cool day yesterday - we hired a 15 seater mini van and Yamana tours went on the road with 5 adults and 4 children. Yes we survived the day with 4 9-11 year olds - they were actually really good and only started to get a bit wearisome on the final stretch when they were all knackered and tanked up on crisps and icecream! But, minivan and children aside, yesterday was cool becuase this place is made of limestone...which means there are cracks, crevices, gullies, arches, caverns and all other such formations all over the place. We trekked through some crazy lunar landscapes - all spiky pillars and pointy bits (reminded me of Return to Oz - kept turning round quickly expecting to see some of the rocks morphing into faces - the sentinels of the Gnome King - if you haven't seen Return to Oz get it out and see it - it's awesome - saw another great film the other day - Sweeney Todd with Johnny Depp - C liked it even though it was a musical - not sure all the throat slitting was quite approriate for a 9 yr old though!)
Where was I? Oh yes, crevices and gullies - we found a hidden chasm that had sand and palm trees inside steep sided limestone cliff walls - was totally hidden from above - looked like the set to The Lost World - it was so hidden you could imagine dinosaurs still lived there (but they'd have to be v wee dinasours - the whole island is so tiny!) C was in heaven as he took his climbing shoes with him and spent all day bouldering... So much more fun than the day before when we tried cylcing round the island in the midday heat with no shade and worse, no lunch. There are so few tourists here that there aren't many restaurants and shops - the only 'shop' we found outside of the main town was essentially a house just the same as all the others. No sign outside - not even a Coca Cola sign... The only reason we discovered it at all was because I resorted to the time honoured tradition of sitting down with a map - it's an international signal for 'help me, I'm a tourist'. Sure enough someone stopped and explained that the house with the crisscrossed balustrade was infact a shop. So we had icream, coke and chocolate for lunch!
Actually, the 'shop' wasn't just like all the other houses...becuase it was inhabited - so many of the houses here are deserted - it's really sad - the population used to be 5000 in the 60s, but people have been steadily leaving since then to live in NZ or Australia. Now the population is around 1300, but people leave their houses here to go to wrack and ruin becuase if they demolish them they lose their claim to the land...
Right, that's enough for now. We're leaving this evening as there's some weather moving in at the weekend - 6m seas - don't want to be caught out in that. There was some talk about leaving tomorrow morning...but sailors just don't leave harbours on Fridays!
Lots of love
will write when we get to Tonga (240 miles so should be 2 days...)
H&Cxx
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