After two days here we’ve got used to the rhythm of life – breakfast at 7:30 (as we’re the only guests we can choose our breakfast time), then dawdle on the beach until we see the catamaran pull up offshore at 11:15 – that’s a high spot of the day to see if other guests are arriving. Then lunch at 12 o’clock, followed by a lazy afternoon until tea at 4pm, then watch the catamaran again at 4:30 as it comes back down the island chain. Then we go into a frantic period of showers and general domestic stuff before the sun goes down, and it becomes too dark to do anything. Then we settle down in the hammock to watch the sunset, and then wait for dinner at 7pm. After that its straight to bed for all of us – something we’ve got used to since we’ve been travelling. In the last two months, because we’re nearly always sharing a room, we all have to go to bed at the same time, and get up at the same time. Our friend Helen Cooke would be proud to see us going to bed at 8:30pm!
Today a couple arrived on the boat from further up the chain, and it was nice to have some fellow travellers to chat to. Dinner’s a romantic affair, with lanterns and flowers on the table, and stars shining through the open sides of the thatched area. Although everything is very basic, its exactly what you might imagine a mid-Pacific tropical island to be (unless you’ve seen the luxurious resorts on things like The Holiday Programme).
It’s all a far cry from home, where you take things like electricity for granted. We’ve no radio, TV or lights, and Charlotte’s delighted that it’s limited her Maths lessons on the computer – until we get back to the mainland we’ve only got enough battery power to allow a lesson every other day! Charlotte felt homesick for the first time today, and at dinner she had a little cry when she said that she missed home, and missed her bedroom. But a game of Uno with everybody sent that thought to the back of her mind (for the moment).
The girls found two Fijian children to play with when we arrived, and so had been happily building sand castles, and hunting starfish and crabs in the rock pools. They also get special attention from the half dozen staff at the resort, with things like a tin of Milo and powdered milk appearing on the second day for them to have hot milky drinks in the evening.