Old Friends Arrive

First, a note. Some new pics are up. Galap/Hivaoa!

Markus from "Namani" together with his wife Nana and son, Nicki, arrived into Hiva Oa yesterday. He was one of our line-handlers through the Panama Canal. It was great to see them and we greeted them with some fresh baguettes, a bouquet of lovely green lettuce and some bananas and grapefruit that we got from another boat. We did stock up on really ripe bananas from a catamaran – because all of their huge stalk ripened at once. They also had these huge grapefruits that they couldn't eat. So we scored and shared.

We had the Namani clan over for dinner after their long passage and Barbara made the Rossetti clan's "Eggplant Parmesan" because the eggplant from the veggie truck was really nice. It was a nice evening as we all compared notes about the Pacific Passage. Theirs was quicker than ours as they had more wind form the beginning and after talking to us on the radio avoided the counter currents early by heading south sooner.

Its always fun to reconnect with folks – that is one of the most pleasurable things about cruising.

We went into town on Monday to do our final clearance with the Gendarmes, and got our passport stamps giving us three months in the French Polynesian Islands. It was all easy and having the agent made it so we didn't have to post the bond. Sandra, the agent, was lovely and provided lots of good information.

Then we did a bit of veggie shopping and tried to figure out how to get propane (actually butane here) for our cooking. We were down a tank and needed to fill up. Michael went to every store looking for the "French" tank adapter – we are getting quite good at getting the hook-up to the local tank and gravity feeding the fuel into our "US" tanks. But it usually takes some doing. This time, none of the stores had the adapter, but luckily a French boat had one and we borrowed it and split the cost of a tank with another boater. So it took most of the afternoon – but Michael got our tank re-filled. We'll have to return the tank and get the deposit back tomorrow.

It's a holiday here today – May Day – or the worker's holiday as its called here. So things are closed. So its chore day aboard. More cleaning, tightening the rig, putting fuel jugs from deck into the tank and more hull cleaning. Hey, it's supposed to be worker's day – why are we working?