Archief 2011 (mei)

Two days later Adam has recovered from the ceremony which accounts for his absence in blog writing last night.

 
We were led through the dark to Tjompe's cousin's house a little way into the village. Lepani (the cousin) is one of the village elders and convinced us on the merits of drinking Cava over beer. Beer drinking makes people louder, Cava drinking makes you quietly fall asleep. Apparently.
Cava was spooned into a silk bag and then rinsed, massaged and squeezed until we were looking at a thin grey mud. Great. At this point there were only 3 of us sharing the cava as Tjompe doesn't go near the stuff, which was slightly concerning given the container of ground cava root we had provided was rather large and only 5 spoonfuls were used in each preparation.

 
The host scooped cava into a small coconut shell and it was passed to Adam, as it was passed Adam clapped his hands once, took the shell, said ''Bula'' to the host, bottoms up to empty the shell and then clapped 3 times slowly (hands perpendicular to each other to produce a deep sound), said ''Vinaka'' to the host. The shell is then refilled and handed to the next person.

 
The advice given to sensible first-time cava drinkers on Wikipedia is, 5-7 rounds/drinks is enough, the narcotic effects don't happen till about 20 minutes after the drink, so make lots of small talk.
Round one completed, we talked rugby. When round two was completed we were let off the hook completely by a certain royal wedding… A young boy came into the house and told Lepani there was something that needed to be watched on TV. The room then slowly filled up, people lying on the floor, mothers sending children off to get pillows and blankets… until there about 20 people inside, and countless more outside looking in through the louvres, standing just outside the doorways... There were couches and seats inside the house but because there was a Cava ceremony nobody sat in them. We translated (from English into English) what was happening in the wedding including pointing out the Crown Prince William and Princess Maxima, and Elton John. Lepani's father, Api, was there too, sitting cross-legged very close to the TV. He took Cava without breaking his gaze at the screen. I think he fell asleep for a while without moving.

 
It was very strange to be sitting in a very simple house surrounded by relative squalor, watching the absolute excesses of wealth on screen. Close to embarrassing. But it saved us from drinking Cava too fast - so thank you Kate and Will.
We excused ourselves just before midnight, after 10 rounds, knowing we wanted to be pulling up the anchor before breakfast…

Navadra. For the last two days we have found ourselves alone in a beautiful lagoon surrounded by three islands. We've been swimming, fishing, snorkeling, relaxing, exploring, lighting fires to roast marshmallows, threatening to roast the goats…  Mees is amazing - ''all the swimming lessons in New Zealand were worth it'' - he is snorkeling without any floatation or assistance, even ducking under the surface, coming up, blowing the water out of the snorkel and carrying on. Wow! We had the under-water camera in action today… just wait till you see some of the action.

 
During Siesta, Black team made a visit to a fishing boat to buy fish for dinner, we came away with four reasonable fish which cost us nothing. After Sharon had filleted the fish we had a curry, using the last of our fresh vegetables. Dinner tonight was Nachos - very popular with the small crew members. It is hard to get teeth brushed before Kent and Nathan have fallen asleep. Mees and Pieter seem to have more staying power, and playing power - they managed to reach into the galley from the beds and get a bag of sugar which was lots of fun (for them) tipped through Pieter's bed!

Plans for tomorrow:
We haven't had enough time to explore all of these three tiny islands (we haven't even stepped foot on Navadra yet) so we are thinking of staying another day…