Papaya

Today we picked our first papaya grown from seed:

 

We've always had plenty of papaya from the other side of the island but it's nice to have our own too. We won't be going short anyway. I planted these last year on Aug 12, so it took a year and a couple of weeks from seed to fruit.

They need to be picked when they just start turning yellow as in the photo, otherwise the bats and rats get them.

Produce

Today we got our first bunch of ripe bananas.

We planted the bananas on Sep 15 so only 11 months to fruit. I think this one may have fruited a bit more quickly than normal for some reason but I'm not complaining. None of the other palms are showing any signs of flowering yet.

Yesterday I caught my first skipjack tuna:

 

Skipjack tuna may not be well regarded for eating but I suppose it's a start. It tastes a lot like... Tuna!

In other news, we've installed a shower but largely just gone about life on an island as you would; swimming, eating, walking, foraging, eating, tinkering, weaving, eating etc., and exploring the nearby islands. Some of them are really stunning. 

 

 

Kenutu

Today we visited Kenutu Island, one of the eastern barrier islands.

Lolo Island. When the sea is rough it comes over the back and flows into this pool as a waterfall.

I forget the name of this little "island".

Orange tree

Yesterday I stumbled upon a large orange tree a few minutes walk from the house. All but one of the oranges had fallen on the ground and were mostly rotting but I found a couple of edible ones. They are mild flavoured, sweet, very pithy and have a lot of pips but would make good juice. Need to check back around mid-April next year.

Nukutahanga

We kayaked to a few of the nearby islands including the lovely Nukutahanga Island, which is a perfect picnic spot and great snorkeling.

We got a kitten a few weeks ago. His given name was Nitrox but we call him Nitro. We got him the week the Host-a-vet vets were here (there isn't a vet in Vava'u) so they desexed him.

I also made a crazy reclining chair this week, just roughly chainsawed out of a tree 5 minutes down the track.

Bearing fruit

Our first papaya and bananas have started fruiting.

 

It'll still be a while before they are ready to eat but it's a good start.

Sherri, who lives on a nearby yacht showed us an avocado tree on the island. It had quite a few avocados on it but promptly dropped most of them a few days later before I checked them again so the rats got them. We got a few up until last week and they are huge, creamy and smooth - almost the perfect avocado. Need to check them next year at the start of April.

Tanked

We put a 200 litre tank up into a tree the other day as a header tank (5.5m head) which is fed from our main water tank with a small 12v agricultural sprayer pump. It takes about 40 minutes to fill.

 

And today we connected up a tap in the kitchen and an outside tap for a garden hose. Much more civilised than carrying buckets!

 

Speaking of civilised, we also hooked up light switches and power sockets in the house last week, which makes life a bit more comfortable too.

Deck

We got the deck on today, which gives us a little more living space. It still needs some finishing touches and we still need to build a roof over the deck. The little shutter you can see is just a temporary storm shutter that will become a security and mosquito shutter once the roof is on.

Hurricane Neil

We've had a series of tropical depressions come over us in the last week due to the Madden - Julian Oscillation lingering and even reversing for a while in the Western Pacific phase. One last night was upgraded to a category 1 hurricane just a couple of hours before it hit us. It was a noisy night. We got a lot of leaves and a bit of rain in the house but otherwise fared quite well. On the positive side we got our water tank entirely filled.

On the downside there's another one due tonight and although it hasn't been named yet it's looking like it might be nastier than the one last night [update Wednesday 13. We had 7 tropical depressions blow over us in the week and there is still another lining up]

The bush in the area has been partly stripped of leaves and is a lot lighter and more open now.

 Lots of leaves strewn around the house

My poor bananas

 And poor papayas

Beach eroded. This beach has lost about 40cm of sand, stripping it bare and showing a collection of old shells. The beach we bring our dinghy up on has lost about 30cm making it a bit tricky to haul it up.

 

There was a track here

Water tank

Recently we had a tropical storm that delivered us a meter of rainfall, yet we only had two 200 litre barrels so really couldn't make much use of all that rain. We were down to our last few buckets-worth again this week. The Met service had warned of a drier than usual summer so we really needed to do something about it. This week the forecast was for another week of rain so we decided if we were quick we could solve the problem. We bought a 5000 litre tank for TOP$1700 and towed it out to the island the day before yesterday.

As usual the sight of Palangis towing things behind a little dinghy was a source of amusement and a photo opportunity.

It took a bit wrangling to get the tank up the hill and down the track to the shed but we only had to cut down a few small trees, otherwise it miraculously just barely slipped between all the obstacles. Unfortunately the tank is a bit higher than the outflow of the guttering on the shed so we had to dig the tank in (about 400mm on one side and 500 on the uphill side), which has taken us the last two days. At least that will help keep it secure and cool so it's worth it.

We just barely got the hole finished as the rain started and we bodged up some temporary pipework including a water bottle elbow. Fingers crossed the pipes don't collapse and the tap doesn't leak and we may have some real water stored for a change. Maybe even a fresh water shower. Hallelujah!

As a matter of interest, they make great tanks here in Tonga. The main factory is in Tongatapu but it's so expensive to ship big empty tanks to Vava'u (cargo is charged by the cubic meter) that every few months they pack up the factory and ship all their equipment to Vava'u then make tanks here for a while before shipping it all back again.

So now we have a week of rain to look forward to. At least we have internet going again! At the moment the Met service says there is a high chance of the depression becoming a tropical storm, but it looks like it will head southwest, away from us. I hope so because we've been so frantic getting the tank in that we've done no storm prep.

Alive!

Forgive me father, for it has been six weeks since I last blogged. We've not achieved a lot since then what with me recovering from surgery and getting over a wee bout of pneumonia. We've mostly been chipping away at small jobs such as getting the floor nailed down, getting the kitchen sink in, hanging the door, concreting in the posts for the deck, and covering the eaves in so it no longer rains inside the house. Also a lot of swims because dang it's hot.

I'm not sure if I mentioned it but when I was in Tongatapu for surgery I bought a car and brought it back home on the ferry. That was a miserable 24 hours with the ferry rolling around and my recently stitched belly rolling around with it. There are only a few seats on the ferry in an overly air conditioned room that is freezing cold, and smells of stale cigarettes and vomit. Most people just lie outside on the deck, usually with a cardboard box for comfort and to stake their claim. You can't walk anywhere without stepping over and on other people but everyone is miserable and forgiving. The few sheltered spots are fiercely guarded and bequeathed to family and friends when vacated so unless you get on the ferry first you are doomed to freeze on the deck or in the vomit chiller. I was totally unprepared but strangely so was everyone else. I had a pillow with me that I had taken to hospital (yes, you take your own sheets, pillow, loo paper, food etc. but the hospital care is exceptionally cheap and New Zealand could learn something there!). My pillow was coveted by many jealous eyes.

As it turns out the only car I could find that didn't have a huge Palangi tax on it belonged to the taxi driver who was taking me around town to look at cars. There was nothing worth buying but in the end he sold me his Lexus for a very fair price. Turns out it's the best car I've ever owned although it's a bit thirstier than what I would usually buy.

Here's the car when we carried some "security mesh" out to the beach (faka Tonga). Flash aye?

 

I had hoped this would free us from the need to arrange trips into town with the neighbour but for now that is still a work in progress as she still has no boat of her own and no likely prospects. Very few boats are available for sale. Judging from the way Tongans load their boats to the gunwales with people they mostly end up on the bottom of the ocean.

Around Christmas the neighbours were kicked off their land by angry locals who decided they owned the land despite the lease agreement. They had to move to the little Cabana that they usually rent out to tourists. It took the Governor and police to step in to prevent the locals from setting boats adrift as they had threatened.  They did cut the moorings, chop down all the fencing and put up signs that purportedly say  "no trespassing" in Tongan. As it stands the only access to the Cabana is by ladder up a cliff face, despite laws much like our Queen's Chain allowing access along the beach, but they are REALLY angry. It's going to court in a few months. They followed us around to our side of the island in their big fishing boat to check we didn't dare step onto anywhere they considered theirs but we lost them on a patch of shallow coral and they returned to the other side. We haven't seen them since but we're told they are due back this month so that could be a bit of drama.

The fibreoptic cable to Tonga was cut in three places just over two weeks ago; two cuts on the link to Fiji and one cut on the line to Vava'u. We've been in cyber darkness until last night and I nearly went mad. Obviously the main link to Fiji was a priority for Tongatapu so we've had to wait a while. There was a satellite link set up by Digicel so I got a Digicel sim card, but we really don't get Digicel on this side of the island so I had to walk over to the other side to get a decent signal. Even so the link was massively over-contended so it was not possible to load any web pages, get email, or pretty much anything at all. All I was able to do was get some short text messages out through Viber. The only person I know with Viber outside Tonga was Sam but he kindly relayed some messages for me and we even got Radio New Zealand to add some weather forecasts to their Pacific shortwave broadcasts so we knew what the weather was going to do. Thanks!

At this stage the cause of the cuts to the fibre is unknown but they are not ruling out sabotage. I hope they got it off their chest; that sucked. Anyway, we're alive!