Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
big warm welcome, hugging her awkwardly in the cockpit. He accepted the warm beer we
offered him, and he told us of the latest news and what to expect of the new anchorage in
Neiafu. He talked about the sailors that were there already, and my ears pricked up when a
Wharram catamaran from Germany was mentioned. “Oh, you must be talking about Uwe
the groover with his smoking Hoover!” I laughed, remembering this couple from Marti-
nique. He was a typical, good-looking, German adventurer: blonde, blue eyed, and broad
of smile. He was friendly to everyone. His wife, Anna, adored him, and one could tell she
spoilt him a lot. She was the smoker of the family, and when she had discovered that the
French government subsidized the local population with Goloise cigarettes, she went out
and bought cardboard boxes of these cigarettes. It was joked that she would have enough
cigarettes to last her for the rest of her life; well, basically when she had smoked her way
through that stock pile! Uwe was always a bit embarrassed by that incident. I had seen him
again on the north shore of Oahu, and Lanai, Hawaii, and his wife was still smoking from
her stash!
Uwe had earned notoriety and lots of ready cruising cash when he produced hundreds of
cleverly made wire and bead bangles that could flare out in petal-like shapes and virtual
molecular combinations. He was discovered by a Panamanian television station and sold
hundreds of these bangles that he and wife Anna had put together on their way from Ger-
many. Together they had made enough money to cruise for quite some time. I looked for-
ward to seeing them again.
We had found a spot near the Paradise International Hotel just north of Don Coleman's
boatyard. It was perfect; we could row ashore and have a fresh, cold water shower and
could head up to the hotel in the evening to play pool or darts or laze about with friends.
There was a resident Tongan band that would play on Friday nights and all the villagers
from miles around would converge on this Australian owned hotel, dancing the night away.
We would get to know the band members well, as they were there for our entire visit.
I was aching to go for a run. I had been deprived of my daily six mile jog since leaving
Palmyra. I was not inspired to run in Samoa; I did not like the local traffic or the narrow
streets. I did not feel comfortable running there. Within a few days of arriving, Gavin and I
took off from the hotel, decked in running shorts and shoes and bandanas to keep the sweat
from our eyes. We headed south along the little dirt road that led past the hotel and scattered
local huts and villages.
A lot of these houses were built of tin and wood. They were brightly painted, and all were
raised off the ground, probably for ventilation and flooding. I saw that they almost all had
a family of lazy pigs rolling around good naturedly in the sand, always a brood of suck-
ling piglets attached to one of them. Goats were another familiar sight in almost all of the
homesteads. These were tethered to long palm frond ropes, and they nibbled away on the
