Our camp is good now and the tents are still going strong. We have tarps over them which is not so pretty but necessary to protect from strong rains and damaging sun. Kian has cut lots of small trees to reveal the view out to sea, letting in a merciful breeze.

 Most days start with a kids check of which cats have come to visit (Karyn and Boris have 4) and how many dismembered bits of lizard they’ve left as ‘gifts’. We are grateful for the cats keeping the rats at bay ( they live in the jungle all around us) but hate to see all these poor dead lizards. We often resue them from the mouths of cats and if they are saveable spray expensive colloidal silver spray on their injured skin and put them somewhere safe! There are lots of pretty varieties here and we appreciate them eating the bugs for us. The unlucky ones have to be swept off the deck before the ants take over. To our gruesome delight we’ve also discovered that the bitten off tails continue to wriggle and writhe long after they’ve been detached from their body.  

We’re now in the habit of lighting a smoky fire downwind of us every morning in an attempt to deter mosquitos, preferring watering eyes to incessant bites and scratching. Breakfasts are mostly….porridge. Yes, it’s the last thing I expected us to eat out here in this tropical climate but it’s the cheapest cereal that we all like. Luckily bananas and papaya are plentiful and pineapple season is about to start. 

 School starts at around 9am and is held either up here – we’ve borrowed a table and benches off a Tongan family and now have a blackboard so it’s lots easier – or down at Happy Api depending on whose teaching. Kian continues with maths and science and is in my opinion a really good teacher. I’m chugging on with English with Maisie – concentration is a big struggle and learning is hard as I think she may well be dyslexic – and cultural studies with everyone. We’ve just finished looking at Islam and will move on to Hinduism soon. We break for lunch at around 12.30 and then do some quiet home study like reading or handwriting practise. Schools then over for the day and the kids disappear to play pretty much until supper time. 

 

They are still loving the wild life, enjoying the boys company and now almost take for granted the freedom they have of snorkelling, kayaking or exploring every day. Kian and I try to get out most afternoons to practise our diving or have a snorkel, there’s always new stuff to see. We had a wonderful time swimming with a huge old turtle recently – unlike others he wasn’t in a hurry to get away from us – and yesterday found a porcupine fish and some beautiful lion fish. There’s usually some lovely spotted eagle rays elegantly gliding past or large flat sting rays hovering around. We’ve visited the handsome leopard shark quite a few times as he has a favourite dozing spot. He’s now been named Marlon after his fellow spotty friend. There is a lot of re growth of the coral now amongst huge dead areas killed by hurricanes, and the advantage of going so regularly to the same lagoon is we are beginning to know what lives where.  

 

Now the season of guests is mostly over ( so I’m not required to cook late in the evenings) we are spending more evenings at our own home camp and just coming together with the others for occasional big meals. We have a pretty basic kitchen and fairly low solar lighting, but it’s nothing we’re not used to so absolutely fine. Our biggest battle is to keep the ants out of our ‘fridge’ (a cool box kept topped up with frozen bottles from K & B’s freezer) by standing it on tin islands in bowls of water. Craftily the little things often engineer some kind of ingenious bridge and invade – so annoying! 

We now head into town maybe every 10 days to 2 weeks so keeping veg fresh is a challenge. We are amazed by how how expensive a food shop is but I guess thats because so much is imported. If we just lived more like locals on a diet of yams and pork life could be a lot cheaper, but we are not completely skint yet and that is just not appealing!

In the evenings huge bats swoop silently overhead and the cicadas start up, coming in waves of noise, incessantly manic, starting up like the jungle car alarm, then all stopping together with some bizarre coordination.

 

 

More evenings up here means less access to the internet when it is working as obviously we don’t have internet at our camp. It’s a miracle that there is internet here at all as it bounces off 3 poles on various islands to get here and is solar charged so all sorts of things can go wrong and they often do. Evening entertainment is mostly stories,  backgammon or endless card games (racing demon is current favourite) and, I’ve discovered the joys of Bananagram. Exciting stuff I hear you say. I’m finally stubbornly succumbing to early nights and early rising here and reluctantly admit it feels ok. Evenings in the tent are far from glamorous, sheets tend to feel a little damp in the humid heat and cling to your toes, and any hint of romance given by the candlelight is banished by our not so sexy mining look as we both don head torches to read our books.

 

The big news is we do now have rain! We woke in the night to the wonderful drumming sound of heavy tropical rain on the tin roof of our shelter and more muted tones on our tent. The air smelt so different, fresh and earthy, and at last the hard ground was wet. We had the pleasure of heavy rain for a few cool nights. Such a blessing after so long of being so tight with water and feeling so salt encrusted and dirty! We no longer have to wash up in the sea or carry bottles up and down for filling. We did have to resort to shipping in one container of water from town and Kian and Boris installed another water catchment system, but now the stress is over and it’s a huge relief. Consequently I have also started planting a bit of a garden up here; lemongrass, rocket, chillies and pineapple so far, but I am lacking seeds. It’s winter here and everyone, wandering around in shorts and shirts, complains of how cold it is. It will start to warm up rapidly, but let’s hope we get plenty more rain before that. Despite the basic necessities of living being harder work here the fact that we are not having to really do anything else at all stressful (no job to rush too, no school run) makes for a pretty relaxing slow and easy pace of life.
In fact the hardest thing we face is of course ourselves – finding discipline and motivation on a daily basis to manage time (not my strong point..) and motivation to make the most of every day. It’s so easy to get bogged down by vastly magnified emotions here as there is so little else to distract. It’s a big lesson living here and learning to let go and be in the moment.Strangely enough I think we are only now getting really settled and happy, perhaps just getting used to heat, basic home conditions, each other and ourselves takes that long. I can’t blame it on ‘culture shock’ as there is so little other culture around us, perhaps it’s more isolation shock.