January 17, 2010 - Garden Route, South Africa

We spent one night on Mata'irea after returning from our trip up the West Coast. In the morning we were off again, this time to head east along the Garden Route to visit friends anchored in the Knysna lagoon and in St. Francis, which also happened to be the home of a few world class surf breaks.

On Wednesday morning, after Sten added some additional chaffing gear to the docklines, we got back in the rental car. Unfortunately, the replacement vehicle we had picked up the night before at First Car Rental in Cape Town had a serious transmission problem. So we called the airport branch and asked if we could swap our defective vehicle there. Looking at a map in the back of a tourist brochure I picked the most direct looking route to the airport. What I hadn't realized was that once we had driven north of Mitchell's Plain, a colored area along the False Bay coast, the route would take us through the sprawling African townships (read: slums) of the Cape Flats. It was an unintentional but interesting trip through rows of colorful, flat-roofed buildings, knocked together from any available material, including, but not limited to, concrete block, old packing crates, corrugated iron, aluminum, cardboard and plastic sheeting. Many roofs seemed to be held down with rocks. We saw several shipping containers repurposed to house businesses, like a barbershop with room for only two stools. The local papers regularly feature stories about the shortage of water and toilet facilities in the townships and the crime and poverty that are a constant feature of township life. Life must be incredibly hard for the residents.

At the airport we exchanged the troubled Mazda for a very basic Renault. Then we hit the road and headed east. We hadn't gotten very far when I spotted a sign for a winery in Elgin, right off the highway. So we made a quick detour. We tasted a few wines and picked up a bottle of Gewurtztraminer to take with us.

As we drove east, the scenery changed and soon we were surrounded by fields of wheat. But for the knowledge that the ocean was just over the horizon, we could have been in the Iowa. Around lunchtime we found ourselves near the town of Swellendam, which is filled with historic white limewashed, grey thatched and black shuttered Cape Dutch buildings. We had tasty lunch at a museum cafe and headed back out onto the highway. We reached Knysna, a holiday town surrounding a lagoon, just in time to join some friends for a beer at the yacht club. Knysna is one of only two all weather anchorages on the entire SA coast so it is no surprise that many cruisers end up spending weeks and even months there at anchor before heading around to the Cape Town marinas. After catching up with the crews of Nero, Tantrum, Vixen and Millennium, we bedded down at the very clean and quiet backpackers.

On Thursday morning we bypassed the breakfast offerings at the backpackers and hustled on down to Ile de Pain, a Knysna bakery that is considered one of the best restaurants in South Africa. Sten's poached egg como was perfectly done and my french toast was a decadent dessert-like concoction piled high with marscapone cream and berry compote. Even before we got the check, we were trying to figure out how we could fit in another meal there on our way back to Simonstown.

After breakfast we drove east towards Cape St. Francis, where our friends Karin and Russell on Moonwalker have decided to spend the year when Russell was offered a job at a resort there. Along the way, we passed the world's highest bungy jump at the Storms River and stopped in at Jeffrey's Bay to check out the surf. Nothing much was happening, but the forecasts called for the swell to build over the next few days. On our way down the coast to Cape St. Francis, we pulled off to check out a few more breaks, including Bruce's Beauties, made famous by the classic surf movie Endless Summer.

Once we were checked into the backpackers at the St. Francis Resort, Sten whipped up a pair of fried egg sandwiches for our lunch. I always tease him because he's the only one I know who puts mayo on a fried egg sandwich. I tease, but then I eat because it is darned good.

When Russell got off work for the night, we put together a dinner plan. We had the makings for steak tacos in the chili bin, so we decided to grill. Our kitchen was bigger than the one in Russell and Karin's bungalow, so we moved the feast over there. Just as we were sitting down to eat, the only other guests in the backpackers, a German couple, arrived back from eating dinner at the resort's restaurant. We cajoled them into joining us at the table with the warning that they weren't likely to get much sleep with us gabbing away in the kitchen.

The next morning Sten and I were completely krook. Thank god our room was an en suite. We were so relieved when we found out that we were the only ones sick and that we hadn't poisoned everyone else with questionable food that had been traveling around in our chilli bin for too long. So we started to suspect the mayo we used on the sandwiches the day before.

Sten recovered quickly and got in a noontime surf; but, I was still in my pjs at sunset when he headed off to the local pub with Russell and Fazie, the owner of the resort and Russell's new boss. The boys were gone for quite a while and eventually Karin got too hungry to wait any longer to serve dinner. She and I were having a very romantic meal for two when the boys came back. We all shifted over to the couches and spent a cozy and entertaining evening dining on Karin's roast chicken and listening to Fazie's wild stories.

By Saturday morning I'd recovered enough to venture more than 50 yards from the bathroom. So we checked out and headed up to to J'Bay to watch the crowd at SuperTubes. While not epic, seeing one of the best right handers in the world peel down the point was pretty cool. After an hour or so we turned the car west and headed east to Tsitsikama and the Storms River Mouth Rest Camp.

One of the best things we've done in South Africa has been to purchase a Wild Card, which grants the holder free entrance to national parks and discounts on accommodation [note to future visitors: if you are planning extensive SA land travel figure out a way to purchase the card before visiting Hluhluwe, instead of after as we did; you can use the Wild Card at KZN parks (such as Hluhluwe), but you can't buy it at them]. It paid for itself during our time at Kruger. Since then, we've used it to receive free entrance to numerous other national parks, including Tsitsikama, which is now part of the new Garden Route National Park.

After checking in we found our way down to our accommodation, an apartment right on the ocean's edge. When we arrived there was serious storm surf pounding right in front of our patio. We eventually tore ourselves away from the sight of the 4+ meter swell hurling itself against the rugged coast to take a walk out to the suspension bridge strung across the mouth of the Storms River. This past year, the park upgraded its trails and installed two new suspension bridges at the mouth, so there are now three bridges to cross. The views from the path down across the bridges were just breathtaking. The bridges themselves are just beautiful. They almost seem more like works of sculpture than civil engineering.

Back at our apartment, Sten, along with nearly every other man in the rest camp, fired up the braii for dinner. Grilling meat outdoors is a South African passion. That night we fell asleep to the sound of the thundering surf right outside the door.

On Sunday morning we donned our best footwear (flip flops) and headed off for a hike. We both seemed to be fully recovered from our gastrointestinal distress. But I was starting to get stuffy. The going was easy at first, and I had long since dismissed the warning on the trailhead sign that had rated the trail "difficult." Then, while ducking under a tree branch and standing up too fast on the other side, I slammed my head into a thick tree branch. That hurt. But not as much as when Sten suggested that perhaps we should be getting more consistent exercise as I struggled to pick my way along the trail blazed along the rocky shore.

One of these days I'm going to learn to pay attention to signs like these

We made it back to our apartment with just enough time to scarf down some lunch before getting back into the car to drive up to Storms River Village to join in the 3:30 Canopy Tour, which I had basically insisted we do. We donned our harnesses and helmets and joined two German travelers for a safety instruction. It was Sten's first time doing a zip line, and he seemed to enjoy it. As we glided down steel cables rigged between the tallest trees in the forest we saw two specimens of the very rare Knysna lourie. The canopy tour was a lot of fun, but by the time we had reached the end of the wire course through the forest and hiked up a short trail to meet the truck that would take us back to our cars I was a mess. My sinuses had completely closed up and my neck and shoulders were all out of alignment from headbutting that tree branch earlier in the day. I haven't been sick in a year and a half, and somehow I'd forgotten how miserable an experience it is.

Our canopy tour guides: funnier than George and Gracie

January 12, 2010 - West Coast Adventure

The lineup at Elandsbaai

Last Friday we had two goals: file our visa extensions and pick up a rental car. We took the train up to Wynberg and arrived at the Home Affairs office at 4:10, ten minutes after closing time, just in time to be turned away by a grumpy security guard. I explained that we just wanted to drop off our paperwork and passports, but she wouldn't let us in. She wouldn't speak to me, just pointed to the sign on the door that listed the hours of operation, including Saturday morning. So we made plans to come back in the morning before heading out to explore this corner of the country.

We managed to make it to the rental car office in Cape Town before they closed, and had some cheap and tasty Indian food before driving back to Simon's Town via the road along Chapman's Peak. Looking down at the spray flying off the water as bullets of wind tore off Cape Point, I turned to Sten with visions of knockdowns in my head and said "let's leave on a day when we have to motor around this cape." He readily agreed.

Saturday morning we picked up our laundry, loaded up the car, and drove back up to Wynberg, where the grumpy security guard was absent from her post at the door. We walked through the metal detectors and up to the counter where we found out that the officers who process visa extensions are only there on weekdays. Gosh that would have been good information to know . . . before we made a second trip. We tried to leave our passports and paperwork with the lady behind the desk, but she wouldn't take them. So we have to go back another day.

After grabbing a quick lunch from the grocery store, we sat in the car for a few minutes to eat and figure out what we were doing. It felt like we'd wasted half the day. And Sten realized that he had left something on the boat. So we talked about just going back to the boat for the night and getting an early departure the next morning. But it seemed like a waste of a day with the rental car, so we spread out the map and picked a spot to head towards.

We thought we might spend the night in Darling, as there was a vineyard restaurant there that we wanted to checkout. But as we drove Northwest from Cape Town towards it, I read that the restaurant was only open for lunch. Then we figured out that all the vineyard tasting rooms in the region closed early on Saturdays and were closed all day on Sundays. So we kept driving north, through a stark, glaringly bright landscape, arriving in Paternoster, a fishing village full of whitewashed, thatched roof holiday homes around 3pm.

That's when we discovered that rocking up in one of Cape Town's favorite weekend getaway destinations on the last weekend of the December - January holiday season without dinner or lodging reservations is about as smart as showing up in Newport the last weekend of August without prior arrangements. After calling all the guesthouses in town, we wound up out at the Beach Camp in the Cape Columbine Reserve. After driving out the sandy road, lined on either side with dry strandbos (weird cactus-like succulents and dusty grey-green plants with tiny leaves and startling bright orange flowers), we pulled up at the camp. With the blowing sand and somewhat military look to the place, it felt like we'd found ourselves in a scene from Beyond Thunderdome. We made our way through the windbreaks, to find someone to register with. While I would never have chosen to spend the night in a tent in a sandstorm, it turned out to be a very memorable experience.

After booking in at the camp, we headed back to town and managed to get a reservation for the first seating at the Voorstrand, the oldest restaurant in town. We spent the rest of the afternoon strolling the strand (beach) and sucking on blackballs (Sten's new favorite candy, discovered at the little winkel (shop) in Paternoster where we also stocked up on local wine from some of the closed vineyards we'd driven by). After an early dinner of seafood by the seashore, washed down with an unapologetically fruity and effervescent chenin blanc, we headed back to the Beach Camp.

While we had been in town, the rest of the campers had gathered around the big braai pit to roast their dinners. We grabbed a bottle of Riebeek shiraz and joined them. We were the only folks there who weren't Afrikaners, and the rest were only too happy to introduce us to their foods. We were offered tastes of whole grilled chicken, served with mushrooms and onions cooked in a potjie (a black pot pronounced "poy-key"), gemsbok shot in the Kalahari (which would have been delicious with a berry glaze), and crayfish curry, also cooked in a potjie. We felt awkward having nothing to share, but everyone else just seemed tickled to have some Americans in the camp.

Cape Colombine

When we went to bed, we wrapped ourselves in all the sheets and blankets we had with us, and a few beach towels for good measure. Overnight the wind died down and once the tent walls stopped flapping we slept pretty well. In the morning we drove down to Saldanha Bay to visit our friends Toni and Darren on Ovation. We had coffee with them and learned that they had found the quiet town of Saldanha a good place to get their yacht ready for the Atlantic crossing. They suggested a nearby fishing village for us to check out. So after wishing them well we headed towards Jacobsbaai.

Imagine waking up and finding this parked in your front yard

Driving over the hill and down into Jacobsbaai we were shocked to see a stack of shipwrecked barges dwarfing the quaint little town of black and white, thatched, whitewashed holiday homes and fishermen's cottages. Apparently this is what happens when you try to round the cape in winter and a serious storm sets up against a three plus knot current. After a really delicious calamari (known hereabouts as white gold) lunch at the hotel restaurant (the only game in town on a Sunday afternoon) overlooking the lagoon, my normally rule abiding husband was so curious about the wreck that he ignored all the yellow tape and "no beach access" signs to get a closer look.

While Sten was off ogling the wreck, I called a bunch of guesthouses in Elands Bay, the home of an excellent if somewhat fickle left hand point break, which according to the forecasts, was expected to start working the next day. Having learning a lesson from our accommodation hunt the night before, we decided not to head further up the coast, where the towns get smaller and smaller, unless we had a place to stay. I was starting to get discouraged when Katrina from Still Waters answered the phone. She seemed as excited as I was about the fact that she had a self-catering room for us in an annex to a 150 year old farmhouse on the edge of the Velorenvlei (lost lake) for 300 Rand a night (approximately 40 USD and less expensive than the very basic tent in which we'd spent the prior night). So I booked two nights for us, which would give the swell time to build.

Driving north through the harsh, desert-like landscape along the coast we passed only a handful of cars. Cresting the Bobbejaanberg ridge we were treated to the sight of a lush, green valley below us spreading out from the reeds, pelicans and herons lining the banks of the Velorenvlei. We drove out to the south side of Elands Bay to check out the surfbreak (which was so not working in the small swell that we couldn't even find it), before heading over to Still Waters to check out our room. We quickly decided the little guesthouse was perfect and moved in. Then Sten made us a round of BLAT's for dinner.

The following morning, as we waited for the swell to build, we strolled on the beach and watched the fleet of at least 100 cray (small clawless lobsters) fishing boats (powered mostly by oars) head out into the protected bay to set rudimentary traps for the apparently large local cray population. Then we went up to the slipway to watch them offload their catch. As the boats were pulling in, the swell built, so Sten decided it was time to give the wave a try. He put on his full wetsuit for the first time since New Zealand, and paddled out. He was having a good time until his exposed feet and ears started to seriously suffer. After an hour, he had to get out.

We headed back over to the slipway and purchased five small crays directly (and probably illegally) from the fisherman for $12 and had a lovely afternoon feast at our little cottage complete with an extremely nice Sauvignon Blanc from Lambert's Bay, just a few miles up the coast. We both got a few deep gouges in our finger tips but it was worth it. The meat wasn't quite as good as New England lobster, but it was the best clawless lobster we have had. Really cold water makes all the difference.

That evening, the swell peaked at around 5 meters. The southerly wind was howling, which made things difficult, but Sten gave it a go. The combination of cold water and wind caused his surfer's ear to flare up. A hood and some booties would have made a big difference. While he was off surfing, Katrina's partner stopped by with a bowl of crayfish salad for each of us. What a treat.

Cold water . . . good for lobster, not so good for thinblooded surfers

In the morning Sten got up at the crack of dawn to go check out the break. But he was disappointed to see that without a stiff offshore breeze to hold up the wave it was collapsing upon itself and very disorganized. So we packed up and headed south towards the Swartland wine region, which is known for its shiraz and olives. After trying a few wines and buying a few bottles we stopped for lunch at a deli. Over lunch I was reading a local wine magazine, and learned that 2009 was a stellar year for Sauvignon Blanc from the Durbanville region. So we detoured through there on our way back to Cape Town, where we needed to trade in our rental car for one with functional aircon.

Back in Simon's Town, where Mata'irea was safely tucked into the marina, we didn't even bother to unload the car, as we were taking off the next morning to head east towards St. Francis and Jeffrey's Bay. As we battled our way down the docks in 45 knots of wind, loaded down with a dozen bottles of wine for the bilge, the chilli bin and an overnight bag, we saw a couple wrestling with their roller furling jib. We asked if they needed a hand, but they said they had it under control. So we kept going. A few minutes later, Sten heard the sound of their jib snapping in the wind and shot out the companionway to help them. Before the rogue sail could be contained, a good third of it had been shredded by the howling wind.

Above us on the hillside a fire raged towards a ridge, beyond which a house sat helplessly in its path. Earlier in the day a swimmer had been taken by a Great White shark in Fish Hoek, just a few miles away. Under its veneer of civility, the Cape is still a wild place. As we climbed into bed (fully appreciating our latex mattress after a few nights away from it) we both put in earplugs to help us fall asleep over the sound of Mata'irea's straining docklines.

October 12, 2008 - Nusa Lembongan, Bali, Indonesia

Returning to the village, loaded down with seaweed

Our days have settled into a wonderful, relaxed pattern during the two weeks we have spent in Nusa Lembongan. Sten makes our morning coffee around 7. We've been enjoying the local Sumateran Mandailing, which is really robust and smooth. Before the day gets too hot, we work on boat projects such as cleaning the hull, rebending the traveler plate that was damaged during an accidental jibe on our run from Komodo to Gili Air, rebending and rebedding the stanchion that was damaged when our mooring chafed through in Serangan, repairing the generator, overhauling the bbq grill, replacing worn bungs in the cap rail, and turning the anchor chain end for end so that it wears evenly.

Around 9 or 10 we have breakfast. We've run out of yogurt, so Sten whips us up some eggs or banana pancakes. Around 10:30 the circus comes to town. Every day between 3 and 6 boats come over from Bali, loaded with tourists. For 5 hours in the middle of each day, the anchorage becomes really bouncy with the wake of a dozen passing speed boats as the tourists enjoy being towed around on giant inflated bananas or inflated wings or riding jetskis. After approximately three hours of this, we escape to shore for a late lunch.

Other than breakfast, we've been doing almost no cooking on board Mata'irea during our time here in Nusa Lembongan. It is just too hot. And there are too many good, cheap options onshore. Instead, we've dedicated ourselves to conducting a scientific survey of the local restaurants. Our control items have been fried spring rolls and cheeseburgers. After two weeks of arduous testing, we can report the best meal in Nusa Lembongan can be found in Mushroom Bay at Lumbung Bali. The grilled whole fish with Balinese spices and the sate lilit ikan (ground fish satay) are both perfect. And the spring rolls are the best on the island.

No meal in Bali would be complete without a blended fruit juice drink. We've both enjoyed plenty of pineapple, banana, and mango juices over the past few weeks. I've even had a few avocado shakes (bizarrely, avocado is considered a fruit here). But for our money, the most refreshing fruit drink is honeydew melon blended with ice. Absolutely thirst quenching. After lunch, we return to the boat, usually just in time to see the last of the dayboats departing.

Ever since the infection in Sten's finger cleared up he has been taking advantage of our prime position next to the surf breaks. All of the breaks on Nusa Lembongan, an island situated in the middle of a selat (strait), are heavily influenced by a combination of tide, swell and current. For hours, there will be no surfable breaks, and then in an instant, as though a switch were thrown, there will be several breaks working: Shipwrecks, Lacerations, and Playgrounds, among others. By the time the surfers staying ashore have seen that there are rideable waves, Sten has scored a handful of tube rides. Within half an hour of the surf turning on, there can be up to thirty guys on each of the three breaks here. Sten usually gets in a few more rides before leaving the wave to the rest of the surfers. Then as quickly as the surf showed up, it is gone. And thirty guys are bobbing around out there, waiting for it to come back. Eventually they head back ashore and the cycle starts all over again.

With our late lunches, neither of us has been looking for much for dinner. The heat of the day takes a while to dissipate, so the less we use the stove the better. At night we play cards or watch a movie while snacking on popcorn or chips and salsa (Frontera, of course), washed down with Bintang (the wonderful local beer that is sort of a cross between Heineken and Sapporo), or Australian olives and wine (we are still working through the many cases of Hardys non-vintage we loaded on board in New Zealand; it wasn't good then and it isn't improving with age, but wine is so expensive here that I'm glad to have it).
Anything I have whipped up for dinner has been meant to be served cold. And ever since I found a deal on mangoes at the local market (3 for 80 cents), the ingredient of the week has been mango. A few days ago we enjoyed a Thai beef salad over rice noodles with a mango-chili dressing. Just the other day we slurped down an Australasian version of gazpacho, utilizing mangoes, chilies, the last of my fresh herbs from Bali (now a bit wilted) and the juice of some old oranges and limes (I added rice wine vinegar to replace the acidity that the tomatoes would have provided). Apparently Nusa Lembongan is where the Old Food Movement meets the Cold Food Movement.

The past two days our schedule has been thrown out of whack by discovering that we could watch the baseball playoffs at one of the bars lining the beach. The past two days have started with breakfast at the bar, washed down with gritty Balinese coffee, as we watch the Red Sox and Rays in the ALCS. If the time shift wasn't disorienting enough, halfway through yesterday and today's games a local lady, carrying a basket filled with offerings has wandered behind the bar to place the day's offerings on the alter next to the big screen TV and wave some incense around to bless the bar. After today's game, we walked down the road to take in a cockfight.

Ketut untying the small, sharp knife, called a taji, from the fighting cock's leg

Ketut stroking his winning cock.

It is a common sight in Bali to see a group of men sitting around fondling and exercising their fighting cocks. We even saw a guy taking his cock for a swim - on a leash, of course.

October 4, 2008 - Nusa Lembongan, Bali, Indonesia

Sten's finger is on the mend, but I still won't let him anywhere near the salt water and the millions of microscopic organisms it hosts until it is completely healed. It seemed a shame to let his bodyboard gather dust while he's sidelined, so late this afternoon I decided to try to surf the reef break next to which we are anchored. I haven't been surfing since New Zealand. Beach breaks and sailboats just don't mix - generally there is no decent place to anchor near a beach break. And frankly, reef breaks scare the bejeezus out of me. All that shallow water and jagged coral, just waiting to flay one's flesh, has kept me from trying to surf any of the legendary waves that Sten has scored in the Pacific and Indonesia.

As I'd never surfed a reef break before, Sten came along in the dinghy to coach me. Once I was out there, bobbing around in water so shallow that I could stand up - hell, I could have kneeled on the reef and still had my head above water - I lost any confidence that I had watching the break from the boat. Then I realized, "Hey, if I'm nowhere near the wave, then I don't actually have to catch it, do I?" I was hoping Sten wouldn't notice that I'd drifted a bit far away from the takeoff zone, but he was quick to encourage (shame?) me to get back there with helpful hints like "your position to the wave matters as much as your position on the board."

After a few false starts, somehow I managed to catch a wave. Nobody was more surprised than I was. And by surprised, I mean terrified. A scream burbled out of me as I rode the wave, trying to figure out how to a) stay on the board and b) get the hell out of there before it got too shallow. I hadn't figured out how to turn, so I just held on and screamed some more. When Sten motored over to pick me up with the dinghy he called out "You just surfed an Indonesian reef break. It doesn't get much better than that." Actually, a rum and tonic, a day at the spa, or even a really juicy novel would have done me just fine, but he seemed so pleased that I didn't argue. I rode one more before calling it a day.

September 24, 2008 - Serangan, Bali, Indonesia

The past few days have been a blur of errands. On Monday and Tuesday we spent time reprovisioning at the various supermarkets. Near the harbor is a Costco like place, where we were able to load up on essentials like diet coke and beer. The best of the local super markets is Carrefour, a French chain that we first came across in Tahiti. Carrefour has a good selection of chips. Unfortunately, $6 for a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos was out of our price range, so we made due with a local version called Happytos. "Tos" seems to be universally understood to mean "cheesy goodness." Our big splurge of the week was buying New Zealand milk, rather than the locally produced brand. As a result of the problems with milk powder from China, some milk products and random stuff like Oreos have been pulled from supermarket shelves here. So we went with the Kiwi milk, discretion being the better part of valor and all.

This morning we got our passports back from Sail Indonesia with our Indonesia social visa extensions. After a visit to my favorite Balinese dentist for cleanings for both of us, we headed over to the Thai embassy to apply for visas for Thailand. We expected to have to wait a few days to get them back, but we were pleasantly surprised to be told to come back later that afternoon. Compared to waiting four days in Panama for our visas for French Polynesia and four days in Darwin for our Indonesian visas, Thailand's turn around time was shockingly fast.

Sten has been getting in some good surfing in the mornings on breaks North and South of the harbor entrance. After surfing in Kuta and Seminyak, he was grumbling about how crowded the waves are in Bali. He was itching to backtrack to Lombok, to hit some of the places we bypassed on our way to Gili Air. But since he discovered that the breaks at Hyatt reef and Serangan are relatively uncrowded, he's content to hang out here a while longer.

September 15, 2008 - Seminyak, Bali, Indonesia

After one night on Mata'irea in Serangan, we took the screens off the hatches, put the freeze and fridge back on auto, stowed the dinghy on deck, got a lift to shore, and hailed a cab to take us over to swanky Seminyak. We checked into a small hotel, comprised of a cluster of two story buildings set around a pool that meandered through the central courtyard like a stream. After getting ourselves sorted, we walked up the beach for a late lunch at Ku de Ta, the most talked about restaurant/bar in Southern Bali. The food and drink prices are on par with any casual restaurant at home, which makes them ludicrous for Bali. But the view makes it all worth it. Sten watched the surf throughout lunch. As soon as we got back to our room, he grabbed his board and headed back to the beach.

This next morning, he was up and off to the beach for another session before breakfast. After breakfast, we remembered that we still needed to pick up Sten's passport from the US consulate, so we found a driver to take us over there. While we were in the neighborhood, we stopped in at the Thai embassy to see about getting Thai visas. I was so busy taking notes on the various documentation required that I completely forgot to ask the consulate staff where to go for good Thai food in Bali. With beef penang curry on my brain, we picked up Suzy from the hotel and headed over to the Anantara, a hotel that seems to have been transplanted from Miami Beach, and boasts a Thai restaurant. Unfortunately, the restaurant works from a more eclectic international menu during the day, so no curry for me. But the smoked duck ravioli tossed in a sage butter sauce more than made up for it. Smoked duck is a traditional Balinese food (as it should be with so many of the quackers wandering around the rice paddies). We had a more traditional version in Ubud: smoked and and then deep fried - nothing wrong with that. Shredded and stuffed into fresh pasta may not be traditional, but it sure was tasty.

After we tallied up the bill for lunch, we realized that we could live for a month in Timor, eating out every day, and not spend what we had on lunch these past two days. Eating out in Bali (particularly in Seminyak) is pricey when compared to the rest of Indonesia, but compared to home, it is still a bargain.

September 4, 2008 - Bali Marina, Bali, Indonesia

We've spent the past two days hanging out in the 10km strip of shops, restaurants, hotels and beach that stretches along the south west coast of Bali from Kuta to Legian to Seminyak. Kuta has the heaviest density of surf shops, bars and hawkers, while Seminyak has more high end boutiques and restaurants. Legian falls somewhere in the middle. Having checked the "visit temple" and "watch traditional dancing" boxes on our to do list, yesterday we headed to Seminyak to do some shopping.

While window shopping in Seminyak, we weren't hassled at all, except for the occasional query "transport, transport?" But today, at a beach on the northern edge of Kuta, the beach ladies descended upon us like a swarm of locusts as soon as our feet hit the sand. They grabbed our hands and asked our names. Everywhere we go here people ask us our names, where we come from, where we are staying, and where we are going - not necessarily in that order. I've read that the Balinese need to orient strangers in their universe, and it helps them to know where we are headed. So the first question we often hear, from total strangers, is "where are you going?" This strikes us, with our western notions of privacy, as very intrusive. But to the Balinese, it is a normal question. And they don't mind if you ask them questions that we would normally find prying. After an hour long $5 massage at the beach I knew more about my masseuse than I do about most of my former co-workers.

Nearly everyone in Bali (regardless of sex) has one of four first names - Wayan, Made, Nyoman or Ketut - which translate as first-born, second-born, third-born, and fourth-born. If a family has more than four children, they just start back at the beginning of the list. This gets very confusing, so everyone has a nickname. My masseuse's business name was "Adidas" to distinguish her from the other 3 Nyomans working the same little stretch of beach.

The beach ladies pay for the right to work a certain area, selling massages, foot scrubs, cheap beaded and carved jewelry, and sarongs. If they venture beyond their zone, the ladies working in the next zone will raise a ruckus. So the ladies working within each zone are in stiff competition with each other for the rupiah of the tourists who flop down in their stretch of beach. When we first arrived, it was completely overwhelming to be swarmed upon by all of them at once; but, soon other tourists showed up and filled the chairs around us, and, once the ladies realized we weren't going to buy anything other than a sarong (for which I paid way too much at $10, but I'm chalking up the excess as direct aid), they extracted promises of future massages and were off to try their chances with the newcomers.

Sten worked on his haggling skills by bargaining for a surfboard rental for the afternoon. I've been honing mine with the taxi drivers. Suzy is an excellent bargaining partner. Whatever price they give me, I come back at them with a counter offer of at least 50% less. If they stall, Suzy starts to walk towards another taxi. They immediately crack. "Okay, okay," they say as they open the door.

This afternoon I continued my world tour of dental facilities with a stop at a dentist's office in Denpasar, the capital city of Bali, to have my Tongan/New Zealand root canal checked. Bali's dental facilities (at least those frequented by ex-pats and Australians on holiday) are an amazing combination of easy booking (I made my appointment that morning), technologically advanced equipment, good hygiene, and rock bottom prices. After examining a panoramic x-ray, the dentist advised me that my tooth looked fine, but that he thought there might be an air gap between the material filling the canal and the wall of the canal on one of my roots. He assured me that it was probably fine, but that I could have a 3-D x-ray to be sure. He hesitated to order the other x-ray because it was "very, very expensive." I asked him the price, and he said "600,000 rupiah," which sounds like an awful lot but comes out to be about $65. That stuck me as short money for peace of mind, so I said to go ahead. One hour later, I'd had two fillings, one regular x-ray, one "very, very expensive" x-ray, and peace of mind in spades for a grand total of $114. I'm coming back to Bali for all my future dental work.

August 31, 2008 - Nusa Lembongan, Bali, Indonesia

Before the heat of the day set in, we headed ashore to explore Nusa Lembongan a bit. The land is dry and dusty, but the coastline is spectacular.

The Devil's Tear

Most homes and businesses have shrines outside, called "seats of the gods," which were filled with offerings. Beautiful little offerings were also placed at the end of every driveway we passed, and along the beach.

Once the gods have taken their sustenance from the offerings, the birds swoop in to make certain nothing goes to waste.

Luckily for us, we had much tastier feed options. Last night and tonight we enjoyed delicious dinners ashore with Mike from Good News. It is Mike's big, beautiful catamaran in the photo of the parasailor below [scroll down to see the pictures that now adorn the Gili posts]. We all really enjoyed how clean Nusa is in comparison to the Gilis. Every time I turned around Suzy was in the water. And Sten enjoyed riding Shipwrecks, one of three surf breaks in this bay.

August 11, 2008 - Savu, Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia

We've spent the past few days fixing the mainsail, doing a variety of other boat projects, and hunting for shells on the beach while waiting for the swell to develop. When it did, it was well worth the wait. Sten says that it is the fastest wave he's ever surfed. We met an Australian named Dave, who has spent the past month staying in the village, surfing this fickle wave. He was here when Khulula came through 3 weeks ago. Since then, only one other boat has been here.

We invited Dave and a few local teenage guys over for dinner last night. I made some pasta. Dave enjoyed the break from a steady diet of fish and rice. The guys were very polite about their first experience with Italian food. However, their expressions reminded me of the look on Sten's face the first time he had to eat laplap. Over dinner we asked them about the broken Nautilus shells we'd seen on the beach. This morning, they paddled out in their outrigger to bring us a perfect Nautilus. What an excellent hostess gift!

August 8, 2008 - Savu, Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia

We're anchored somewhere along the coast of the island of Savu. We actually do know where we are, but because the friends who gave us the details about the anchorage here and the potential for the reef to produce both a perfect left and a perfect right in big swell asked us not to publicize the location, we're abiding by their wishes. So, we're somewhere in Savu, which is so off the beaten track that the two inch thick Lonely Planet guide for Indonesia doesn't even have this island listed.
Best of all, there isn't another cruising boat in sight. It is just us and the local fisherman, who spend all day long gill netting in the waters around us. It will be nice to have an anchorage all to ourselves for a few days. Not having to worry about boats dragging down on us is a nice change.
We had a fast, fast day sail to get here from Nemberala. For over an hour our speed over the ground was pegged at over 10 knots. That's unheard of for us. At least 3 of those knots were due to assistance from the current flowing in our direction. The rig wasn't even loaded up. Which leaves us a bit flummoxed as to how we managed to tear the mainsail. Luckily we've got a few more days to go before the swell sets in, so we should have plenty of time to repair the main.

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August 6, 2008 - Nemberala, Rote, Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia

We had a beautiful overnight sail from Kupang to Nemberala, a surf spot on the Southwestern corner of the island of Rote with a legendary 'left' known as T-land. The anchorage here is a little tricky to get into, as the charts don't show the reefs. But by keeping an eye on the wave occasionally breaking to our left as we approached the anchorage from the North, we were able to scoot around the reef and anchor behind a handful of other cruising boats.

Our Tuesday morning arrival was timed perfectly (and completely unintentionally) to take advantage of the local weekly market. As we cruised into the beach in the dinghy, fishermen leaned out of their boats waiving strands of pearls at us. As we pulled the dinghy up on the beach, a gentleman from Palau Ndao, an island situated 10km west of Nemberala, renowned for its silversmiths, approached us to show us some bracelets. All the jewelry was nice to look at, but what we were really after was a few eggs and tomatoes.

Nemberala is a cute little westernized Indonesian town - a result of catering to surfers. There is a bakery where you can order focaccia. The local restaurant serves burgers (when they remember to order buns from the bakery) and hashbrowns. And the resort at the end of the beach serves a mean margarita from its beautiful bar (this place has customer service down - when you sit down they hand you a pair of binoculars so you can check out the action out on the reef). We had a really fun time at the resort bar chatting with some folks from Adelaide, Australia, who have done more New England cruising than we have, a surf photographer (what a cool job), and a group that had just arrived from San Diego. Nemberala is not an easy place to get to and these people had all traveled a long way to get here. Unfortunately for them and Sten, the surf was not rewarding the effort they made to get here. The swell was minimal and forecast to stay that way for several days. Sten made the best of it and got out there and had some fun warm-up sessions in the small waves.

Walking the beach at low tide we found big knobby starfish and chards of coral. We also spotted some pigs foraging in the tidepools - free range pork, as Sten quipped. We watched the locals harvesting seaweed from the shoreline. In this arid region, where it is hard to grow vegetables in any abundance, seaweed provides an important source of vitamins and calcium. The seaweed is also a cash crop. It is shipped overseas to be used as a thickener in dairy products and a fat substitute in diet foods.

We joined some other cruisers for a few Bintangs and mie goreng (fried noodles) at the local restaurant. Over dinner we learned a very important phrase should we ever find ourselves in need of a beer in Australia: "I'm as dry as a dead dingo's donger." We've tucked that away with "spat the dummy," which translates essentially as 'threw a hissy fit.' Our Indonesian isn't making much progress but hanging out with all these Australian cruisers we're learning some colorful Aussie slang.

Additional boats released from bondage in Kupang arrived each day we were in Nemberala. Soon this serene spot started to feel crowded too and we felt the itch to move on and find our own wave.

May 12, 2008 - Anelghowhat Village, Aneityum/Anatom Island, Vanuatu

We have been having such an amazing experience since we arrived on Anatom last Wednesday morning. Our arrival coincided with the this village's celebration of Labor Day. When we finally made it ashore around 1pm, after spending the morning putting the boat away, there was a fierce volleyball competition underway on the lawn in front of the church. Sten, Joe and Lew from Serannity played for a while with some of the local guys between tournament matches. Ann and I sat down to watch. Within a few minutes, Reny, a local lady of my age, came and sat down beside me. We talked for a bit while watching the match.

Reny's youngest son sat on her lap, nursing. Her second youngest was running around us and her first born, a 12 year old girl, was hanging out nearby. Her two older sons were sequestered at the nakamal (local men's clubhouse) recovering from the circumcision ceremony they underwent the day before. Her husband, and most of the men, were also at the nakamal, drinking kava.

The hills above the village are covered with pine forest, planted in conjunction with New Zealand Forestries. But the pine is prone to brush fires (there was one during our stay here), the rainy weather makes the ground too soft for the tractor to pull the logs out, and there are regularly shortages of fuel. So, a few months ago the village brought a horse down from Port Vila (the capital of Vanuatu). The horse doesn't get stuck in the mud, and doesn't require any fuel. This is a big improvement.

Firewalking pit shaded by an ancient, gnarled Banyan tree

There is no set schedule for the island freighter to come here with supplies. The freighter only comes when there is enough timber to make a run profitable. But the men would rather drink kava than cut down trees. So they don't cut much timber until their wives run out of cooking oil and rice. Then they get to work. When the men have cut and milled enough timber to sell, they call the freighter on the village's one phone. A few weeks later, the freighter arrives with more cooking oil, rice, shoes, batteries, kerosene, noodles - everything these people use that they can't grow or make themselves.

This is easily the least developed place we have been in the Pacific. Unlike French Polynesia, where the houses are made out of subsidized concrete blocks and tin roofing material, the houses here are primarily made out of traditional materials - woven walls and thatched roofs. Everything here is made by hand. The other day while walking around the village, we came across a man making concrete blocks by hand. After mixing the sand, water and cement, he filled a form with the mixture, packed it down, then carried it into a building to dry. We figure it takes him 2 to 3 minutes per block. At a couple hundred blocks per structure, that is a slow way to build a house. No wonder most houses here are made of thatch.

Like building a house from handmade concrete blocks, getting a buzz here is also a labor intensive process. The local intoxicant is kava, a muddy drink produced from the roots of Piper methysticum, a pepper plant. Kava is drunk throughout the South Pacific, and as far north as Hawaii. But most modern islanders grind the stuff. Not in Vanuatu. Here they make kava the traditional way.

First, the roots are dug up. Then the husk of a coconut is used to remove the dirt and excess bark from the roots. Then (and this is where it gets a bit gnarly) the roots are chewed, and chewed, and chewed. Then the masticated lump is spit out into a bowl or onto a banana leaf. Once the pile of saliva saturated kava is big enough, a bucket of water and cup is brought over. A lump of chewed kava is put in a piece of cloth, such as an old t-shirt, and squeezed into a coconut shell, while water is slowly poured through it. Even with several people working together to clean the roots and chew the kava, it can take an hour or more just to get the kava ready for the squeezing process. This is not a quick or easy way to get lit.

Kava drinking used to be an exclusively male activity. On our first afternoon here, I asked Reny whether she drank kava. "Yes, I chew kava for my husband one or two times a week." "Do you drink it too?" "Yes." "How much?" "One big bowl," she said with a smile. Then she asked if I would like to try kava. Always up for trying the local grog, I said yes. I was also delighted, as being invited to a kava ceremony is tantamount to being officially welcomed to the village. We made plans to have a kava ceremony the next night. Thursday was going to be a big day for everyone, as a cruise ship was expected, and nobody wanted to be hung over from kava.

The day after our arrival, an Australian cruise ship anchored outside the pass and ferried its passengers to "Mystery Island," a small, sandy island in the harbor. On cruise ship days the ladies from the village go over to Mystery Island to set up their stalls in the marketplace. They sell the usual trinkets to the tourists - leis, woven can coozies, woven bags, postcards, key chains, and dishtowels. I wish I had a picture of the expression on the face of the cruise ship passenger who watched Reny and I exchanging hugs, a bag of limes and a few DVD's (a few of the more prosperous families have solar panels that they use to charge batteries to power a few small LED lights and their DVD players). Several of the men from the village had captured lobsters on the reef the night before and were doing a brisk business of cooking them for the Aussies, in exchange for 20 - 40 Australian dollars, depending on the size of the lobster. Our first morning here a local man named Wesley paddled out to Serannity in a dug out canoe with some lobsters. They traded him a t-shirt for them. Khulula traded a t-shirt, a pair of flip-flops and a hat for seven lobsters. The yachties are clearly getting a better price than the folks on the cruise ship.

The local string band performing on cruise ship day.
Yes, he is using a flipflop as a percussion instrument.

Reny's house, shaded by a moonflower tree

After the Aussies were ferried back to their ship, Sten, I and the crew of Khulula headed ashore to join Reny for the kava ceremony. She took us back to her home, two thatched buildings surrounded by gardens and a packed dirt yard. We sat in the yard on low stools and woven mats. Sten, Ryan, Bryson and Hugh cleaned the roots with coconut husk while Reny set to chewing them.

Ryan and Sten cleaning roots while Reny chews

Reny chewing while her son, Jefferson, shines some light on the situation

As the mounds of chewed kava piled up in the plate, we started to feel bad about how hard Reny was working. I also had the fleeting thought that if I chewed some of the kava, then I could pretend that the portion I drank contained my saliva, rather than anyone else's spit. Thea, Jess and I gave chewing the roots a try, but our lips and tongues quickly became numb and our jaws stiff.
Once the lumps of chewed kava were ready, Reny's nephew helped her strain it through a t-shirt into coconut shells. As she presented us each with a shell of kava, Reny wished us a good night in her local language - a phrase that sounded a lot like "chew-char-ab-nee." After feeling the effects of the kava, I understood how suitable a blessing "good night" was. I felt nothing initially, but the next morning, as I fought what felt like an Ambien hangover, it seemed like I'd just gotten off of a long-haul flight. Sten had a completely different reaction. My typically taciturn husband turned into a philosopher, as he ruminated about the economic and social effects of introducing a steadier power supply to a place like this.

Drinking kava with James

Reny - feeling good

Towards the end of the kava ceremony on Thursday night, Reny's husband appeared in time to have a cup of kava with me and Sten. James invited us all to come back on Sunday night for a feast and a "real kava ceremony." On Sunday afternoon we all met James and Reny on the beach. Before heading back to their place, James offered to take the boys to the nakamal to meet his sons who were there recovering from their recent circumcisions. Thea and Jess went with the guys for the walk to the nakamal, although they weren't permitted to go in, as the nakamal is exclusively male territory. Along the way they visited a small compound where James's family lives, saw giant bats (called flying foxes) and checked out blowholes, surge channels and tunnels carved in the edge of the reef.

An outrigger hull, dug out of the trunk of a kauri tree

While everyone else went on James's tour, I went back with Reny to her house, as I was looking forward to getting a chance to have some quiet conversation with her while we finished making dinner. Reny's cook house, which is separate from the sleeping house, is a rudimentary affair. To the left of the entrance is an open fire. There is no chimney, so the air circulates in the house and eventually finds its way out the doorway or the window on the opposite wall. There is no light, save the glow of the fire, daylight or moonlight filtering through the doorway and the window, and a pinprick of light cast by a single LED at night. At the far end of the room, a table sits under the window, with benches on either side. When the rain is very heavy, the family will eat indoors, otherwise they eat in the covered area between the two buildings. A platform long enough to lay down upon runs the length of the wall opposite the fire.

While Reny fried slices of taro (a starchy veg that is a staple of the diets of Pacific Islanders, which, after a good long boil, still has the consistency of uncooked potato), I set about cleaning the kava roots. Reny explained that James's sister's son had brought the kava from another village for us because it was particularly potent. Serving us Paama kava, seemed to me a bit like serving a cult cabernet to a child, but it made them proud to be able to give their guests the best they could. Once James returned with everyone else, their nephews took the roots I'd been cleaning and started chewing the kava for us. Compared to the other night's communal affair when we all pitched in to make the kava, this was a more formal event, and James was running the show. He decided the order in which we would drink, and honored Ryan by choosing to drink with him.

Reny, her sons Jefferson and Jameson, Thea, Jess and I, cleaning kava roots

Bryson and Sten knocking back the kava as James looks on

Hugh, aka Reef Walker, my kava drinking buddy

The Paama kava was more potent than the kava we had on Thursday night. After the first sip, my lips and tongue began to tingle. Then a feeling of euphoria descended over me. Sten had an even stronger reaction, as he felt his legs begin to give way, and quickly found himself a seat. I began to think that there might have been some truth to Reny's earlier promise that we would all wind up sleeping in her kitchen.

An island feast of taro cooked in coconut milk, braised chicken,
fried taro chips and boiled chunks of purple swamp taro

After drinking the kava, we gathered in a space between the two buildings to exchange gifts and enjoy a meal together. It felt awkward accepting presents from people who had so little; but, we would have insulted them if we did not accept their gifts. Sten and I gave them a few staples, a t-shirt, hat, and some batteries for their flashlights. Khulula gave them a bag of canned goods and spices and some cigarettes. We risked making them feel indebted to us by giving them so much, but it was hard to hold back after being so welcomed into their home and family and seeing how little they had and how bare and dusty the shelves were at the local store.

Jefferson showed us the remains of the missionaries' printing press

Village kids with blond hair - a whaler's legacy?

In between kava ceremonies we found some time to walk around the village and play on the reef. Sten, Ryan and Hugh got in some surfing, while Thea, Jess and I did a bit of snorkeling. There is a wreck of a Japanese fishing boat, circa 1960, that is in about 1 meter of water, at high tide. At low tide, there is barely enough water on top of the reef to stay afloat. While checking out the boat, I dropped the tips of my flippers down, so they were resting on the reef, to hold me in place in the current. I noticed a sudden movement, and realized that the patch of coral that I'd disturbed was actually a stone fish, which according to Coral Reef Fishes, by Lieske and Myers, is the "World's most venomous fish . . . has caused human fatalities." Um, good thing I didn't step on him. This guy was so well camouflaged that I struggled to find him again when I brought Sten, Jess and Thea back to see him.

Click on the picture to blow it up - to find the fish look for his red eye

In addition to poisonous fish, the reef is also home to many turtles, which the locals hunt. We've never seen turtles move so fast! At the first sound of an outboard, they take off like a dart. Phoenix arrived from New Caledonia on Sunday evening. On Monday, while Sten and the boys were having a decent session out at the reef break, I took Patty and Giff out to check out the wreck and the turtles. The current was ripping across the top of the reef, so Patty, Giff and I hopped out of the dinghy and drifted silently over the coral heads. We got just close enough to spot the turtles before they hightailed it away from us. I tried to get some pictures, but they were much faster than me. All I wound up with were shots of blurry turtle butts off in the distance.

These bright blue starfish were everywhere

On cruise ship day, thelocals were telling the cruise ship passengers that they would see bronze whalers on the snorkel tour. I asked the customs guy if there were sharks in the harbor and he just laughed and shook his head. The locals were also advertising dive trips to a burial cave 10 meters deep, but nobody could point us towards its location.

Usually we avoid ports when cruise ships are in; however, this time we were delighted. Currently (although this is about to change), Anatom is not an official port of entry. So when a cruise ship is due, Customs and Quarantine officers fly in to clear the passengers. We took advantage of their being here to do our Quarantine clearance. Unfortunately for us, the Customs officer didn't have the right paperwork for yachts. Quarantine charged 3,000 vatu (the local currency) or $40 Australian. He didn't accept NZD, and we didn't have any vatu or Australian. So we had to wait until Friday, when the bank opened, to get some vatu (the bank is also open on Tuesdays).

Quarantine told Serannity, who arrived on Tuesday, that they needed to leave by Friday to go to Tanna and finish the clearance process. When I cleared us on Wednesday (a romantic, candle-lit process on this island with limited electricity), Quarantine didn't give me a deadline. The Quarantine officer told me (with a straight face and the Customs guy standing right next to him), "Quarantine is the most important. Now that you've cleared with me, you can take your time doing the rest." Customs said that we should go when the weather is good. I jokingly told him that it didn't look like it was going to be any good to leave for several days. He just nodded.

Joseph coming out to see Phoenix via outrigger canoe

We also brought our passports to a local guy named Joseph, who lives in a house just to the east of the Presbyterian church, so that he could write down our information. This isn't a clearance of any kind; it's just that the community would like to know who is hanging out in their harbor. I'm not certain whether Joseph will continue to have this responsibility in the future. Later this week the Prime Minister is arriving on the twice weekly flight (Monday and Thursday) from Port Vila to declare Anelghowhat as an official port of entry. Nobody I spoke with was certain when his declaration would take effect or what the clearance procedures would be.

While anchored off of Anelghowhat we had several fun nights on board Mata'irea, Khulula and Phoenix. Our first night in the anchorage, Serannity came over. We celebrated our safe arrival back in the tropics by sharing some of the local lobster, which is the best warm water lobster Sten and I have ever had, and frying everything we could get our hands on. The drink of the evening was a tropical champagne cocktail, made with passionfruit pulp and Hardy's sparkling wine (an effervescent substance, that bears a closer relationship to sparkling grape juice than wine). We all got a little ridiculous. A few nights later, Khulula came over and we finished off the big mahi we caught on passage by making a mess of ceviche with the limes Reny gave me. Khulula brought over some nice cheese and crackers and over some ice-less vodka tonics we all got to know each other a bit. It has been fun having Khulula around. They are the first boat we've spent time with on this trip with a crew of our own age.

One of these friendly guys nearly became our new ship's cat