The stinky whale

We've been back on Principe for nearly two weeks now and are getting into our life here and routine again. Zachary's sleeping patterns have returned to normal, after all the changes of the travelling and holidays, making Mark and I very pleased. For the first week he was still on South African time and was waking up for the day between 3.30am and 5am, which we didnt enjoy!

Answered prayers meant that on the way home from South Africa we encountered no undue hitches, including visa difficulties and Zachary took the flight between the islands on the noisy Dornier, very calmly. So all in all, since my last blog entry, things have been good.


Earlier on this week, we went on an adventure to see a whale which had washed up dead on Praia Grande, one of the beaches on the West of the island. Most of the local people seem unfamiliar with this beach and there is some sort of legend attached to it about a ship's captain going missing near the beach, so the unused 'road' to get there was the bumpiest, most bouldery, yet. However we all congratulated ourselves on enduring the ride and it was worth it to see the massive body of the deceased whale. As long as the wind direction blew away from us, we could go up to it, but when it changed the smell was nauseating. Zachary objected greatly to the smell of the "stinky whale" and after a few photos, we headed back.

Christmas holidays

It's been a while since my last post as our internet has been very unpredictable, causing me to loose a few draft posts and frustrating my blogging motivation. At the moment I have network, although its very on and off this morning. I know because I have a jazz radio station playing through my tablet and it has taken a few rests while I've been busy.

This week, we're counting down until our Christmas holiday break. We've only got three full days until we leave on our flight to Sao Tome, the larger island, where we'll spend a night. From there, if our visas are waiting, we'll catch our connecting flight to Luanda. In Luanda's airport we will wait for around 5 hours for our flight to Johannesburg, South Africa, and again we will spend a night there and then on to Durban the next day. We break the last SA leg up to avoid toddler insanity. It's a lot of travelling for an adult to handle, let alone a little person and last time Zachary came out in childhood Excema after our flights.

Once in back home in Durban, we've several wonderful weeks of holiday to enjoy with our family and friends. We're so looking forward to the lights, action and restaurants. Its been a long 5 month haul on our tiny, quiet island.

Merry Christmas and I pray that you will be celebrating this special time of the birth of Christ with us and Christians all over the world.

Until next year...

The Sao Tome Spinetail

Living near the airport now, we've developed the habit of going for late afternoon walks along the dirt roads near the airstrip. The sun sets consistently early on Principe it seems, around 5.30pm, so 5pm is a great time to watch the birds which feed in flight, swooping through the air and speeding along just above ground. Keeping to themselves the Grey Parrots fly up high, on their way home to Bom Bom Island.

An unusual thing about Principe is that the Little Swift and the Sao Tome Spinetail, sometimes called the Sao Tome Spine-tailed Swift, fly together in mixed groups while feeding. Both birds are black-brown with a white rump and for a novice birder the mixed groups had me stumped for while. Though with this information I'm starting to see the subtle differences between them, the smaller size of the Little Swift for one. The Sao Tome Spinetail itself only measures around 10cm, small for the boomerang winged species. As an aside, the name  Spinetail originates from the spine tipped ends of their wings.To confuse my identification skills a bit more, the Little Swift looks superficially similar to the Barn Swallow, which also occur here and their flying style is fluttery and similar.So the Sao Tome Spinetail has my interest at the moment, as I learn to distinguish it from other similar species in the air but one thing is for sure though, they are too swift for my camera.

Our new home

We've been in our 'park home' around one month now and having the extra space is wonderful. Zachary is back in his own room again and we have a lounge and diningroom to watch tv in and a table to eat at, which all feels much more civilised. It took nearly six months for our accomodation to get sorted out, which is a long, long time for a family to squash into one hotel room. Anyway, we are much happier now and are in the process of ironing out the difficulties in settling into our new home. With the heavy rains of late, water seems to be oozing out of our flooring and running in through unsealed little spaces around the aircon units, making us quite concerned. Thankfully, today and yesterday have been sunny.

I have just spoken to one of the guys in charge of sorting out the housing and have shown him the leaks and drips in the house, so hopefully we will see some solutions soon. Also Brian and Jeanette, Mark's colleagues, are waiting for various items and fittings for their house and I discussed those with him too. Their house is taking so long to get finished and they are as frustrated as we were before we moved in. Some fast solutions would be such a relief for both them and us

Tomatoes?

Now that it is raining again after the dry gravana season, the market is full of beautiful ripe tomatoes, which I have missed. Back home, any time of the year, I'd pop down to my local 'Spar' shop and pick up a tub of lovely ripe Rosa tomatoes or hand select some large tomatoes from the baskets. Here, tomatoes or anything for that matter, aren't always available when you want them. For a Durban city girl, this has inspired a subtle sense of some sort of panic around supplies and food. So, yesterday while in town waiting in the car for Mark, I saw a young girl, about age ten, walking with a big plastic container of ripe tomatoes on her head. In a mad moment I had gestured to her to come over to my side of the car and so the negation began, immediately I started having second thoughts. How was I going to communicate with her, my Portuguese is coming on, but it is very patchy and the other thing is the crazy money they have here (and the long total described in Portuguese is quite something). In the shops I get the cashier to show me the total of my shop on the computer or calculator screen (the two main shops have those!) or get the stalls to write on paper, but pen-less in my car, all we had to work with was language. The other complicating factor was that I only had a 100, 000 dobra note with me, which is about R50 and no other change or money for the negotiations. Since vegetables are extremely expensive here, I figured that wouldn't actually get me many tomatoes, maybe a kilogram or so, but I was wrong. With tomatoes now in season, the price has dropped. Anyway, so I tried to communicate with my large dobra note, asking how many tomatoes could I get for the note. The girl did not understand me, so she tried to explain how the tomatoes are sold - only in kilograms it turned out - but I didn't get it. Eventually, helpless and chuckling, we looked around and found a builder walking towards us on the pavement and gestured him over. He worked out what was going on and wrote in the mud on the side of the bakkie what he thought we could do. Anyway, in the end it was a case of either I buy three kilos of tomatoes or no tomatoes because the girl only had 40, 000 change. I went with the three kilos and today I have been making and bottling tomatoe chutney and tomatoe passata to preserve them for when there are none. I feel quite proud of my efforts.

The mancut

My husband must be the world's most squirmy haircut victim and that means I'm comparing him to Zachary... We have been married for seven years and until this sunny afternoon, he has never let me near his hair with scissors or a shaver, but with no alternative and his hair like an untrimmed hedge, he relented and let me at it. Sitting on a small stool in the bathroom, he squirmed and complained as I attempted to negotiate the shaver, its length settings and his thick hair. Starting off with a number 1 at the neckline turned out to be a mistake, but as the haircut progressed it seemed to improve and he conceeded that it was actually a pretty good job in the end, which I agree with. It also beats the last one, which was in Sáo Tome at a local barber shop. That was an experience which included a shaver set on number 2, a very shabby, dirty shop, a crowd bantering in Portuguese and a barber who looked as nervous as I felt this afternoon, in his case at the prospect of cutting non-ethnic hair! Dispite Mark exclaiming, "I'm getting that same feeling that I do when I'm a passenger and you're driving", at some point during my trim, I reckon he'll opt for me next time and not the local barber's dirty shears!

Whale season

Gravana season or the dry season, is also Whale watching time. The water temperature drops attracting Marlin - and their wealthy fishermen - as well as Whales, which play and splash just off the coast lines of Bom Bom. Everyday when Zachary and I walk along the beaches I keep an eye on the horizon hoping to spot another Whale. Zachary has cottoned on to the fuss around spotting Whales and often shouts ,"Whales", when he looks up from drawing in the sand toward the sea.

This is our 5th month at Bom Bom and as lovely as it is, I'm now more than ready to make a home and move from our 4 star hotel room. I'm so looking forward to more space and settling into my own routine. Cooking is going to be a challenge due to the lack of a variety of ingredients, but, I have missed choosing our meals and cooking up something to look forward to. I think we might end up going a bit vegetarian, much to Marks dismay!