Durban holiday coming up...

On Sunday we begin our journey home, to arrive on Tuesday evening, travel weary I'm sure.With lots of prayer covering us, we'll negotiate five airports over the three days, crossing from off the West coast of Africa, through two islands, down the body of Africa and on to our coastal home. We've done this journey many times now and the thought of doing it again just makes me tired. Although so looking forward to the break from our island existance and to seeing family and friends, the travelling is a mission. At first with our travels was the initial excitement of the unknown, which turned into the anxiety producing known but has now descended into the wearisome state which seasoned travellers through Africa know well. I'm not sure how many more times we'll negotiate this long route, as we have been here 12 months now. I look forward to forgetting Luanda airport...

A photo journal from March 2013 to Feb 2014

Approaching Principe

Sao Tome



Airport



Bom Bom Resort view



Cacao

Airport wood fire bakery

City market inside

City market outside

Local shop

Buying and weighing fish

 

The local currency, Dobra. STD 100 000 = around R50

Festival of St Lawrence



The Papagio river which runs through the city

Santo Antonio is the second smallest city in the world, qualifying as a city because of the Cathedral present and because of the local government, amongst other things.



Portuguese architecture in the city



Here, the trees are taking over...

Most housing is made from wood and on stilts



Our home and the Aurecon offices nextdoor.



Sundy ex- plantation estate house in ruins

 Roca Sundy or Sundy plantation estate, is the largest of its kind on the island. Although in ruins, a community lives on the grounds and have made homes in the shells of the buildings. There are plans ahead to renovate the estate for tourism.

Tucked away is a disused steam engine







Praia Buoy

Belo Monte terrace with Praia Banana below



Praia Macaco







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.