10/12/2011 - Funafuti, Tuvalu

We arrived yesterday in Tuvalu. Check in was a breeze and we spent the afternoon
relaxing and napping on the boat in the wonderful breeze. It is awfully hot here, but the wind is blowing so perfectly that you almost don't even notice the heat.
So, today we did Tuvalu. I think. Well, we gave it our best shot. It's not a big place. We walked all over town. We found the "Tuvalu National Library and Archives." We found the internet cafŽ (well, more than one, believe it or not). We ate lunch at a local restaurant, pretty nice. We exchanged money at the bank. We even saw a New
Zealand Airforce plane land and unload some aid equipment (Tuvalu recently ran
out of water...yes, water).
We went to the local Town Council and attempted to get approval to anchor
Savannah at the Conservation Area on the West side of the atoll. For a small fee of
$50 (how much does it cost to go to Yosemite?) and another small fee of $100 to
take pictures (yes, TAKE pictures, even after Andy offered to give them a copy of
everything for their own use), we decided against going over there. There were
supposed to be turtles and mantas, but for $150, we decided we could just look at pictures of them.
So, tonight, I sit, playing video games on the iPad. Everyone is asleep. Why are you not asleep Monica? Well, I hear chanting, singing, drums. There is a celebration going on! I can hear it. I don't know what it is, but I am certain they are roasting a pig! It is all I can do not to lower the dinghy and find out for myself. But no, I cannot. My boy is asleep. My husband is asleep (in the net, no less. I get the whole bed to myself tonight). We will not be celebrating. Of what, I do not know, nor care. We will not be having pig tonight.
We're going to check out in the morning and make our way to Tarawa. We found
out that we aren't able to stop at any of the outer islands. You can, but you have to come back to Funafuti to check out if you do that, about 200 miles against the wind. I don't think so.
Reading through this, it sounds like we didn't enjoy ourselves too much, but that's
not the case. The people here are the friendliest we've met so far while cruising.
While the island is also the trashiest we've seen (yes, even worse than Pago Pago and fortunately for all, we didn't see anyone going to loo in the ocean like we had read about - not saying they didn't do it, just saying I didn't see it.), it has a certain sort of charm to it (probably due to the people). It's not a place you want to spend a lot of time, but it is a good place to stop over and rest a bit. So, off we go tomorrow on our 8-day trip to Tarawa. Wish us luck!
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