Sorry, no Internet here at Ile du Coin in the Peros Banhos atoll. Nor anything at all but palm trees, coconuts, coconut crabs, hermit crabs and an unbelievable amount of fish. Nobody has lived here for 40 years they say. Obviously you can't buy anything at all and Liping is getting worried about our food supply.
I'm not. Drop a 3-inch hook in the water, with any kind of weird plastic on it at all during feeding frenzy and within less than a minute you've got a 2-foot bonito on the hook. Very good deep-fried, not so good as sashimi because of all the red meat.
Aurora Ulani says this is the best place yet and I am inclined to agree. It is just... All the adjectives and so on are so used up by the brochures and travel-magazine articles, they just don't do reality justice any more. This is *it* and it will never get any better in this particular department.
Just in case you think that I am losing my marbles, there is this: The other side of the coin, so to speak.
The wind was either on the nose or nonexistent. We were severely overloaded, as we knew that you couldn't buy anything here. It took 34 days to get here from Langkawi and while tacking into the wind, I developed an abscess on my hip, which finally reached the size of a child's fist. The very first thing I did here, was asking for a book like "Where there is no doctor" (www.hesperian.org) or some such. The whole thing was rather painful after all. Imagine my relief, when I found out that there was a competent French doctor on another boat.
I went for it immediately. Yvon had one look and decided: operation. That happened on the couch of my own boat, with lots of injections of local anaesthetics & the whole thing still isn't over and done with. Another thing is that we are anchored in 28 meters of water, which is way beyond my comfort limit, especially as we only have slightly more than 60 meters of chain. I have never anchored that deep before in my life.
This is one of those places you only daydream about or spend decades looking for.
Say "Hi!" to Jennifer for me and please do keep sending me eMails! During the long six-hour night watches, eMails are definitely one of the things I keep looking forward to!
Cheers!
Holg
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At 4/16/2011 3:34 PM (utc) our position was 05°26.82'S 071°45.80'E
