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American Spirit II - Day 145; Toured Island, Whale Behavior & a Strange Usage for Duck Tape; Thursday, May 29, 2014



Up until 3:15 AM. Lot on my mind. Infection, rigging, batteries, charging, etc.

8:00 AM got up. Breakfast at 9:00 AM. In dingy by 10:30 AM heading to wharf. Stopped by house where laundry is being done. No one home. Walked by post office and mailed post cards. I wonder if they'll ever reach America. Have to go to New Zealand first.

Rented a car at 11:30 AM. Fifty seven dollars. Half the price of a car rental in Moorea and Tahiti.

Stopped by the hospital at 11:45 AM, trying to catch the doctor before he went to lunch. Successful. Suggested that my right calf infection was a contamination exposure from my Bora Bora infection, requiring a stronger prescription than I was taking to get rid of. Gave me a prescription of Ciprox. I asked for one for Doxycyline, also. For 'future' use. Got it. Found out later in talking with brother David (who talked with a pharmacist and infectious disease doctor) that Ciprox might not work for all types of MRSA. Need to have wound cultured to determine that. I didn't have a culture, so I started taking the Doxycyline and stopped taking the Ciprox.

We stopped at a Pizza restaurant for lunch. Ordered a 'meat lovers' pizza. Beef, chicken, BBQ. Looked awful when put on the table, but quite good. Crew from Lluiton were there also, eating sushi.

Next stop the hardware store where I bought a 5 gallon plastic bucket to do laundry with. Our 2 gallon buckets aren't big enough to handle large bed sheets.

Then toured island. The road around the island is 64 kilometers or about 40 miles. Most of the road is wide enough for only one car. When a car approaches you you both have to put one wheel in the grass off the road to get by each other. And driving is on the left side of the road. The steering wheel is on the right side.

A number of whale watching stations are located on the cliff tops overlooking the waters on the west side of the island, with signage describing things like 'whale behavior.' For example, Breach - when a whale flies upward out of the water like a surfacing submarine, landing on its back with a big splash. Skyhop - when a whale sticks its head out of the water in a vertical manner, like a periscope. Blow - when a whale blows water thru the hole in the top of its head. The easiest way to find where whales are. Look for the blows. Fluke Up Dive - 'tail' straight up, whale going straight down. Head Lunge - whale jumps with throat and forward part of body landing in water creating a big splash.

Our longest hike of the day was at Talaava Arch. Think Arches National Park in the United States. Except there is only one arch. To get there you have to walk on sharp, uneven coral and rock. Narrow trail thru a rain forest. Difficult walking. Sign said 30 minutes one way. We did in 29. The view when we got there was worth the hike. One giant arch along the water's edge. Because it was low tide the view was excellent. Caves there, also.

Next stop Hikula Sculpture Park. Modern. At a loss for words. Very unusual.

Then drove down a road to the sea to visit the Washaway Cafe, closed unfortunately. These roads or paths to the sea are called 'sea tracks.' A World ARC 2010-2011 banner was hung in the outside bar. Located at Avatele Oneonepata Beach. A Christmas Island shirt was hung up in the bar, also. In the Indian Ocean. We're going there late September. 500 miles west of Bali.

Stopped at another whale watching location where huge breakers were sending gigantic geysers of water into the air. And a whale information board there even had the names of 4 humpback whales that visit Niue every year. I should have written down their names. Forgot. Again, the whale watching location is on top of the cliff face. The entire shore around the island is cliff faced. A sign showing the whale migration locations has the whales coming up from Antarctica to calve in the South Pacific waters. There be here in July thru November. We just missed them. They apparently even get so close to the mooring field we're in that they lay alongside your boat, looking at you.

We picked up our laundry on the way back to the boat. Cost 25 New Zealand dollars for one load of laundry. Lady had a book for us to sign with information like the name of our boat, where from, etc. A nice touch. And she had a great garden. Took us for a tour.

Back at the boat later, for dinner we had 3 blackened chicken legs and 2 hamburger patties cooked on the grill. Plus corn out of a can and cut up pineapple for dessert.

After dinner Joel downloaded from the internet and studied weather information via Passage Weather. While he was doing this I put new sheets on my bed and organized a plastic box to accommodate all of my bandage materials for changing my bandages a couple times a day. When I re-bandaged my wound before going to bed, I noticed that the wound had drained a lot. Disgusting. I had a concern it would drain thru the bandages, contaminating my bed sheets. So I got out some duck tape and covered the area of the bandage right over the would with 2 strips of it. Not the entire bandaged area. Just over the hole in my leg. Worked great. I wonder if anyone has ever told the companies that make duck tape that this might be a new way to use it? Probably not. But I'm sure I'm not the first to figure this out. I read a science fiction once where an alien race allied with the Earthling's only on condition of being given an unlimited amount of duck tape for their race. Forever. Sounds stupid, but the author was very convincing in the book.

At 11:15 PM I finished typing a log and sent it and some emails out over the SSB radio.

Went to bed at 1:00 AM.

338 Days until home.

Brian Fox



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