Week 3 - Sainte Luce

October 17, 2018

Week 3 - Sainte Luce

So week three started with drama, the girls left late as the car from the town get stuck in mud on the way down to collect them (and drop Sarah off) and no-one got to their intended destinations before 8pm. This meant that Sarah, the new guard, Lala our guide for the week, but more importantly our provisions for the week did not get here till 8pm!

The MO is that the food and water for the week is transported from the town, across the river each Tuesday (so does the same journey we do to get here), and we have to live on that even if we eat it all by Sunday as there is nowhere anywhere nearby to buy anything, the village stocks very little food stuff (as per the picture in week 2). The only thing we can get is water from the village (which is a 2.5 hour round trip) or get Solo the reserve groundsman and his wife to bring over muf balls which are fried dough balls which we can dip in tea or coffee of dip in honey if we have any left. The food is always used up by Tuesday lunch and we have some very strange concoctions by the end of the week. Having said that I now eat every vegetable that is put in front of me especially when it has onion, garlic and enormous amounts of ginger added! Don’t tell Stew!

When I talk about water, this is not bottled water, it is water from the river which is treated with chlorine. The water colour can sometimes be green or orange, but the aid of my trusty water filter bottle it tastes just like water at home.

Activities for the week are as follows: for 1-4 and 6-8 read week one

Other activities included:

Bench making and installing - we made three benches with the help of the guys. They gave us the saws to cut the red eucalyptus hardwood and we would have been there all weeks if they hadn’t have helped, they are so strong. The saws were pretty blunt as well as everything they have here is old or going rusty. Once the benches were made we painted them with termite proof paint to stop the benches being eaten. The termites love the wood here and it is very disconcerting laying in the bungalows listening to your house be chomped on at night…..

We tried out the forest to the north of Sainte Luce to find out if we could find any trails. There is a move for the Sainte Luce people to 'manage' the forest for the government which means it will be more protected than it is now as villagers just enter the forest and take the wood for firewood and any new houses. A village house is made up of one large tree so it has to be big and of good hardwood to make it last.

We also had to ‘undig’ a hole… a company had come to the reserve to dig for water so that we can have a natural well here to stop having to transport ‘fresh’ water in large containers every week. Unfortunately they mucked one hole and left without filling it back in (workmen are the same the world over) so we had to fill it in - I have never seen so much sand and dirt to replace! It took seven of us three afternoons to complete. This is where I found my first black widow spider, not the best place to throw one up in the air on the end of your shovel!

One activity I hadn’t planned on was being ill with some stomach bug which waylaid me for 36 hours, it was at this point I regretted not having an en suite bathroom in a swanky hotel rather than having to run up and down a hill countless times…….

The weather has changed and it is more cloudy and rainy than at the beginning of the stay here, but the thunder and lightening shows are incredible at night. The gear in my room now has a slightly damp feel, I’m hoping the weather will change back soon.

Rom left us this week but we are welcoming Patrick (40 Canada) and Wufan (27 China) for my final week in Sainte Luce.