in the marquesas

finally i get to send q proper e-mail....
we arrived in nuku hiva of the marquesas on thursday, jan 12th, it is
beautyful here, paradise, quiete refreshing in comparison to english
colonies. the people qre bequtiful and it is warm and tropical.
unfortunately all the e-mail places where i could post pictures are
broken, this is pretty remote....i'm mailing from the post office with a
phone card.
on one of my wanderings i saw a guy building a boat in his backyard and
asked if i could come and have a closer look. we chatted a bit and then
his wife took me around on their property, collecting fruit for me. i got
a whole stock of bananas, a sack full of mangoes, ( giant avocadoes, some
papayas and a bunch of very sweet grapefruit they have here. i asked her
if they wanted qnything for it and she just said, no, it's a present, we
have a lot, she said. iand because there was no way for me to carry all
that, the entire fqmily got into their pick-up truck and drove me and my
presents down to the quqay. how totally nice is that!
at sea the winds came out of a-typical directions for the seasons; it
rained to much in most pqrts qnd not enough in the intertropical
conversion zone.... and there wasn't much sea life at all, we saw a total
of 1 baleen whale, 2 small groups of pilots and, 15 pods of dolphins, all
that in nearly 6 weeks.... we saw more than that in the 2 weeks from
bermuda to the azores and the atlantic is supposed to be dead compared to
the pacific... well. i wish i could post some pictures. i also wish that i
could send more updates... it turns out that the boat has subscribed to a
very limited amount of time for the radio e-mail and of course the owners
are using it, and then there isn't much left, and some needs to be saved
for emergencies. so, my apologies that the updates are not happening as
often as promised.
i do however werite stuff down on paper qnd take photos that i'll be able
to show later...
we are planning to leave here next sunday, i think that's jan 22nd