Friday 19 September – sad to see our guests leave

Grant and Judith had arranged with the resort to pick them up at 8am to go to the airport. Time has flown by and it was sad to see our company depart. They head to Manila and have a great week planned in the Philippines. We busied ourselves to get organised as we decided to check out of PNG today, as this is the last easy place to check out on our route to Indonesia. Customs seem to be relaxed about us heading west as best as we can, even if that means stopping at a few PNG islands along the way to break up the passage to Biak in Indonesia.

We headed into town, while Rowan visited customs and got our passports stamped I did some final provisioning, most importantly eggs, in the supermarket below customs! Then it was back to the fresh produce market on the waterfront. We were pleased to stock up on avocados pawpaw, pineapples and all sorts. It’s always a complete juggle to get it all back into the fridges. We didn’t hang about, we had the anchor up by lunchtime and were on our way back to Nusalom island where we were yesterday. It’s lovely and peaceful there, with great snorkelling, so a much better option than staying in Kavieng. Claudette has a terrible cold so she is going to check out on Monday and catch up with us. Rowan and I are much better, I do wonder if it was a Covid type thing. Claudette went to the the 50th anniversary of Independence rally in Kavieng on the 15th. Her photos are amazing of the local tribes all dressed up in their finery, singing and dancing. So brave of her to go on her own, it was a 3km walk to the stadium, she said everyone was so friendly and it was a very happy calm affair. Sad we missed it.

We went to the other side of the bay to snorkel in the afternoon. It was great even if the visibility wasn’t the best. We were very pleased to finally see a turtle. We also had a fairly big shark, whizz past us at great speed, usually they are just cruising by. That made me a little wary, especially when this Longfin Batfish followed us virtually the whole time we were in the water, when I looked back every now and again to check on the shark, the Batfish was right behind us!

Rowan went into the village to give the grandpa his sparks plugs that we bought for him in town, he was overjoyed, couldn’t believe it. He had paddled out to us the other day asking if we had any spare spark plugs as his had died, which meant he could not get into town to buy new ones. Rowan also took some plasters and medication for one of the kids who had a bad sore on his foot.