Our trip to Franklin's village began with Eliana's first ship ride... she did extremely well on the ride. She was very content to just sit with her koko'o (Grandma) or sleep. Our three and a half hour ship ride was followed by a ride from the port town of Auki up to Franklin's village near Malu'u. The trip is only 85 km, but it has usually taken us between 8-10 hours to make the journey because the road is so bad. We had heard rumors of improvements, but were waiting to see how it would go ourselves. I am pleased to report that our journey only took 4 hours, and that includes all the times our truck had to stop to pick up or drop people off. Yay!
The road we travel on basically goes along the edge of the island. Most of the time the road looks like the picture above (sometimes with hills and sometimes with potholes... occasionally you go through a village). Toward the end of our journey, we ended up driving on a beach of sorts... the high tides have now washed the old road away... Franklin says that coming back one thing he has noticed is that the sea level has risen.
When we were 3km from home our truck stopped. The driver said we couldn't go any further because of the high tides blocking the road. He thought we'd have to wait 3 hours before continuing. Fortunately, Franklin saw a HiLux (pickup) across the water and we were able to transfer our items into that truck (because we could walk across the little bridge, but a big 3 ton truck couldn't cross it) and get home. There was quite a crowd waiting for us when we arrived. This is the little rest hut next to the road filled with just a few of our family members. :)
Next post: Village activities. :) It takes so long to upload pics, though, I don't know when that will happen.
Our trip to Franklin's village began with Eliana's first ship ride... she did extremely well on the ride. She was very content to just sit with her koko'o (Grandma) or sleep. Our three and a half hour ship ride was followed by a ride from the port town of Auki up to Franklin's village near Malu'u. The trip is only 85 km, but it has usually taken us between 8-10 hours to make the journey because the road is so bad. We had heard rumors of improvements, but were waiting to see how it would go ourselves. I am pleased to report that our journey only took 4 hours, and that includes all the times our truck had to stop to pick up or drop people off. Yay!
The road we travel on basically goes along the edge of the island. Most of the time the road looks like the picture above (sometimes with hills and sometimes with potholes... occasionally you go through a village). Toward the end of our journey, we ended up driving on a beach of sorts... the high tides have now washed the old road away... Franklin says that coming back one thing he has noticed is that the sea level has risen.
When we were 3km from home our truck stopped. The driver said we couldn't go any further because of the high tides blocking the road. He thought we'd have to wait 3 hours before continuing. Fortunately, Franklin saw a HiLux (pickup) across the water and we were able to transfer our items into that truck (because we could walk across the little bridge, but a big 3 ton truck couldn't cross it) and get home. There was quite a crowd waiting for us when we arrived. This is the little rest hut next to the road filled with just a few of our family members. :)
Next post: Village activities. :) It takes so long to upload pics, though, I don't know when that will happen.
2 comments:
The roads sound worse that BD. Looks kind of like BD with all the coconut trees.
Hanna
It's great to hear what is going with you guys!! I miss having you guys around, but that's the way life goes, huh. I am just glad that you are doing great and seem to be enjoying being back where you love! Take care guys and continue doing your great work!!
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