Sunday 23rd September.

They must get unruly customers in the Airport Hotel.


79 days to go.

A nice lie in til 0800, some breakfast and some lounging around until 1100. Tweety and I head off to Nemos’ place. We take our washing and both get them done. Work done we head off to the Airport Hotel for lunch. During lunch Nemo tells us about her Saturday. She went diving off the beach on the West of the Island, where we drove last Sunday. She walked off the beach and then swam a few meteres to a submarine. She spent the whole of the dive going in and out of the wrecked submarine.

After lunch we head off for our drive the length of the road to the East. This area of Guadalcanal is totally different to the West side. These are the plains. Most of the agriculture takes place here. There are also Palm plantations. Row after row of palm trees stretching a long way. They are used to produce Palm Oil, wonder if that is what they use in Palmolive?

I also found out that there are two types of Coconut Palms. The tall ones are the old natural ones. There are smaller hybrid ones. They were introduced to make collection easier. However they produce smaller Coconuts. The locals refer to these as "Colonial Coconuts"

We pass a few villages, people out walking everywhere. There are several rivers too. In most of them the local communities are either swimming or washing. Clothes or cars. They just drive the car into the river and wash it.

We get to the end of the road, well for us anyway. We do not attempt to go any further past a wide river bed. There is a bridge, but no road leading up to it. We return via the same road to Nemos house where we pick up the washing.

On the way back we experience some rain, not the expected heavy tropical downpour, just a shower. First rain we have seen here despite constant cloud cover.

Back to the Hotel. Tweety heads off to Dukes where the other 3 have gone. Tonight is Melbourne v Parramatta in the second Rugby League semi final. After the game finishes he takes the others to the prison and returns to the hotel. There appears to have been a lot more rain down Dukes way, after the reasonable drive there last night it was almost time to switch to 4 wheel drive. We have dinner in and a quiet night. Newcastle are playing tonight. There has been no internet access since Friday. I will have to wait until Monday.