WWII Tour

I have to start this and tell you about some poor guy in Australia that is now going to have a huge phone bill.  It cost about $1 AUD a minute to call here, and he called the shop with a wrong number and spoke for twenty minutes.  First our office manager answered the phone, and neither of them could understand each other, so I got the phone.  He wanted a hotel in Honiara, and I told him the wrong number.  I looked up the number he needed, and gave it to him.  He then asked where I was from, as I did not sound like a Solomon Islander. I told him from Atlanta Ga, and he asked where that was in the Solomons.  Then he asked about why I was here etc, nice guy, but expensive call for a wrong number.

Yesterday I had a bit of a day off from diving, I had been teaching a lot of open water students, and been out on the boats for the last five days training people.  We have a film guy here making a promotional movie, and we needed to take him around the WWII stuff in the area, so you might see me in it!  It was a nice day, but a long one as it involved driving around for about eight hours to see all of the things you would usually do over a few days.  I got to see some stuff I had not seen before, and it was nice just having a few people in the boat, running fast as the weather was nice. 

In the photos you will see some local guy with sails in there dug out canoes, there was a strong westerly wind so they must have decided to start going home, and made sails out of palm leaves propped up in their canoe, they were going quite fast and did not need to paddle, only steer.  They were going from Rendova to Renoga, which is probably about 45 miles, a long trip, that would take 2-3 days.  When people do things like that here, they don't take much with them, they fish for food, drink coconuts, and live off the small islands.  And we think driving a car without cruise control for a few hours is hard, these people are defiantly tough.

Luke