Camera woes

Well, we have bad news on the camera front. I dropped the camera yesterday,
and broke the lens. It was our work-horse lens. The go-anywhere, wide range,
kind of lens. We now have only our super zoom lens. Oh dear. Needless to
say, the captain has relieved me from camera duty. And, if that wasn't
enough. Our little computer does not seem to want to read our SD cards. So
even though I can still take photos with our little camera, I can't seem to
upload them onto our the computer. Bleh. So...that is a long way of
saying...we have no photos for today's blog.

SO... In your mind's eye. Imagine. Cereleun blue lagoon. Lots of wee
fishies. Locals paddling their va'a (outrigger canoes) through the
anchorage. Oh yeah...about 5 charter boats that have anchored within 100 ft
of us. REALLY? In this HUGE space. Oh well. It normally wouldn't be so bad.
But since some french guy made a joke to John yesterday about Canadians who
only speak one language, our intrepid captain is pretty ticked off by anyone
hailing from the land of wine and cheese. In fact, John tells me that he
responded with a bit of german, with a touch of international sign language
to amp up the classiness factor.

On a side note, my french is getting better. I seem to be able to have a
very basic conversation, and ask for the things we need. Sadly, when the
locals answer me too quickly and I give myself away with that look of *DUH*
on my face, they usually switch to english, foiling any hopes I may have had
to use them as my practice victims. Even though we're almost moving on from
this french-speaking country, I continue to torture John with my daily
morning podcast of coffee break french.

We continue our leisurely circumnavigation of this island. We have noticed
that huge resorts have sprung up here in recent years...since the
publication of our guide books. Sadly, most of them are almost empty, as
tourism numbers are very depressed. The tour boats we see are almost private
cruises, and huge resorts have only a couple people on the beach or lounging
on their lagoon balconies.

Yet, we still revel in our cleverness in being able to anchor in a beautiful
lagoon, shared with a huge resort hotel, and enjoy the same snorkelling and
swimming, yet escape from the $500/night price tag.

We are currently anchored in about 12 feet of water at 016 31.98S, 151
42.32W.