Food is great here, it’s not like Norfolk Island where there’s no local agriculture and everything is shipped in. Local food is fresh and reasonably priced. I’m obsessed with the local tomatoes versus the shipped in NZ ones, there is no competition.
The local ones are like grandma’s home grown jobs, at the risk of sounding like an advertisement, they are how tomatoes used to be. Bread from the local bakeries are super soft and processed but still fresh. Little expensive at $5 a loaf but we are on an island. Because we run a fairly vegan diet for our home meals excluding meat has kept our food budget down and we are trying to keep cooking as much in house as possible, its hard to shake that holiday feeling and eating out too much.
Today we started with another walk to get back into it after the mammoth effort on Saturday now that the legs are recovered. A quick hour and a half walk down across Muri and back with a pause at Le Bon Vivant café. Some great pastries and coffee in the middle of Muri, my almond croissant was pretty darn close to some of the pastries we had in New Caledonia. Nice. Good coffee too, I suspect they are supplied by Neil from over the road at Cook Island Coffee Company.
Once we get back, we find the boys editing some more of their high comedy footage. It doesn’t take long to convince them that a trip out to the Rarotongan for some snorkeling in the marine sanctuary in the bay there is a good idea. Cycling over there takes about 35 minutes and the weather is already starting to turn. An attempt to hit up Cocoputt mini golf is made but due to our lack of cash and their lack of card facilities we are fobbed off into the rain. At this point to salvage the day the only real option is a trip to Wigmore’s on the way back for lunch and one of their heavy ice-creams. A Wigmore’s ice-cream is one of the excellent value options, a single cone is a generous fist size at $2, a kiddies cone at $1 is virtually the same, a double scoop is tall and structurally unsound at $3. The triple scoop is offered at $4 but I don’t know what kind of lactose addicted maniac would be tempted by it. And it’s not some kind of “Streets” icy garbage as you might suspect, “Tip Top” classics all the way. For the non-dairy eaters they also miraculously had Nice Blocks (and a better Ceres Organics selection than you’d find in your local supermarket). Still, this is more of that holiday style eating out which we must avoid.
As the rain gets heavier, we accept our fate and head back to the house to hide out. Tom can have a nap today which will help his outlook on life.
