On Monday we called immigration to see if the permits for the outer islands are ready and where told we can come and pick them up but should bring all boat documents along. (At the end we only needed the passports.)<\/p>\n
Immigration has it’s main office in Bairiki, the real capital city or I better say capital village. In Bairiki, is the residence of the president, the parliament, the ministries, the High Commissions of NZ and AUS. In between these two is the Chinese Embassy. In contrasts to the High Commissions of NZ and AUS, the Chinese Embassy has barbed wire on top of the high walls. The NZ High Commissions’ walls are painted with animals; this gives a pretty friendly impression, which I like.<\/p>\n
To reach Bairiki we needed to take a bus for a 7 km ride over the Nippon Causeway. This road is given to Kiribatis by the “People of Japan”, as the memorial plates always say. A term I like. It’s a full Japan’s system because the cars have to pay for the only land connections between parts of water surrounded islets of the Tarawa atoll. Such a road would also be toll road in Japan.<\/p>\n
The bus ride costs AUD 1.10 one way, which I consider to be fair for the local people.<\/p>\n
The staff in the immigration office was, as always in Kiribatis, pretty friendly and helpful. In a reasonable time we got the permissions for the outer islands, Abaiang, Butaritari, and Abemana. And we got the information that we need to get stamps from customs in Betio.<\/p>\n
We walked around in Bairiki to see what’s the difference to Betio. In Bairiki we saw housing projects with solid walls and two floors. Two floors because lands is not much available. These houses look good. However, it needs to be known how cool they are inside and how good they can withstand tropical depressions and seldom so, cyclones.<\/p>\n
Most of properties appeared cleaner than in Betio, but still lots of garbage lies around.<\/p>\n
“Merry Christmas” was written on a huge inflatable Santa Claus figure. It felt strange to me to see this Christmas element in the heat of Kiribati, just a degree north of the equator. I still associate Christmas with cold weather and sometimes snow.<\/p>\n
A pretty big shop, a combination of food store, kitchen ware and appliances, clothes and hardware store pulled our attention. It is Chinese owned and run with combination of Chinese and local people.<\/p>\n
Immediately, a washing machine was attracting me. The logo appeared like the MIELE logo, but it was MEILE. The technology was pretty old.<\/p>\n
Tobi looked for replacement of lost lures, but they did not have what he wanted.<\/p>\n
In another shop, called a “mall” I got rechargeable batteries and refills for my FM Bird ball pen.<\/p>\n
At the end we looked at the wharf. Once a little harbor with a slip for small boats, a cyclone ripped down the walls with \u1e5bemnants just around water level. Youngsters played football with two very small goal. As one goal was just at the upper end of the slip. This means pretty often someone had to go in the water to get the ball. In the heat of Kiribati, this was a moment to cool down and nobody cares the wet clothes.<\/p>\n
Back to Betio, with the bus again, we went straight to the customs office to get the necessary stamp. After we explained what we need, we were told that another customs’ office is in charge of these permits. We walked to this other office and were told we need to go to other office. Verification of the location of the second “other office” on my OsmAnd off- line map showed that we just come from this very office. I asked the officer to please call the other office and explain that they have to stamp the document. He did so and we walked back. When we opened the door, everybody was expecting us with apologies. A lady, who took charge, told us that the reason was the broken printer in the other office. We waited maybe 20 min, then we got our documents. Instead of stamping the documents issued by immigration, customs issued documents with the same content and stamped it….<\/p>\n
With big smiles, and many thanks we left happily with all the documents we need for the outer islands.<\/p>\n
The copra processing plant was just next door to customs so we decided to ask if we can see the production. As it was already late on the afternoon and the production was going down, we were asked to come back the next day.<\/p>\n
We did and came back the next day and the factory manager gave us a tour. At the beginning of the process there are the bags with copra, the content of a fully ripened coconut, dried in sunlight and air. The copra is made at the outer islands, where it is the main source of income. I remember the price being paid for copra is a fair one; it’s a bit more than I tought. A few men empty the bags into a kind of big funnel from where the copra is transported into a height of about 5 m. From their it comes down again by passing through a shredder. Up again into several presses. At the end they get 20 t \/ day of unrefined coconuts oil. It’s buffered in a huge tank of 1000 – 1500 t of this oil. Shipping abroad, mostly China, is the unrefined oil in flexitanks for 20 t. These flexitanks are placed in a container before being filled.
\nA small amount is refined in the factory to produce cooking oil, body oil. Another part of the unrefined oil is used to produce soap for the Kiribati market. At the end, we both got a bottle of body oil and a big slap of soap, good maybe for a year. It was an interesting tour with good explanations by a very friendly plant manager.<\/p>\n
After we left the copra processing the first day, we went back to the tender were we had four 20 l diesel jerry cans and drove into the harbor corner only less than 100 m from the fuel station. It was a bit tricky because there were 2 vessel tied up and loading and unloading freight for the outer islands. We passed under their docking lines and could tie up the tender at one of the lines and walk up the stairs.
\nWith the jerry cans filled with diesel we returned the same way to tender and made it back to MaRe. So we got the first 80 l into the tank.<\/p>\n
On Monday we also asked at the fish factory if we can get potable water. We referred to an information from sailors that we can get free water from the factory. The prices they mentioned fluctuated a lot. 500 l for 50 AUD was the agreement. A fair price and lower than at other prices.<\/p>\n
Wednesday was the great refill day. First again 80 l diesel, than water. For water I have only two 25 l emergency jerry cans on board. So we needed to shuttle forth and back.<\/p>\n
Kids are playing around the only ladder we needed to dock MaRe’s tender to reach the fish factory.<\/p>\n
Kids jumped into water from the pier, which height fluctuates by the 2 m tide difference. Some of the kids made even a somersault backwards into the water. Some other tried to catch small, 10 – 15 cm long fishes using just a line with a hook. As a bite they used a small piece of meat from a bigger fish, which was lying in the dust of the street. The shocking thing was that they bit a piece of this fish with their teeth, chewed it and fixed it on the hook.<\/p>\n
Another boy got on of these small fishes, bit off the head, and ate the raw fish meat from the back of the about 15 cm long fish while swimming in the water and holding to a rope of the vessel also loading and unloading goods for and from the outer islands.<\/p>\n
To lower the filled jerry cans into the tender we had to use a line. It would not have been possible to bring down a 25 kg jerry can on the metal ladder.<\/p>\n
Some times a man standing by gave us a hand and the kids in the water gave the tender a push to get it in the right position. A very friendly together around the metal ladder they needed to get out of the water and we needed it to get out and in the tender.<\/p>\n
With a late lunch break we did 5 water runs the same day. Exhausted we stopped with 4 water runs left for the next day.<\/p>\n
We also did laundry because we had a good supply of fresh water.<\/p>\n
The next day 4 more water runs, laundry and I needed to complete my routing into the Abaiang and Butaritari Atolls. This was not easy. I’m write more about this task in another narration.<\/p>\n
On the last day Tobi went shopping for fresh food, but the supermarkets didn’t have much. Mostly imported, thus expensive fruits. A local market place for mainly local produce exist surely somewhere but we didn’t know. We also wonder what kind of local fruits and vegetables are grown on such a densely populated island.<\/p>\n
I got one more jerry can of fresh water, and worked on preparations for next days departure to Abaiang.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Monday we called immigration to see if the permits for the outer islands are ready and where told we can come and pick them up but should bring all boat documents along. (At the end we only needed the passports.) Immigration has it’s main office in Bairiki, the real capital city or I better […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-16"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1558\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sosx.de\/cat-mare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}