Day 124 Chores

Getting ready to go
I spent the day doing a myriad of chores in preparation for our departure on Thursday.
The Caretakers - As noted in an earlier blog, the Australian catamaran Eaio had stopped in Suwarow Island in the Northern Cooks and noted that the caretakers who live on the island needed supplies. They urged us to bring the needed items from Rarotonga.
Previously, I had contacted the Department of Environmental Services who employs the caretakers but I had not heard from them so this morning I walked to the other end of town and met with Vavia Vavia the acting director. He assured me that they would provide us with the list of items requested by the caretakers. This was mostly fairly basic stuff like cooking oil, sugar, flour, etc. Vavia committed to have the items delivered to the boat before we left.
Internet - I had purchased a card from Cook Telecom that supposedly would allow me to get wireless Internet at the boat. The card had worked at first but on Friday it ceased working and I wanted to update the blog and post some more pictures before we left. I went back to the Telecom office and spent 40 minutes while the fafine behind the counter struggled to make it work. Between calling the support line and throwing occasional "hissy fits" he/she got the card working.
I spent the next two and a half hours posting text and uploading pictures. This latter task was interrupted frequently by a loss of the signal. I am beginning to suspect that there is something wrong with the wireless card in my computer since Andy did not have any such problems using Molly's computer from the boat.
As I was about finished from fatigue and hunger a woman walked by and asked me if the picture on my screen was from a sail boat. When I explained our trip she summoned her husband and they invited me to join them for lunch to talk more about it.
Peter and Felicity are from a suburb of Melbourne, Australia. He is a lawyer and she is an artist having just completed her PhD in fine arts. They are well travelled and Peter is a sailor so he was very interested in hearing the details of the Puddle Jump. They asked what things I had done on the island and I mentioned that I planned to do the cross-island hike the next day so we arranged to meet at the boat at 10 and go together.
I did a little shopping including groceries but have been unable to find coffee filters in any of the stores. We are down to the last few and Molly brought some wonderful Peet's coffee when she arrived so I may be relegated to drinking "cowboy coffee" for the next two weeks until we get to Pago Pago and I can find some in the store. If anyone has any ideas of how to get good coffee from ground coffee and no filters, I am all ears.
Andy, Kurt and I ended the day at the pizza place. Andy has a very bad staph infection in his leg and can barely walk. He is now taking amoxycilin and changing ugly bandages a couple of times a day. Those of us who have gone through that sympathize.