On-the-Road Tales

My hopes of fluffly, downey soft, freshly laundered clothes were dashed this morning after a trip to reception. No machines but there was a “laundromat” down the road and they would swing by and pick up your clothes – sounded to good to be true. And it was when Tina handed me the price sheet. $7.50 per item to wash, $7.50 per item to dry but hey – only $3.50 per piece to iron! Are you kidding me? This place must be kept in business by the idiots renting the bungalows for 1/2 grand a night.

So I headed to Tem, the groundskeeper, got myself a bucket and broke out the camp soap. You do not realize laundry is a luxury until you are on week three of salty, sun cream, sweat infused clothes sporadically caked with earthen materials and dusted with a fine layer of volcanic soot. Sink scrubbing and bucket washing just do not have the same effect as a Maytag. Additionally – nothing ever really dried properly so there was a faint musty smell lingering. Yep – life on the road. All those ‘living vicariously’, make sure you try that at home to get a real sense of nomadic life! Still, just an observation, not a complaint. Images of Peruvians washing their clothes in rivers and laying them on the banks to dry are still fresh in my mind and I know machine washing is a luxury.

The swede and I swam out to a “motu” or small island with some snorkel gear and checked out wildly coloured coral and fish along the way. The waters in french polynesia are virtually your own personal aquarium with exotic plants and animals are around. Out on the island, there was an abandoned cabana. My new friend filled me in on some of the politics. Apparently, there was once a Club Med on Mo’orea. The property was owned by an old woman and rented to the resort since non-locals could not own property on the island. When she passed away, it was divided among various relatives and offspring. At some point, when the club med lease came up, the owners got greedy and demanded a huge increase in rent from the super resort chain (probably assuming they would never jeopardize their popular property). Well, Club Med called the bluff and pulled up stakes to establish on another island where they would not be strong armed into more money. Everything that could be removed was – roofs, piers, courts. They left behind hundreds of cabins which have since fallen into disrepair. We journeyed to go check it out and it was a pitiful sight. In some cases, only the wall safes remained standing in the middle of the woods. It seems like such a waste, shame something else could not have been done with the place.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 15th, 2007 at 11:56 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.