Niue 2

The next day Sunday – and that means: everything is closed (except a few restaurants) but Niue-ans go to church. So no snorkelling or diving. 😉 Since I didn’t bring a skirt (and a fancy hat) I couldn’t go to church but we didn’t think about that anyway. First of all I got up early and we already had some whale action during breakfast. On the first pic: do you see the bird with a big insect in his pecker?

We went on an island tour with our group. What Niue really impressed me with is that even though it is a small, remote island they have signs at spots of tourist interest. And if you want to go down to water level you usually have to climb down the rocks. But they have created paths with steps and handholds. Sometimes through caves with stalaktites. So even for me it usually was possible to walk down to water level. In addition – in a lot of the parking lots for these places there are toilets. They are not fancy but in my oppinion that is not necessary. I personally think that it is very unusual for that small island to have so many public restrooms. Go to very touristy areas and often you don’t find any public restrooms at all. So Niue does have my admiration for that. You can see everywhere that the island is limestone. There are fossils everywhere. No rivers on the island as the water usually goes down through the limestone.

While driving around the island I noticed that there were a lot of graves along the street. Sometimes in front of abandoned houses so it was obvious that the inhabitats were no longer alive. The graves were interesting and telling a very diffent culture than we have. Often there were chairs next to them, illumination around them and unusual objects placed on the graves. Like a bottle of Jonny Walker, other bottles, medals – basically all kinds of stuff. Very unusual…

Towards the end of our tour we stopped at the Washaway cafe. It is very unusal because everything is based on trust there. You have to go behind the bar yourself to get your drink. There is a book and you have to write down what you got. When you leave you just pay what you have written down. But seems to work… 🙂