The murderer is always the gardener

So we say in German. It may not be entirely correct this time (although we really have started a vegetable garden), but we do have a casualty to mourn. Brian´s centipede Molly found an untimely death only one day after she had moved into her display box together with geckos and cockroaches meant to be food. The next morning we found everything dead in the box - apart from the cockroaches. Me as a layperson immediately attributed this tragedy to the tank having no ventilation holes. Brian in turn is of the opinion that the cockroaches poisoned Molly. Maybe with a Gin Tonic in the library, Cluedo style...
However, Molly was replaced pretty soon by a new companion of ours by the name of Weener. Weener is a little tomcat that adopted us a few days ago and since the first feed has refused to leave again. He is kind enough to help our dog Micky overcome her laziness by letting her chase after him. I am just not so sure if Micky appreciates this generous gesture.

We finally had the chance to visit one of the nicest little islands down south called Uiha. An Austrian friend of ours lives there, but we never made it down there. So when a fellow countryman of his wished to be taken to the island, we were more than happy to deliver and explore the place a bit ourselves. Uiha only has two villages and is famous to deliver the best fish in entire Tonga, the fishermen from there being highly skilled. It is a very sleepy place (not really surprising), with only one school and one little shop, but the 6 churches (3 of them Mormon) make up for this lack of institutions and entertainment.

 Some more reason to celebrate was that we had our first anniversary with Fins 'n' Flukes and that - just in time for that - Brian´s winning photo of the Humpback Whale calf got published in the Dive New Zealand magazine and on their website in the advanced section. It is still going to be another few months until the whales will be back here, but we wanted to post the following video now sou you can see what are looking forward to from July on:



In the meantime we are preparing for cyclone Rene that is supposed to hit Tonga on Sunday or Monday. With predicted winds of up to 90 knots this could really be a bad one and we will start making everything steadfast this afternoon. Keep your fingers crossed that we´ll get out of this with just a black eye.