After 5 days at sea, we finally arrived at the tiny island of St. Helena - and still 2 days from Namibia and the coast of Africa! It looks like a barren, rocky island with sheer stone cliffs. The ship had to anchor out and we tendered in; there was a bit of a swell so getting on and off the tenders was challenging, but we made it in. The captain said that some calls they're not able to send the tenders down.
The tour of the island was, surprisingly, quite nice. The current population is 3,800 people - and dropping. They are losing a lot of their young people when they graduate from high school and then go to other islands for work. St. Helena is a British dependency, or colony, so they do receive support from England. It's still an isolated existence - no airport, etc. The mail comes by boat from So. Africa or the Falkland Islands -- and arrives every two weeks! If someone is seriously ill and the hospital on the island (50 beds, 4 doctors) can't handle it, they have to go by boat to Cape Town, So. Africa -- 4-5 days at sea!
When Napoleon was finally defeated, he was exiled here to spend the rest of his life. We saw the home he lived in - rather nice, actually. When he died,he was buried here, but years later, the body was exhumed and taken back to France for burial. The original tomb is still here.
The main part of town itself looks like a little English village. It's not a wealthy community, so the people really didn't have the money to tear down the older buildings and put up new ones - kind of a reverse urban development, but it preserved the older sections.
The natives are a mix of Portuguese, Africans and Anglos, but English is the official (and only) language. There are 7 churches on the island - and 10 pubs! (Always good to know the ratio!) After the tours, in mid-afternoon, a group of children from the middle schools came on board to sing for us. We had about an hour performance, all songs written about their island home. It was really pleasant.
We now sail to Namibia for a day's visit (don't know if Brad and Angelina will be there to meet us - ha ha!) I'm scheduled to do a ride through the sand dunes by 4-wheel jeep -- Annie's doing a bit more stable bus tour to one of the towns outside of Walvis Bay were we dock. We'll update after that adventure!
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