When I was clearing in at the Customs office the other day I met a local guy named Johnny. We were in the small waiting room and within probably two minutes of chatting we discovered we’d both been to Palmerston Atoll. It’s not often that you meet anyone that has even heard of Palmerston, much less make friends with someone who has lived there for a few weeks. He drove me around the town, about a three minute circuit, and we said goodbye.

A couple days later we were walking around and ran into him again—it’s a very small island. He invited us to lunch to chat more about world travels. Turns out he had spent much of his youth off on fun adventures. Living in a tent in Alaska while building a log home, striking gold claims in the Yukon, living on Palmerston, fishing and living with the locals all over the South Pacific. Now he spends his days in a home at the edge of the bay on this small island.

During lunch he told us he had a car we could have while we were here and that he also had a rental bungalow that was ours as long as we wanted—with a washer. This was incredibly generous, and not only because we had just paid $28 to have one load of laundry done here on the island. You read that right. In this weather, where every trip in the dinghy is a salt water dousing, we would have a load of laundry a day. Even better, it gave us the chance to get out and see the island, and a place to spend our afternoons out of the wind and off our bouncing boat.

Ali and I have often talked about how, when the day comes that we settle down somewhere, we need a chunk of land for campers, or an extra room for fellow travelers—some way to pay back some of the kindnesses that have been given to us through the years. These unsolicited, chance meetings, and freely given gifts, are a big part of what make our travels so great.

We woke up one morning to find that our back anchor line had chafed through at the anchor. I don’t know how, but it’s been so rough I suppose anything could happen. I swam out to make an effort to find the anchor, but knew pretty much all along that it was gone. It’s almost certainly buried in the sand. Just swimming in these waters was nearly impossible with the current and waves blasting through. I tried to pull the anchor line out with me to attempt to mark roughly where the anchor should be, but I couldn’t even pull the line out straight. It just pulled in the current like I was trying to drag a parachute through the water.

Lunch time. At least half of our meals include a can of refried beans.

Cabin fever settling in for me and Ali, but none of it has any effect on the kids. To them, they’re home, and it doesn’t much matter if the weather is good, or bad, or whether we’ll get a weather window to move to the next place or not. We need to do a better job of emulating them.

It takes them about 10 minutes to collect 300 pieces of plastic garbage. Earth is a dump site. We give the kids 1 point for every piece of garbage they gather and they can earn $5, or a number of other rewards, for 450 points. They could break our bank account in a week walking around just one island. As an added bonus, when the bartender saw them going to throw the garbage away she gave them each a pineapple juice.

Ouest lost a tooth. Tradition requires the construction of a fairy house for the night’s visit.

Gathering supplies for their restaurant.

Ahh, fresh clean towels. Such luxury.

The east end lighthouse overlooks the nearby island of Cayman Brac.

While we were up there we met Fluff, the chicken who walked right up to us like we were old friends.

An attempt to make smores in solar ovens. It was a bit of a fail, but since smores are just as good warm as they are hot, there was no great disappointment.

Another day, another bag of plastic.

Everyone wanted to go see Fluff again the next day. I said, “What are the chances the chicken is going to come running over to see us again?” How silly of me. As we turned on to the deserted road, who was already walking towards us?