Praise be to the god of fresh linen! Praise be to Alda, Ipu’s wife, who kindly devoted her afternoon to running her small laundry machine in our service!

We hung the clothes to dry on the “beach” in front of the house, Aldebaran out front. Not a shabby view. Alda’s super cute chubby grandson walked around inspecting our work.

Arguably, laundry is one of the most difficult parts of cruising French Polynesia. IF you can find someone to do it, laundry usually costs $10-20 per (small) load. Is that fluff and folded? No way, dry your own clothes! It costs a small fortune here (the complete opposite of Central America, which is laundry utopia).

To subsidize this cost, we’ve been known to trade rum for laundry, which is also over priced in these islands. Lucky for us, we still have a few cases of wholesale priced rum from Ecuador. But not always are laundry owners drinkers.

Once we were so desperate we paid $20 per load and still had to hand wash because the machine was so pathetic. So the eight loads of quality laundry that Alda did for us was an enormous gift!

This was a major relief to the “culture shock” that Sabrina was experiencing upon return to the boat… which always smells, uh… stale compared to fine laundered clothes at mom’s house. Most certainly helps smooth out the reintegration to boat life!

Fortunately Sabrina brought back perfume from US, which is highly coveted by the local ladies, and she gifted these to a very happy Alda.