These people up and moved from LA to the South Pacific!

I accidentally came across this site today and it is very interesting. This family moved for a time, to the South Pacific. Here is their photo log and journal. It looks interesting in case any of you are interested.

check it out here

Hey Digitiki,
Nice find! I love the part about the defunct Sheraton: "The ruins of the resort are now covered in rapacious island vegetation creeping in from the jungle."
Great pictures too!
Aloha,
:tiki:

That was some great reading (had to waste a little time at work on a friday afternoon). It definitely makes me appreciate living where I do. Seems the simpler way of life comes at a price. I think I'll just escape to the islands at my tiki bar.

vw

I was bummed when they left, I haven't read anything about them since they decided to leave the island.

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=4881&forum=1

I think this is Mark F's web blog...
http://boingboing.net/index.html

This is their summary:

“[W]e were on a plane bound for Rarotonga. It was wonderful (no stress, living in a house next to the ocean and walking barefoot everywhere) and awful (the baby got antibiotic-resistant pneumonia and the hospital sucked, lice, tropical sores, ceaseless weeks of rain).

Four and a half months after that, we were back in Los Angeles. We bought a car (a neat Scion Xb) and a house the first week we got back. We lived at Carla's mother's house for two months.”

This is the specific page
http://boingboing.net/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=1&search=South+Pacific

[ Edited by: christiki295 on 2004-09-27 22:32 ]

I think this wonderful, dreamlike story is both encouraging as well as providing casue for lament.

It is encouraging becasue it confirms that there are still corners of the Earth in the South Pacific were a tranquil, easy life style not in the shadow of the newest resort exist.

I wonder if a happy medium could be available on an island like Molokai, or Kuai in the U.S. or on one of the other Cook or Fiji Islands.

A balance between proximity to medical & other facilities, yet still enough isolation and idyllic paradise.

Maybe also the time in one's life is before, or after, young children.

The lament is that,by their own admission, they now are completely unaffected by their journey and are now very much living the same LA lifestyle they so desparately sought to leave.

(The famed LA Band X became famous for a song about that very issue.)

When I was on Rarotonga I fell in love with the place, thought this is the life, and a part of me still believes it is. But I was warned by plenty of people who had moved there, that the reality is different in the long run.
I carried on my travels through most of the Island chains over 8mths and suffered most of the bad things (Tropical ulcers, extreme dehydration a suspected case of Dengue fever) but I loved every minute and can't wait to get back to some of the places.

[i]On 2004-09-28 10:24, cheekytiki wrote:

When I was on Rarotonga I fell in love with the place, thought this is the life, and a part of me still believes it is. But I was warned by plenty of people who had moved there, that the reality is different in the long run.

Do tell, how is "the reality different in the long run?"

Do you mean living there as opposed to at home or living there as opposed to vacationing as a tourist?

These arent my necessarily my views but those from what I gathered of people I met who had moved there.
I think the reality is that its a very small place thats very detatched from the rest of the world with the mentality that goes along with it. Everyone knows everyones business, there aren't the comforts you would expect at home and (as the Cook Island Moari admitted to me themselves) they are very lazy people.(I hope that offends no one as I have also met some very hard working Moaris as well). The rainy season when it pours every day for months and the Humidity is un bearable. But thats Island life things are done at a slow pace, but it can be infuriating if you are someone used to things being done right away.
People I met that had moved there were older and because of the lack of things to do and get done spent their time in the RSL club by the airport or drinking at the fishing club, two very Colonial style institutions. I suppose going to the beach or walking the cross Island track doesnt have the same appeal when you live there.
I only spent a month on Rarotonga and Aitutaki and then another month around some of the other even smallert Islands some of which had nothing more than a pearl farm and a boat every 2 weeks.
And as I said can't wait to go back, maybe for longer next time

On 2004-09-29 05:46, cheekytiki wrote:
I think the reality is that its a very small place thats very detatched from the rest of the world with the mentality that goes along with it. Everyone knows everyones business, there aren't the comforts you would expect at home and (as the Cook Island Moari admitted to me themselves) they are very lazy people.(I hope that offends no one as I have also met some very hard working Moaris as well). The rainy season when it pours every day for months and the Humidity is un bearable. But thats Island life things are done at a slow pace, but it can be infuriating if you are someone used to things being done right away.

Yeah, I did 6 great weeks on Barbados, researching for my dissertation. While I loved every minute of it (apart from the couple of minutes when one of the people I was interviewing grabbed me by the throat!) getting my tasks completed was incredibly difficult. The pace was incredibly slow, and everyone who had a job seemed to have a couple more pals hanging around just chatting.

By the end of the 6 weeks, I realised I was missing all sorts of weird stuff - mainly the kind of things that were good for the brain, like a decent newspaper.

I was offered a job out there on the jetskis and I sometimes wonder what life would have been like if I'd have taken it and not returned home to finish my degree. The reality is I probably would have stayed another month, caught the first cheap flight back and then begged for the place on my course back.

Trader Woody

On 2004-09-29 05:46, cheekytiki wrote:

Everyone knows everyones business, there aren't the comforts you would expect at home and (as the Cook Island Moari admitted to me themselves) they are very lazy people

That is indeed a different reality, which for those living a big city life, would take some resolve to make a decision to live life in a diametrically different manner.

May be that is why it attracts those older, who have had their share of a working lift and are ready to ease up.

I am not ready for that now, retirement to a place like that sounds very appealing.