By Grant
In mid April, while Delphine and the girls were in Japan, we finished all the eggs on board. I wasn’t too fazed as I knew I could just pick some up in supermarkets in Raiatea. So far we haven’t had problem buying eggs in the Society Islands.
Whenever I went onshore, I would go to supermarkets and the replies were always ‘sorry, no eggs’. I’ve been kiting like a maniac and when I finished I just craved bacon and eggs!
Almost two weeks went by and there were still no eggs. Now we were feeling a bit desperate. Aside from missing eggs for breakfast, we also had to provision for our upcoming long passage. How could we survive without eggs?
We had to leave Raiatea to sail to Bora Bora to see our dear friends (Francesco and Emilie) on Kissanga. Kissanga has been in French Polynesia for almost two years and Francesco and Emilie are our local guides. They seem to know everybody and can solve most problems. So we recruited their help in our quest for eggs. They told us that they were also out of eggs. Resourceful as always, Emilie contacted her friends in Tahiti to see if they can air freight some eggs over to Bora Bora. Excellent idea! But it appeared supermarkets in Tahiti were also out of eggs! She called up Morton, our dear ‘Zeus, the egg man’ in Toau. Even a chicken farmer couldn’t send us eggs due to shortage of chicken feed and his chickens weren’t producing enough eggs.
At that moment we realized the problem was serious.
So we went to the two supermarkets on Bora Bora, SuperU and Chun Lee to inquire. One person said ‘No eggs’ and another one at SuperU said ‘come back tomorrow. Supply ship is coming tomorrow’.
Early the next morning, Delphine and I were on the sole mission of buying eggs. We even saw the blue supply ship coming through the pass. We arrived at SuperU at 9am. SuperU is an old, rundown supermarket with half empty shelves. Delphine went inside to provision for our passage while I waited at the entrance to check for the delivery truck’s arrival. We also asked different staff with English and broken French using google translate to see when the eggs were arriving. As usual, we got an array of answers. ‘No eggs,’ ‘Don’t know when,’ ‘supply ship didn’t come yet,’ ‘maybe in an hour. around 10am’.
10am came and passed and still no eggs. We waited and waited…. 11am…. 12pm… still no eggs. Delphine kept filling up the shopping trolley as she kept going up and down the aisles. Mosquitos were plenty inside the store.
Three and a half hours have gone by and we were getting hungry. I found another lady who spoke some English and told her of our quest. I think she felt sorry for us and went to the back store room to check. She came back out and waved us to the back delivery area. Someone was pushing out a trolley full of cardboard boxes where we found beautiful precious boxes of eggs. I got 10 boxes… and Delphine got 10 more. 240 eggs!
We finally left the supermarket with our eggs after four hours wait. We kept ten boxes and gave away 10 to other cruisers boats. You should see the look on their faces. It’s like receiving gold.
The very next morning we had the most scrumptious breakfast of eggs, bacon and hash brown. Such happiness.
The wait was worth it.