Ok. Some news.
I pretty much have been holed up in my hotel the last two days. Other than a trip to Apia on Saturday and today, I’ve just read and tried to recover.
I think the boils have stopped spreading. Now it’s just scabs and sores. I think my attempt at bandaging it made it worse because the area underneath where I had the tape now looks like a wound. Taking the tape off hurt more than getting my tattoo.
Thankfully, I had a very large book “Ancestors Tale” by Richard Dawkins to read.
I went to the Tokelau Apia Liason office today to see if it was possible to visit Tokelau. There is a boat leaving on the 23rd, which they said was booked (actually, I think there was a spot left on the form). I can get on the July 4th boat, which I think I’ll try to do.
I’ll try and take the time from now until July 4 to visit American Samoa, Tonga, and Niue…and actually, see more of Samoa than my hotel room.
I’m excited about being able to go to Tokelau. I can’t explain it, but going to Tokelau is one of the things I’ve really been looking forward to on the trip.
My guess is that most of you have never heard of Tokelau. There is a good reason for that. Of the ‘countries’ of the world (I use the term country loosely. Click on the link in the scorecard window on the left to see why) Tokelau is one of the smallest and one of the hardest to get to. Tokelau only has about 1,500 people living on three atolls. There are more Tokelauians living in New Zealand and elsewhere than living in Tokelau proper.
There are no flights to Tokelau. None of the atolls are big enough for a landing strip. No seaplanes fly to Tokelau. The only way to get there is a ship from Apia which leaves about once every two weeks.
Tokelau is technically a “non-self-governing colonial territory of New Zealand”. They took a vote last year on becoming a territory in Free Association with New Zealand but didn’t get the 2/3 required.
Tokelau also has their own top-level domain name: .tk. You can get a .tk domain name for free at www.dot.tk. I have www.everything-everywhere.tk. Actually, click on that link if you can. You need to have 25 visits a month to keep it active. You can make your .tk domain name direct to things like eBay auctions and MySpace pages. Money from the .tk domains go to help provide internet access to Tokelau. Believe it or not, they have broadband.
I suppose one of the reasons I want to go to Tokelau so much is precisely because it is so isolated. So far on my trip, most of the places I’ve been have been big tourist destinations (Rarotonga, New Zealand, Tahiti, Fjij, Hawaii). Tokelau is about as far from that as you can get.
To give you an idea of how few people go to Tokelau, this is the list of ‘places’ from the most traveled people website. These are people who make me look like a homebody. Of the close to 3,000 people registered, who have collectively been to every speck of land on the planet, only 15 have been to Tokelau.
Going to Tokelau would definitely be a feather in my travel cap. They are also supposed to have some of the best weavers in the world.