We leave St. Helena on the RMS

On Monday, March 12, there was, as there always is, great excitement as the RMS St. Helena arrived from Capetown bringing returning saints, tourists, workers from the UK and supplies and shipments of all kinds, including a small bus.  Think "Wells Fargo Wagon" from The Music Man! There will be a rush to buy meat and fresh vegetables before they run out and stores resort to the usual choice of potatoes, onions and rather dejected carrots.  We drove to the southwestern part of the island and climbed High Hill - a steep but manageable trail that climbs 150 m to 707 m.  We finally broke out the video camera, made a video of driving down the steep and narrow Ladder Hill road to Jamestown.  Later, Jack monitored the video camera while Meg interviewed her cousin Caroline about growing up in England and life on St. Helena.  It will be a gift to her son, daughter and grandchildren.  A couple of financial notes:  petrol (gasoline for you Yankees) costs £1.52 per liter which is $8.92 per US gallon.  We heard an ad (local radio is often more like someone reading the newspaper;  in fact, the announcer IS reading the paper!) for a junior government statistician job paying a salary of £5,000 per year, and saw an ad for an accountant at the Bank of St. Helena (the only bank, with only one branch) paying a salary of £12,000 per year.  This is not to say that the cost of living on St. Helena is low.  Food prices seem about the same as the UK and petrol is higher.  Tuesday, March 13, was our last full day on the island.  We spent time in the museum which has at least something on every aspect of St. Helena history and life.  We returned the Toyota 4WD to Hensel who seemed to want to be an intermediary between us and whoever owns the vehicle.  We drove 337 km in 12 days.  We never saw any paperwork nor signed any agreement for the vehicle!  It was a large, heavy and unwieldy vehicle, not one we would have had for choice, but it did enable us to go on roads and tracks we could not otherwise have travelled. We had a final dinner with our cousin Caroline and Hensel with much discussion of the large, if disorganized, collection of family photos and documents that Caroline inherited from her father.  On Wednesday, March 14, we delivered our cabin baggage to the customs house at the requested time of 7 am.  It cannot be a less formal procedure.  One simply hands one's bag to a saint who takes it into the shed that serves as a customs house.  They do put the bags through a scanner (X-ray?) however.  We returned at the requested time of 10 am, said fond farewells to Caroline, Hensel, Nicole and Dax, all of whom came to see us off.  Then, again with minimal formality, there is a brief passport check.  One dons a lifejacket, steps into a ferry boat (at just the moment when the height of the boat rising on the swell matches the height of the dock, with two deckhands there to help), motors out to the RMS St. Helena, makes that step again onto a pontoon tied to the RMS and climbs the steep ladder steps on the side of the RMS.  Shortly before noon the RMS raised anchor, set "sail" for Ascension and the island of St. Helena rapidly disappeared into a watery haze hanging over the South Atlantic.