Nuie is four times bigger than Rarotonga, with a circumference of around 65k. I’m just going to put a nice photo in here which I found when fact checking that circumference data.
The population is a measly 1,600. I know that in Iceland, with a population 200 times larger, they have a local version of Tinder that ensures the person you are considering smashing isn’t related to you. Do they have the same here? Or actually, surely you’ve already met everyone on the island already? My high school in Auckland had the same number of people in it (and I never found a single boyfriend there). Wack (or, that is hard to comprehend). 46% of the population don’t even speak English, only the local language. What an amazing life those people must lead. A small but I imagine fairly untroubled one (thinking that through, it’s a very patronizing comment to make – but I hope it’s true nonetheless). It’s a very religious society, thanks to white missionaries hundreds of years ago (whose own societies are now becoming increasingly secular*). I’m guessing this helps protect against random hook ups with undisclosed cousins. It’s Sunday today, and all the shops are shut.
There is no cell phone coverage here, for those of us with NZ cellphones, which is quite liberating. I do feel sorry for all those people trying to get hold of the on call orthopaedic registrar without success, though. We have WiFi but it’s slow enough to be very painful. I’m just getting tantalizing glimpses of the cricket and no more. A good time to catch up on my reading (just finished a Margery Allingham book from the golden age of detective fiction, and am now going to start The Hogfather by Terry Pratchett. A fairly representative sample of my reading patterns. )
* “sike!” as my daughter would say