I have time till the 11:30 ferry, so I take another wander around town. Traveling around Indonesia and the Philippines and other places I, with my big nose, beard, and 10 inches taller than everybody else, am obviously an outsider. Here, with my turquoise gore tex jacket and North Face pants, I stand out no less. No matter, I set off on the rough ATV trail that is the village’s only road.

The houses are scattered about the hills like corn tossed to pigeons. They're not as picturesque as those in the tourist brochures, most are quite ordinary, with vinyl siding, of the uninspiring colours available from Home Hardware. Some have a wild yard, the grass uncut, but most would fit well enough in any suburb, with trees and flower beds. Several have a sign out front: " Nanny and Poppy's house. Sleepovers, hugs and kisses, milk and cookies". Another sign declares "2020, Stay Home Year", a take on the tourist board's 2000 "Come Home Year". 

There are two churches in town, one Anglican, one Roman Catholic.  The RC one is deserted,  the door boarded up, the windows broken.  I look inside and the ceiling has caved in, though the statues of Jesus and Mary remain as they were. The cemetery is overgrown, the gravestones barely visible. Back of the village lies the Anglican cemetery. Different eras have different styles of gravestones and here, in the current era, gravestones may feature an engraved picture of the deceased,  a picture of a  truck, a lobster trap, a sewing machine, a dog. It may be accompanied by a sappy poem, such as you would find in a Hallmark greeting card. This scares me, a life reduced to this. My landlady happens by. She points out a new grave, 3 weeks old. It's for a 58 year old lady but "she was more a man than a woman, lobstering and working the (fish) farms." Her wreath was made of spruce boughs,  with bits of rope and fish net intertwined, and scallop and lobster shells attached. I look around a few minutes more before the blackflies chase me off. 

I go back to my room and have a last cup of coffee before the ferry comes. My landlady comes by to clean up as she has another guest arriving on the ferry I'll be leaving on. We chat as she works; mostly she gossips and complains, but in a good-natured way. It's fun. 

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