"No more lobster, thank you," €we tell John, the main man here on Panasia Island. The locals have given us 14! "€They are special creatures that taste delicious but take many years to grow so we must not kill too many." John nods. "Okay, we want to have some for our children's children."

Frank traded us four lobsters for 15 meters of climbing rope for his sailing canoe. Kanon offered six small tails in hopes of getting some kina to buy cigarettes on Brooker, a nearby island. We declined, saying we had no money, but his mother gave them to us anyway. It would have been better to tell him the truth.

I dumped them all in my big cooking pot. It broke my heart to see one with eggs clustered under her tail. She was pretty small. What a waste.