The sun is out and so am I, sitting on the balcony high above the peaceful river. It's too early for a glass of wine but never too early for yet another book, this one being "Forgotten Islands of the South Seas" by Bengt Danielsson who was a member of the 1947 Kon-Tiki Expedition.
a time when a good book cost just 2 shillings and 6 pence
After the Kon-Tiki expedition, Danielsson married a French woman, Marie-Thérèse, and they settled in Raroia, the atoll on which the raft had made landfall. They stayed there from 1949 to 1952, and in 1953 moved to Tahiti where he wrote many books and scripted many films, becoming one of the world's foremost students of Polynesia.
In his 1952 book "Raroia: Happy Island of the South Seas", Danielsson observed, "The Raroian peace stems from the fact that the people have no material anxieties and no other object in life than just to live".
Remind me to drink to that when the sun is over the yardarm!
