Papeete, Tahiti

14. Jun. 2015
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French Polynesia
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2 Comments

Author: Pete

Location: Papeete, Tahiti

Date: June 5 – 13

Alright! Back to work! I guess that’s how it’s felt in the last week in Papeete. We got set up in the new marina in town which is half price until the end of June. They’re still working on things so the marina isn’t a well oiled machine yet, but hey, neither am I. It’s a treat to be at a dock, to be able to run out and pick up something you forgot, to walk to dinner without being sprayed with sea water in the dinghy, hose salty kite and dive gear down without being a water Nazi, and also to take a real shower. I haven’t taken a real shower since Panama. That’s not to say that I haven’t taken a shower, or even a hot shower. The boat provides hot showers when the engines have been running. I’m talking about real, hot, soapy, soaker showers. 3000 miles long past.

Our first night in we went out to eat at the plaza that features all the Chinese food trucks in town. The place was teeming with people and steaming with food blazing over mobile propane grills. The food was great, and most importantly, not cooked by us! We also stumbled upon a great Polynesian dance performance. I was ready to get my coconuts and grass skirt going.

The town of of Papeete gets a bad rap from the cruising community. If one expects a pristine settlement on a tropical island, one shouldn’t expect to find random Harken jib car parts there. We were pleasantly surprised by Papeete. There’s a beautiful park and promenade along the waterfront, nice restaurants, and more chandleries than you can shake a spinnaker pole at.

The styles of the tattoos have been changing little by little as we head west through French Polynesia. In the Marquesas the tattoos were generally animals, sharks, dolphins, and rays. The Tuamotus had more geometric designs, angular and repeating. Here in the Society Islands we’ve seen more flowing ‘tribal’ designs with more Asian looking influence. Pretty neat.

Liza and Felix spent a day planning and packing before they headed to the other side of Tahiti to catch the big waves coming in there. It was an emotional send off; we were happy for all the help they’ve been aboard in good weather and bad, happy for all the incredible experiences we’ve been able to share together, but sad to see them go. C’est la vie.

No time to get glassy-eyed, Susan, time to get busy! We have a TO DO list about a mile long, nothing critical, but it’s like bailing water, if you don’t keep up, your boat is going down. For all the running around town we busted out the baby blue, sparkly fold-up bike that was stashed in the starboard crash box back in Fort Lauderdale. She was still in impeccable shape with not a spot of rust! We bolted her together and found some pegs in the local hardware store. I pedal, feet a blur in tiny circles, and Miranda stands on the back, holding on, skirt flapping in the wind. It’s comical. If I didn’t have a cute girl holding onto me, I’d feel like a big knob and get beat up by way more muscley Polynesian men.

On the list, propane! Dragged seven, ten-pound propane tanks to the gas filling station some miles north of town on the blue bike. Then it was onto replacing failing exhaust hose and dinghy fuel line connections, running to the Port Captain and Customs Offices for clearance paperwork, and general cleaning and work on the boat. Miranda also got her hair cut by ‘professionals’ in a ‘salon’ because she doesn’t trust me with the ‘trimmers’ to give her a ‘fashionable haircut’ on the ‘transom’. Geeze, some people have no adventurous spirit at all.

We also destroyed the blog by updating the WordPress software and it took a good couple hours of freaking out in an internet cafe, but Miranda figured it out. For you gurus, we couldn’t login to our admin site because we got the White Screen of Death (technical term, promise!) from our outdated theme’s incompatibility with the new version of WordPress. So she updated the WordPres theme by overwriting the current version via an FTP client called Filezilla. Merg? It’s sort of like getting your Michigan driver’s licence renewed when you’re not allowed back in the country because you have too many DUIs. Tough going. It’s amazing what you learn out here, even when you don’t want to.

We loaded up with new provisions, fresh produce at the market, a good deal of booze, watered up, and filled the boat with diesel, before heading out of Papeete! On to new horizons!

Video: Fakarava Shark Dive

03. Jun. 2015
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French Polynesia, Video
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4 Comments

Put this together after all the amazing diving we did on Fakarava’s South Pass. Enjoy!

Hiva Oa and Tahuata

02. May. 2015
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French Polynesia
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No Comments

Author: Pete

Location: 07°54.559S’ 79°18.846W’

Date: April 22 – 27

Well we spent our first couple days ashore hucking around Hiva Oa. There was the obligatory formalities to attend to. Our agent Sandra and the Pacific Puddle Jump made paying the customary French Polynesian bond for our flights home happily unnecessary. It was pretty painless actually, coming from Panama and Galapagos, filing income taxes in China with instructions written in Swedish look easy. We celebrated our happy crossing with pizzas out at a great wood-fired pizza place along our walk home to the harbor.

The island is stunning. Most notably it’s tall and lush with a sharp spine and incisor-like teeth biting into the sky. Most of the day there is a cloud cap that sits just on top of the main peak towering over little Hiva Oa. The town is cute and sleepy, completely closed from noon to 2PM. They sell pan au chocolat and baguettes in the stores, tropical fruit hangs along the side of the roads from laden trees. It is, quite simply, paradise. Days are hot and sunny, but it cools off enough at night. The Hiva Oa harbor is a little choppy. Boats are anchored bow and stern in good holding at 6-8 meters with 1 meter of tide. The main negative is the green soupy water, churned up from the rain runoff of the squally days prior to our arrival.

We spend a few days reconnecting with the world in the Salon de The, which also made great crepes, and did tattoos! All of the locals are tattooed in the traditional style. I felt naked and white walking the streets without any ink. Miranda and Felix fit in fine. The Marquesians were so friendly and welcoming. We only walked the 2 miles from town to harbor once in the several days of provisioning, water runs, bureaucratic fun, and internet obligations. Stocked up on bananas, rambutan, pomelo, and mangos!

Our last day in Hiva Oa we rented a tee-ruck and checked out the north side of the island, a eye-popping, perilous drive along dirt switchback roads over the razorback mountain spine of the green island. I haven’t driven in months! Just like Panama, a trial by fire. We explored a tiki site with carved statues of warrior gods on ceremonial sites where the Marquesians used to sacrifice and eat ‘long-pig’… vanquished people. The site, at the foot of the high peaks, all set about with ancient trees, made for a apt location to make offerings to the gods. Let’s stick with goats and shells though, hey?

On the 26th, after getting our four day fill of civilization, we set sail again, this time for closer horizons. Just south of Hiva Oa is Tahuata, a less populated (does it get less populated that 3000 inhabitants in the middle of the Pacific?) green saw blade with several leeward anchorages. Sailed right past the first big bay with twelve boats all crammed in, swinging on their anchors (suckers!) and in the very next, slightly smaller bay, with its own white sand beach, found ourselves alone!

We put ourselves in the water immediately with snorkels, masks, and spearguns, and didn’t get our for three days. Incredible clear water, deep, sandy anchorage to ourselves, and fantastic snorkeling. Also saw three manta rays. They’re out in the deep, so we went out one day, jumped in off the dinghy and there they were! We floated around, our curiosity of these ten foot oddballs outweighing the nagging voice in our heads that we couldn’t see the bottom in water infested with, according to the guide books, “enormous sharks.” Bah.

Spent most of our waking hours in the water. The underwater topography drops off as sharply as the wicked slopes ashore, making for more nooks and crannies than an English muffin for fish to hide in. There were myriad tropical fish in blinding colors. Speared a humpback snapper and a peacock grouper and turned them into some dynamite fish tacos!