The largest of these stores is Magazin (French for “store”) Daniel, which is so important as to be noted in our guidebooks as “the best supermarket on the island”. So this, according to our printed guidebooks mind you, is the best supermarket in the main city of the largest, most developed, most populous island of the 78 atolls of the Tuamotu chain. Here’s the tour:
And as a special treat for all of Greg’s fellow sci-fi nerd friends out there, look what he found!
If you don’t get it, it’s ok, he forgives you. If you do get it, you know why he put it up here… so awesome!
Oh the third place stuff from the boats go? Like we mentioned before, some stuff is custom ordered. Which is why this video is so amazing:
Greg getting his butt handed to him by an island kid in a game of ping pong is not remarkable. It’s the cultural significance of the thing! (no, not of me getting power slammed by a 10 year old, why are you fixated on that!?) It was the ping pong table, focus on his table! (I might note I scored some points.) What is remarkable is that the table was there in the first place. This most assuredly overshadows any *cough* – minor – *cough* point spread difference there may have been.
In the United States, if we want some lettuce, we go to the fridge and get some lettuce
(what does this have to do with Polynesian life? Stay with me a sec.)
Fridge empty? Fine, we go to the grocery store. But what would we do if the grocery store had no lettuce? What if all the grocery stores had no lettuce because there was none to be had? What if we couldn’t go to the farm, organic or otherwise, to get our lettuce because it was literally impossible to get to one via land?
Well then I’d guess we’d just have to sit on our happy hands and wait a few weeks / months for the next delivery, now wouldn’t we?
Alright, take that paragraph above and replace “lettuce” with everything from “milk” to “vegetables” to “paint” to “beer” to “wheels for my car” to “computer monitor” to “gas for my stove” to anything you use in your daily life.
You can now understand what we mean when we say the supply ship plays a very critical part in the lives of Polynesians.
The M/V ARANUI 3 makes 16 trips a year to resupply many of the Marquesan islands and a couple of the Tuamotu islands. “Oh, that’s a lot of trips.” No, no it is not. Imagine that only 16 times a year, basically once a month, you could get fresh vegetables or a new TV or your favorite book series or just about anything over the size of an airmail package. Think of the mindset shift for a purchasing consumer. First off, you’d better be darn sure you want whatever you’re ordering, because it isn’t $5.95 shipping and handing, we can tell you that. After having to deal with the Polynesian internet “service”.These people have to order things far enough in advance to get it delivered to Tahiti (which is not exactly on the beaten path to start with) early enough for it to get onto this ship so it can get delivered. The boat only comes by 16 times a year and if your package isn’t onboard when the ship leaves Tahiti, well, guess you’ll just have to wait another month then, won’t you? So that new bike you want to get your kid for Christmas? Might want to think about ordering that around September or so. Just in case there’s a delay somewhere along the delivery chain (sure that never happens) or just in case the weather’s bad on the day the delivery ship shows up and it can’t make any deliveries so it leaves to make it’s next appointment (because we’ve be told that does happen).
Sure stores stock stuff and here on Rangiroa there are more stores than on most islands (about 3) but they each don’t carry much, and by “not much” I mean “not much beyond basic living necessities like clothes, food and cookware” and none of them are specialty stores. You want your XBOX 360 video games or a replacement laptop because yours broke? That you special order and wait for the boat.
Did we mention that the supply ship also has to enter the port via the the aforementioned narrow pass of tidal death? It comes inside the lagoon and anchors off the pass and deploys small boats, since it’s too big to tie up at the shallow pier. Then it uses its crane to put things into the small boat. You know the video arcade grabby claw? Ok, play that game, except if you screw up, you lose the island’s ration of potatoes for the month, retail value several hundred to several thousand dollars. We did mention this game is being played on a fluid maritime environment where nothing is stable, right?
We have heard stories of new cars and trucks being dumped overboard during transfer…oops!
When the stars do align and the delivery ship can drop anchor, release its tender boat and actually make deliveries, it’s a big deal that a good part of the whole village turns out for.
These people get their supplies from outboard motorboats. The Port of Oakland or New York, this is not.
People buying and selling, right there on the dock. Why? Because if there are 50 wheels of cheese to be delivered to Rangiroa this month, you want to make sure you get your cheese before it’s all gone.
I have significantly improved my German vocabulary on this trip. I used to know all of one German word – “nein!” which means “no!” And then we discovered in Alameda THE German restaurant in the San Francisco Bay Area – Speisekammer (also know as Spice-en-whatsit) and then my German vocabulary grew by leaps and bounds! Speisekammer means “pantry” and they have the most awesome vegetarian strudel (which is a pastry-like thing) and they have TO DIE FOR Macaroni and cheese (or, as the Germans call it Gratinierte Kasespatzle. I only ever remember the spätzle part of it… So tasty, with caramelized onions, asiago and parmesan cheese… Mmmmmm….).
So by my count, we’re up to three words – Nein, Speisekammer, and Spätzle. Have you ever heard that traveling can expand your horizons or teach you language skills? Well it can! In Mexico, Tiffany’s Spanish got a lot better, and in the Tuamotu of French Polynesia, our German got a lot better!
“Wait a minute…” you’re probably asking yourselves. “I thought French Polynesian people spoke French or Tahitian or Marquesan? I didn’t know they spoke German too!” And you’d be right, they don’t. But there are tons of travelers who pass through that do! One thing you must understand about travel: there are Germans everywhere. Which is really cool, because Germans are the nicest freaking people you will ever meet. Greg has literally never met a German that he did not like. Elizabeth from our Pacific Puddle Jump buddy boat PROXIMITY is German, and at one point we had 4 boats headed toward the same island, all within about a day or so of each other and on every boat at least one person spoke German! How crazy is that?
We had BOREE, STERNCHEN, PAIKEA MIST and us on FLY AWEIGH. Burt and Ingie on BOREE are Germans who have been living in Australia for a number of years, the owners of STERNCHEN (which means “little star” – ha! Another one!) are Germans who speak some English, Michael on PAIKEA MIST is a German-Canadian, and Allan on FLY AWEIGH took classes for his degree in Germany. At one point, STERNCHEN called BOREE on the VHF radio to ask for some technical assistance, and I learned new German! We heard them call on the VHF radio to switch channels to “acht” (which means “eight”) and followed them over to channel eight, so Allan could listen in and keep up with his German and his long standing underway technical assistance skills 🙂
While we were listening, I learned 2 new German words – “computer” and “easy-peasy”. Now, you may be saying to yourself, “hey, those aren’t German!” But I counter – if you walked up to four Germans having a conversation in German, then the words they use MUST be German! Ha!
We have now over doubled our German vocabulary! Sternchen, Acht, Computer and Easy-Peasy!
Once we all got into port we actually got to meet the crews of BOREE and STERNCHEN and spend some time with them. We had some wonderful conversations. Greg is a huge fan of the German language, he just loves the way it sounds. (Greg – Actually, I believe my EXACT words were “someone discovered the sound of awesome and just decided to make an entire language out of it!”) Greg was such a big fan that Ingie even gave him REAL German Bread!
You do not appreciate how awesome this is. First off, it’s hot as heck here (80 F is the average temp) and no one has air-conditioning. She turned on her gas stove in her boat and heated the whole thing up, for several hours mind you, to make us bread.
Also, do you understand that we are 6,435 kilometers, oh sorry, 4,000+ miles *flying!* from Spice-en-whatsit! 9,655 miles flying from Germany! Need I remind you that those flights don’t even exist, so add in mileage for stops in Tahiti and Hong Kong. Do you know how much a flight like that would cost!? And. We. Have. FRESH German bread.
Do you have fresh, hand-baked German Bread right now? No, no you do not…and ours will be eaten before you get here so don’t try it.
During our discussions, we got to talking about the happy birthday song, and how the Germans don’t really sing happy birthday. Here’s why:
Which lead to Burt telling us about how Germans like to smash words together to make new words. His example: the soccer world cup. In German it’s one word: Fußball-Weltmeisterschaft.
So awesome…
How many languages can you speak?
Oh PS: Greg can curse in German too. Who says you don’t learn useful skills in the Boy Scouts? 😉
We arrived in Toau to find two really nice guys in an outboard who guided us into the 10 boat anchorage they had set up near the “village.”
Why is “village” in quotations?
Just wait for it.
After helping us get anchored the nice guys invited us over for dinner that evening. It’s a pretty common practice for the locals to prepare dinner for cruisers for a price and then “invite” you to dinner. Remember in Fatu Hiva where the terms “restaurant” and “living room” were synonymous? Yeah, pretty normal and to be fair, they take good care of you:
Those would be fresh lobsters. Paired with baguette and fresh fried parrot fish and by “fresh” I mean the two guys who guided us in? They are also the fishermen; brought the fish in that afternoon and cooked them up alongside one of their wives. Same with the lobsters.
Also, they have a dog
Cute little guy, kinda scraggly. Not really worth noting until…hey wait a second…how the heck did a dog get way out here?! It’s not like he evolved from the freaking fish! Did you ship him in? How much would that cost? Is he some sorta descendent from dogs brought over by Capt. Cook? Seriously, where did you get a dog!? (see, like I said, sometimes it’s the little things that make you remember where you are).
We had a great time at dinner and then the 2 nice guys and the lady invited us to come to church tomorrow. Well, we’ve all heard legends of the Polynesian church singing and it’s also when the whole “village” would typically turn out, what a great opportunity to meet people! …and truthfully, it’s been a while since we were able to get to an actual church, so heck why not?
Here’s the church:
And here’s what the service was like:
Not exactly what we were expecting. Ok, so all the white people? Sailors. That leaves the lady at the front and the two men in the seats…
…noticing a trend here?
You know that joke where the town’s so small that the mayor is the sectary while moonlighting as the pastor and city garbage collector?
Yeah, that’s here.
Greg played bocce ball with the two guys on the beach with their bocce set. Won one game, lost the other. In other words, he beat half the bocce ball playing population of this island in one go.
…Hey wait, where the heck did they get a bocce ball set?!
Welcome to the main town in Fakarava. So what does one do here?
(aside from the diving, we’ve already established that’s amazing. Well, that and suicidal crabs)
1) First off, secure transportation. Preferably, transportation with shock absorption.
What Tiffany fails to mention in the video is that at that point we still had to bike back… And it was a very long trip home, let me tell you!
2) Well, there’s the dive center.
Two notes here:
– Greg can officially now say that he’s had a French tutor. Which is cool, right? The fact that his tutor was male and taught diving vice female and “l’art d’amour”…eh, less cool. He thinks that the fact that he learned to dive in French Polynesia almost makes up for it.
– If you are one of those people looking to jump the puddle, as it is called, get your dive certification in Mexico. Yes, we realize that it is expensive compared to other things in Mexico and you will tell yourself “nah, I won’t dive, I’ll just snorkel.” No you won’t. What you’ll do is snorkel by yourself and be terrified of all the sharks swimming around you while you’re all alone and all your friends are off diving. Remember the part where they school? Like fish? (ask Greg how he knows this!)
Then all your friends will gang up on you and convince you that paying the exorbitant prices for a private French diving instructor is actually very chique (a French word, not coincidentally, I’m sure) and is a really good idea in order for you to fully experience this “once in a lifetime diving opportunity.” They will be right and you will be a fool for not having paid half the price in Mexico to get your certification. The one consolation you will get is that the instructors in French Polynesia are really cool and they use your practice dives as opportunities to actually show you some amazing stuff. Still, it’s WAY cheaper to get your cert in Mexico.
2) The store, where we discovered that your local grocer is actually not only a national brand, but an international one:
For you east coast people, this is like running into a Publix (or in the case of our Texas friends, an H.E.B.) out here in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. I mean really? Safeway? In FRENCH!? Who knew?
3) The church (which is actually pretty cool)
Click on the photo above to enlarge it. The shell chandeliers and other decorations were amazing!
(to be continued… We had way too many videos for one post!)
Random uninhabited beach, central Fakarava, Tuamotu, French Polynesia
Figuring out that US $67.25 doesn’t even buy a single dinner out for Tiffany and myself at any restaurant on the island (seriously, crazy expensive here), my career as a professional dare taker comes to sudden, if not awesome, end.
Not that I won’t take dares. Please, by all means.
We hauled anchor and headed up the Coast, well, the coast on the inside of the island, which isn’t very far from the other coast on the outside of the island. Here let me show you what I mean:
Yeah, that’s really it. Think about that for a second, they live on an island no wider than a few football fields in the middle of the Pacific. There is a certain reassurance that large land mass provides, a reassurance that until now I had not ever noticed before. It is something very disconcerting about being able to see both coasts at the same time of the only land for about 100 + miles. Something in the back of your mind that says: hey, if there’s a tidal wave buddy, or maybe a hurricane, this island ain’t gonna do much more than trip it up a bit. You’re basically screwed…
…it gives one pause.
Dropping anchor for the night, we went ashore and decided to have a “genuine natural Polynesian island beach experience.” What does this mean? More coconuts!
Few points here:
1) What did Tiffany and Greg learn from their last coconut experience? Not a DARN thing, thank-you very much!
2) Actual Polynesians are not in any way interested in “genuine natural Polynesian experiences.” I met this dude a few days later:
Huh, a fire axe. Don’t see that in too many beach movies eh? Just in case you are wondering, they cut open the coconuts and let them dry because the milk is worthless. It’s the coconut oil that is the cash crop.
The evening culminated with a perfect sunset barbecue, though more ended up being on the menu than was originally scheduled:
The past year has been an adventure beyond description and we are blessed to have the chance to make this dream come true. Thank-you all so much for sharing it with us. Your comments and emails have been a real encouragement for us as we have strived to maintain this video blog in a part of the world that doesn’t exactly lend itself to high speed internet…or any internet for that matter. Your questions and comments on the blog, Facebook and emails have been great, please keep them up!
We’re still out here exploring the south pacific, in the coming year we hope to see an actual continent again (no rush on that though!)
If I could offer you one thought for the coming year it’s this: According to the people I talk to out here travelling with me, very few people who set out to do a trip like this actually accomplish it. The number one reason has to do with health and often it is simply because they waited too long. They bodies gave out before they were ready.
I know dropping everything isn’t in the cards for everyone and grabbing a piece of your dream now, however small, at least gets you going in the right direction. Upon seeing some of the marvelous islands we’ve been to, one of my fellow crewmen (woman, actually but crewwoman sounds funny) has gotten into the habit of says “Good work God.” God has indeed done some awesome work on this little ball of rock we call Earth…and the only way you can experience it is to take the first step now. Simply said: it’s awesome out here.
Until then, we’ll keep blogging as long as you keep watching!
-Greg & Tiffany
Here’s Tiffany with her new Polynesian ukulele (not to be confused with a Hawaiian ukulele) and a nice, cheap, fresh baguette in Tahiti, two key pieces of Polynesian culture.
Here’s Greg smirking next to the tiki we’ve been calling “tripod”, one of the gods from Rarotonga in the Cook Islands with his Hawaiian ukulele. Um, they put this tiki, in all his glory, on their $2 coins…
So that’s the city sign. Guess they don’t exactly have a city line, being as there aren’t a lot of other cities out here to butt up against.
So the semi-obvious question I left out of the previous entries (I ran out of space!) was, “Greg, I get how the islands got there, how did the PEOPLE get there?!?”
Good question, and the short answer is…no one actually knows for sure.
Some people say they sailed from South America. Some dude name Thor (no, really, it’s his name) sailed a raft from South America to prove this theory. He made it to the Marquesas, so, it possible. However, the current popular theory is that the ancient Polynesians came from Asian stock:
(thanks to httpthe.honoluluadvertiser.com)
The summary version is that the Polynesian people were beyond comprehension badasses at seagoing navigation. They were human sextants capable of determining their exact position on the largest expanse of bleak nothingness on the planet Earth (the Pacific Ocean) by doing things such as watching the stars, checking the angle of the waves, looking at birds in flight and…no that’s it. That’s what they did. I am not a Polynesian. I use a GPS because I suck with a sextant, much less reading the angle of a wave bounced off an island 100 miles away (not making this up or exaggerating here.) So these people sailed against the current and upwind in what amounted to two canoes tied together by some wood and some sails lashed on top. Why did they sail against the wind and current? So that if, while exploring, they failed to find any land, they could easily get pushed back home once all the food and water was used up onboard. Doesn’t that just sound swell? Well it sure did to them because they got really, really good at it. Therein how they found, charted and settled all these islands long before we Europeans with our clunky tall ships (and syphilis! Let’s not forget what we brought to share!) showed up on the scene.
As for Kauehi city, well, city is a generous term. Here’s me in the center of town, which also doubles for their beach:
They have a “store” (it may one day grow up to be a 7-11) where they sold baguettes!
Our elation at being able to resupply our junkie fix for awesome fresh French bread was short lived when we found out that the baguettes were frozen. It did lead us to wonder though: are they frozen because they got shipped here? Or do they just turn on the bread baking over once a month to save energy? Unfortunately my limited French skills did not cover such complex topics of conversation. I did manage to find ice cream though. Hey, if they can freeze bread they can have ice cream. More importantly, I can have ice cream.
The main structure of the town is the church. We were lucky enough to be here on a Sunday and we attended a Catholic mass in Tahitian. Though we couldn’t understand the service, we did get to meet the entire town (maybe 100 people in total) and they were really nice to us. Also, the percussion instrument in the choir was an Alhambra water jug. I felt that it would be disrespectful to tape this guy playing during mass but man, WOW. You’d be amazed how good people can get at playing an empty plastic water jug when it’s the only instrument available for 600 or so miles.
They have a dinghy dock and yacht anchorage. The monthly resupply ship, their only semi-reliable (weather depending) means of contact with the outside world, stays offshore and sends in small tender vessels with supplies for the residents. No exports that I am aware of or could find evidence of are taken back out to the ship. With only 100 people on the island and about 30 yachts a year that visit, they have an almost untouched natural beauty and crystal clear blue water right up the edge of the dock.
These people LIVE here. Perched on this tiny ring of coral in the middle of the ocean. They fish, collect rain water to drink and they have been doing it for hundreds of years.
The transit from the Marquesas to the Tuamotu was fairly uneventful. Being the ocean crossing salty dogz (yes, with a “z”) that we are, we scoffed at the idea of a 3 day sail to the next island chain as if such paltry transiting now barely even merited our attention. I mean, goodness we scarcely had to provision for this trip. OK, we bought some extra baguettes and some pamplemousse but that’s basically about it.
Have I mentioned pamplemousse yet? Picture grapefruit…ok now picture it actually tasting really, really good. I mean crazy good. Like you could easily eat yourself sick on it. Yeah, that’s pamplemousse. They grow it out here. It’s better than the mangoes. Notice you don’t see any pamplemousse rotting on the ground with the mangoes…there’s a reason for that.
(From our friends on SV Mulan)
The sail across did have one interesting highlight though:
Yes, a spider crawled out of my armpit. Well, fell out really. I screamed, it died. I screamed some more. I’d rather not dwell on the experience.
The Tuamotus are in and of themselves, an interesting story. Imagine, if you would, hundreds of square miles of open ocean a few miles deep. Ok, now in the middle of that, stick a ring of islands that reach no higher than 3-10 feet above sea level. It’s kind of like the Florida keys, minus the mainland nearby. Oh, and the big lagoon in the center of each…
People live on these things. Which is amazing, but where do the islands come from? Well, Darwin (yes, THAT Darwin) apparently had a second theory that drew a little less fire from the Christian coalition than his evolutionary ponderings. Darwin’s Theory of Atoll Formation states:
(from www.geocaching.com)
Stage 1: islands form from either exploding volcanoes or by the earth’s crust jutting up (like mountains) (the Marquesas are an example of stage 1)
Stage 2: coral, which is apparently just floating around the ocean looking for a place to live, latch onto these islands. There they are supplied with a place to live that is close enough to the surface to allow for sunlight. Coral grows around the islands and form a barrier reef.
Also during this stage the volcano goes dormant and the island starts to sink back into the ocean. Basically, the combined weight of the large mountain jutting literally miles up from the surface of the sea floor is a bit much for the crust to take, so it sinks. Also erosion starts to take affect. The coral keeps growing though, so the difference between the receding island shoreline and the barrier reef becomes a protected lagoon. (The Society Islands are an example of stage 2)
Stage 3: The island sinks below sea level, leaving a lagoon anywhere from 0 to 100 feet deep. The coral keeps growing and forms tiny islands (or “motu” in Tahitian) made completely from the coral. The motu grow on top of the barrier reef which is also constantly growing, so it does not sink despite the sinking of the island. In the end the barrier reef islands are all that remain.
The islands we have just entered are examples of this final stage.
Now while that is all very well and good, lets move on the practical application portion of our little science lesson here: sailing THROUGH a coral reef in order to effectively get swallowed up by an island where you sail on an underground mountain that juts up at unidentified locations just below the water line is, shall we say, a source of some concern for the average yacht owner. Especially when the nearest repair facility is oh, say, 700 miles away, give or take.
I would have included this entry into the last one except that I noticed you all have been asking for / demanding / threatening bodily harm if I fail to deliver some sweet, sweet pics of the Islands. So here you go:
Daniel’s Bay is picture perfect and just 5 miles from the largest town in the Marquesas, Taiohae Bay, by boat. Apparently a season of “Survivor” was filmed here. I can see why.
Just for a moment, let’s picture the crew chiefs in charge of filming the show and providing for the film crew, etc coming upon this place.
Crew chief 1: Wow this place is perfect!
Crew chief 2: Yeah, so remote, so tropical island in the middle of nowhere looking!
Crew chief 1: One problem, where we gonna go get a beer after we’re done filming for the day?
Local walking by: La bier et la pizza est huit kilometers pour ton bateau
(translation): Beer and pizza is 8 kilometers (5 miles) for your boat
Crew chief 1&2: oh really…
There see, even tossed in a little French lesson for ya. Anyway, if you watched that show and were concerned about the well being of the competitors, know that they were about 30 minutes from a piping hot pizza, prepared in a stone pizza oven I might add, at any given moment. This assumes 10 minutes for actually ordering and cooking the pizza. I am concerned about the residual effects on the local community however…
Now as we have said before, there is an overabundance of coconuts, flowers, plants, bananas, and any tropical fruit or plant that you can really think of. However, me telling you this just doesn’t convey the abundance these people have come to live with. Tiffany was shocked to find that these people literally have more high quality fruit then they can possibly handle.
Let’s continue on with our exploration of the unrelenting awesomeness that is this flora of this island as we hike up to the much talked about waterfall on the island.
