At only 10 miles from Tahiti, way less populated and with regular 5 times a day ferry service from the capital city, Moorea is seen quite literally seen as Tahiti’s garden-esqe backyard. We got a good look at the place when we took one of the regular busses around the island to our over-water bungalow. (sounds classy huh?)
Oh look! A slide show! Now that is classy! 😉
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While it doesn’t hold a candle to the Mexican bus service, the fact that Moorea had a regular bus service at all was pretty spectacular and yet again evidence we were no longer on an island that is unaccustomed to vacationers. In addition to the beautiful scenery, Continue reading “What do you mean sinking!”
Our expectation on the quality of ferry service was not too high. So Papeete is the major commercial port for the region. Come on, the second largest commercial port in the region had guys on outboards bringing in fruit and a grand total of one cargo ship that goes about 8 knots best speed. So it can’t be that much more advanced right?
The distance between Tahiti and Moorea is not much more than a stone’s throw in island terms, a little over 10 miles to the rest of the world. Add in the docking, loading and unloading process and we figured it would take us about four hours to make the transit.
Our first hint that we had underestimated the situation was that the 5 passenger ferries that service this route (!!) are each bigger than the one resupply ship for the rest of this country…and not by a little bit.
Our second hint was the nicely upholstered airline style lounge area aboard with the flat screen TVs showing old black and white island TV.
But what really convinced us was when the 4 jet turbine engines kicked in (they have those here!?) and we hurtled across the channel between the two islands at about 25 knots!
Getting an actual French Polynesian tattoo created by a real, genuine French Polynesian on an honest to goodness island in the middle of the ocean is MAJOR nerd cred in the sailing community. No mere skull and crossbones at the local ink shop here people! Take the source of hundreds of years of sailor tradition and possibly thousands of years of Polynesian culture, put it at the immediate end of the longest single sailing transit you will likely ever do in your entire life and tie it up all in one piece of very well done personalized custom art that can be tastefully placed wherever you want on your body! Though they are even more conservative than even the modern tattoos for the locals, cruiser tattoos manage to be really nice while maintaining some of their original elements.
Not to mention the bragging rights! Holy cow for the rest of your natural life people will point and ask you questions about your tattoo which is the perfect segway into you telling the crowd-enthralling tales of nautical daring-do that you had to go though in order to get that inkjob!
The result is that everyone was getting tattoos. The people you would least expect, the people who swore they wouldn’t, were coming to the cruiser diners sporting their newly minted badges. The number kept growing and, though people didn’t push, there was a taste of peer pressure in the air mixed with the hint of a limited time only offer. “We’re pulling out tomorrow and what are the odds we’ll make it out here again? Last chance!”
So, the big question, did we get tattooed?
It was very tempting and no, no we did not.
Ok, well it was very tempting for Greg. There was no way Tiffany was going to pay actual money to have someone “stab me with a needle a few thousand times!” Also, it’s a permanent mark on her skin and if she commemorated everything notable she did with permanent ink, well, she’d probably look like that guy from the last post!
For Greg, well, gosh. Remembering this trip is what this whole blogging project is for. He didn’t have an intention to get a tattoo when he left Mexico and he hasn’t really gotten any new reasons since arriving on the islands. A tattoo is something that is difficult, if not impossible to get rid of and he thinks anyone making an irrevocable decision should have darn good and specific reasons to do it. He figures he can always get a tattoo later but would have a much harder time “un-getting” one. Sides, he learned to play the ukulele and improved his French, which in his humble opinion, is both way more useful and much cooler.
… and since when did Greg need a good excuse to start telling a story?
And of course, the main anchorage of Tikehau is on the opposite side of the island from the only navigable entrance to the lagoon. We’re not asking them to pick up their whole village and alter the geological formation of their atoll just for a few boaters (there were only 3 other boats in the anchorage while we were there) but really, it’s like they planned it this way.
The island of Tikehau is of particular interest because it is famed to have beaches with actual pink sand. Wanting to see this natural wonder and having just left the big village of Rangiroa, we had our fill of the city and decided to spend some time exploring one of the islands or “motu” that make up the ring of the atoll. You’d be amazed how much stuff you can find on a small desert island.
The reason Tiffany was poking around dead crabs was that she was looking for purple dead sea urchin spines. Hey, they have peach sand, so why not?
We found a bunch of them:
And using Alison’s beading kit Tiffany was able to create some tropical jewelry:
Oh you want the zoomed out picture? Being as on that Google map we showed you before the scale was 1 pixel = somewhere around 500 miles or something, I don’t think it would change very much. We’re still in the middle of the blue stuff. 😉
With about 2400 permanent inhabitants (this is a HUGE number by the way, we haven’t seen cities so populous since Nuku Hiva) being only a paltry 220 miles from Tahiti (laughable distance really) and with an airport with actual daily flights (*gasp!*) Rangiroa is the de facto capital of the Tuamotu. Its coral reef is made up of 415 motu (islands) and it has only 2 passes in or out. This is where our story begins:
We had gotten a little cocky about the whole “sailing though a dangerous coral reef” thing but don’t you worry, Rangiroa was kind enough to re-humble us. Her lagoon is big: about 50 miles long and 20 miles wide. This atoll actually has its own horizon and generates its own localized micro weather patterns. Land’s still about 300 yards across though, so no help there. 50 miles long, 20 miles wide and a lagoon about 100 feet deep. That’s a lot of water and there are only two skinny little passes (say about 100 yards across) in or out. Perhaps you can see where we’re going here.
Rangiroa has a tidal current.
Those weren’t jumping fish; they were 5 foot long dolphins surfing in the standing waves. Rangiroa is famous for them. Also, some genius French entrepreneur (they did invent the word, after all) built a channel-side bar with an observation deck to watch the struggling boats…it’s like the nautical version of celebrity death match with dolphin cheerleaders & umbrella drinks!
A 6 – 7 knot tidal current shifts back and forth throughout the day, creating 5 foot standing waves in addition to the coral on both sides of the channel just waiting to snack on your fiberglass hull. If you don’t know anything about tides and currents, let us give you a visual. We watched one boat who thought that the reports of the rip tide were exaggerated and decided to just push though. For a full hour we watched this cruising boat, at all ahead full, pedal to the metal, going though gas like a drunken sailor though vodka, transit this 300 yard long pass. 300 yards! At sea – calm. In the lagoon – calm. In the pass, one little boat struggled to get in while 2.09×1013 gallons of water wanted to get out…all at once. Oh yes, we just broke out the scientific numbering system. The same system they use to measure the distance to other galaxies. Do we have your attention?
“Oh but that isn’t so bad”, you say. “Just go in while the current is pushing you into the lagoon.” Bad idea for two reasons:
1) For the non-sailors out there, the way a rudder works is that it’s a board sticking out of the bottom of your boat that turns you by pushing against the water. Turn the rudder, the water flowing past it hits it at an angle, which pushes the board and the boat attached to it, in a new direction. If water isn’t flowing past the rudder, the boat won’t turn. When a boat is in a following current (aka being pushed) in a narrow channel where the speed of the water is equal to the speed of the boat, then no water is flowing over the rudder and your half million dollar floating condo just became the world’s biggest pinball.
2) You know that desert island with the one palm tree that people get shipwrecked on in the movies? Found it. It’s at the end of the fast flowing channel of Rangiroa, right there in the smack dab middle of where all the really fast water lets out.
It’s cute, when the current isn’t pushing you right into it – then it’s scary!
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?!
Underway, transiting in the Tuamotu, French Polynesia
So we left the natural splendor of Fakarava and headed over to Toau, which was a day’s trip away, and also finally got some video of the mouth-wateringly delectable pamplemousse.
For a little over the past month now we have pretty much sustained ourselves on French baguettes and Polynesian grapefruit. Greg will only feel deprived by the situation when this is no longer possible. Tiffany is already dreading the day… 🙂
Also, many of you ask what happens to trash when you’re at sea. Here’s what everyone does:
Shocking, isn’t it? What’s nuts is that this is the norm for all ships, commercial and recreational, the world over. Greg remembers the first time he saw trash going overboard. It was his first cruise on a Coast Guard ship and they just tossed bags of garbage over the side while at sea. He was dumbstruck until another sailor explained it all. There is some logic to it. You may not agree with the logic, but at least now you’ll understand it. Since all the popular exposure we’re aware of is primarily focused on tossing garbage overboard as a bad thing, here we’ll take the role of explaining it. As for our own opinions, we’ll give it to you at the end.
First off, there isn’t anywhere to really put garbage on a boat long term that is sanitary for the crew. Also you’d have to deal with the smell, the bugs, attracting rodents in port, leaking etc. Now there are some cruisers that “pack their trash out” by only throwing out garbage when they get to port but we will look into that idea in a minute. Also, these cruisers are typically shorter range cruisers who will pull into an established port with garbage facilities once a week. In Polynesia, most of the locals literally burn their trash (including plastics) because they, like us, have nowhere to put it.
As long as what you throw overboard is bio-degradable, the sea does a heck of a faster job breaking it down than anything on land. Also, you’re not allowed to throw stuff within miles of land, so likely you’re tossing the biodegradable trash into the 80% of the ocean that is barren desert (except for the salt water). That’s why we had so many cans in the video; we hadn’t been far enough from shore while inside Fakarava’s lagoon. To get an idea of what is legally allowed to be tossed over where, here is a handy diagram from Greg’s Coast Guard boarding officer days (yes, we are currently talking about maritime law enforcement, don’t mind Greg while he geeks out, hey maybe you’ll learn something!)
Note the one thing you are never allowed to throw overboard: Plastic. Plastic never degrades. Sailors do their best to avoid having it onboard because they can’t throw it overboard, ever. When they do use plastic they store it. Plastic is a major problem for the ocean and is the primary focus of the whole “Pacific Garbage Patch” dilemma.
Finally, stuff falls into the sea all the time, especially organic waste. Whales poop in the ocean – about 3% of their total body mass each day – and they live for a while, you do the math. So do birds and basically every other creature, at some point or another, has had their fecal matter mixed in with the ocean. Animals die in the ocean and their rotting carcasses often sink. Also, many coastal cities use the sea as a garbage site (surprise!). A couple of decades ago the US government was using the waters off the Farallon Islands (near San Francisco) as a radioactive dumping ground. Once they figured out it made the sharks glow though, they cut that out.
Here’s the scary truth. Live by the coast? Throw stuff away? Then it probably ends up in the sea. Where else is it going to go? Sailors are just a little more direct about the process. If an apple gets tossed into the water, is it littering? Ok, so how about a cardboard box that becomes waterlogged and decomposes before your eyes? See, slippery slope.
By the way, anyone want to go swimming?
On the one hand is the unrealistic goal of a perfect world that no one can live (or poop) in and on the other is an ocean so polluted that the plastic outnumbers the plant life (which, by the way, is apparently true right now in some places of the Pacific.) Ultimately, like everything else, it’s a balancing act that we all have to agree on and do. Right after we finish up that world peace bit.
It worries me that one day God is going to show up and ask us to explain why we broke his planet.
Where do we stand? Hard question. As crew, we don’t really have a choice in the matter because as long as our Captain is obeying the law, we really can’t stop them. It’s easy to be hard-over against dumping anything. Garbage is bad! However, all creatures create waste, it’s part of living. Yes, humans create more. Anyone here willing go without their spaghetti sauce? How about your car? Seeing both sides of the issue, actually living with the logistics and having had both sides impact our lives, we would have to say that we agree some things can be tossed overboard as long as we know we aren’t significantly impacting the environment in the area. Right… now define “significant impact”… We could go on…
But not with plastic. Plastic kills baby turtles and that makes Jesus sad.
What’s your opinion about what is ok and not ok to throw overboard?
4) The pearl farm. This is the big business of the Tuamotu islands. Most of the “Tahitian pearls” people buy the world over are actually from the Tuamotu. You expect, with the price of pearls and all, for it to be some big production. Vaulted ceilings, caviar, some champagne perhaps? Classical music on the sound system? Heck, air conditioning? Nope. A shack, 4 guys, couple of planks of wood, some oysters and hell’s dentist’s office. To be fair, what the industry lacks ostentation, it make up for in patience:
If you’re a pearl fan at all (or at least have an appreciation for the fact that pearl necklaces are not cheap), check this out:
They leave bags of this stuff lying around. Open plastic bags chock full of Tahitian black pearls casually placed, completely unprotected, near open windows without even a screen to keep bugs out, much less people. Crime is not a huge concern here. With a population of about 1500 people it’s not like you don’t know you’re neighbor.
Oh wait, you say, perhaps a tourist could steal the pearls and sneak off the island? Not likely, as the only means of escape are rather…limited…in scope:
5) The airport
This airport has 1 flight per day, normally. Saturdays are the big day with a total of 2 flights. Most of the time the airfield is completely abandoned and totally wide open. You can just wander on in, no restricted areas here. At about an hour before the flight is supposed to arrive, a fire truck rolls in, soon followed by an unguarded fuel truck, ticketing agent and 2 baggage handlers. That’s it. No cops, no TSA, no security check points, no body scanners. Heck, no boarding areas. The gate agent? After the ticketing agent finishes selling tickets, they become the gate agent. Well, they become the stairway agent actually, because why would you need a gate for the one plane landing here today? There are some cops on the island (Gendarme, kinda like French colonial police) but they don’t show up for the flights. People get on, people get off. The plane grabs some gas and off it goes. The fire and gas trucks leave, soon followed by the airport’s massive 3 staff people. I think sometimes an extra car shows up to act like a taxi and sometimes the hotel will send a shuttle. Whole process takes about 2 hours. It’s all very anti-climatic.
We should point out that this island is the second largest in the entire 78 island Tuamotu chain. The second largest. Which is weirder, the nonchalant manner in which this airport operates or our American reaction to it?
6) And finally, let’s not forget the aforementioned bar:
You sailed from Mexico to French Polynesia for a margarita? You came all this way, on a boat, powered by wind, at about 7 MPH average speed, for at this point about 2 months of travelling, all this way to pay $15 for drink you could have gotten for 5 pesos back about 3,000+ miles ago? Really?
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!)
