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Tubuai has it all. Green mountains, crystal clear lagoon, the freshest fruits and veggies, great food, and friendly people. For me, this island is perfection.
This is just a glimpse of Raivavae. It was really hard to capture how untouched and pristine this island is.
I've finally got some photos for you! Here are a few from our passage from New Zealand to Raivavae back in May. But wow - it feels like a lot more time than that has passed. I'm posting this from the warm, sunny atoll of Makemo in the Tuamotu Islands... which feels like a world away. More on the past two months coming soon. In the meantime, here's a little glimpse of our long, chilly, upwind passage to the Austral Islands.
I'm always amazed at how instantaneously our perspectives and attitudes change upon arriving in a new place. When we left New Zealand, I was complaining about the fact that the lamb chops we'd ordered weren't delivered frozen. Our first day in Raivavae I was overjoyed at being given a day-old baguette and a grapefruit.
It was a very different passage than what we've been used to since leaving Panama. We spent most of our time layered up and zipped into hoodies and were never on deck without our harnesses. We barely experienced the extended periods of pleasant, downwind sailing that we’d become accustomed to in the lower latitudes. (As you'll notice, though, I took most of my photos during downwind stints. Attempting to capture the boat pitching and smashing into waves with our expensive camera was neither appealing nor safe.) It was the first time we were sailing into the sunrise instead of the sunset since we left Rhode Island in 2014, when we used to take weekend trips from Newport to the island of Cuttyhunk, 15 miles to the East. Two years later, weekends have lost a bit of their special significance and sailing is no longer a recreational, spare time activity, but a defining part of our life. What a difference a couple of years can make.
(On a side note, I just realized that there were some formatting issues with my daily updates from sea. My apologies for SHOUTING at you for paragraphs at a time.)
After being anchored at the village for several nights, we woke one morning, pulled the anchor and slowly made our way toward the next island southwest of Mangareva. I believe Taravai's official population is eight – six adults and two children – though if you count non-permanent residents like pigs, chickens and goats, the population triples. Taravai is an incredibly peaceful place. The main “attraction” is the big church that sits on an tidily manicured parcel of land at the water's edge. Bees buzz around its aging stained glass windows. Branches of bougainvillea nod in the breeze. When we visited the church was empty, as it no doubt almost always is. But it is kept spotless nonetheless, with pews in perfect order and everything on the altar in its place as though a preacher and his congregation may wander in and begin mass at any moment.
Beyond the church a wide grass path cuts through a grove of bananas and papayas, which is maintained by Taravai's residents. We met one of them when we wandered into her backyard. She immediately welcomed us and invited us to stay. The yard was shady and quiet. Chickens pecked at coconut husks, a couple of small horses mulled around near the house, and piglets scurried in and out of the brush.
Lolo explained to us that she was only here temporarily, a sort of extended house sitting gig. She and her husband, who was out hiking for the day, were originally from France. They had sailed all over the world, most recently coming from Patagonia, and had become accustomed to life on the move. But then they sailed into the Gambiers and after some time in Rikitea, spent a few nights at Taravai for a change of scenery. She fell completely in love with the place. Now their boat sat an anchor in front of the house, looking rather bare boned and stationary. Lolo spent her days tending to the animals – including nursing a neglected horse from Rikitea back to health and fattening the piglets for slaughter (her weapon of choice was shotgun) – growing a vegetable and herb garden, maintaining the path and yard, and making jewelry from shells and coral she collected. I know it must get lonely there, that everyday life can't be easy and that there are downsides to that kind of life that I know nothing about, but as she was describing it while we sat there in the shade sipping lemonade, her life sounded pretty dreamy and surreal to me. When it was time to go, we left her with several baguettes and she filled our arms with plantains.
Later that evening as we puttered around in the dinghy fishing, the sky glowed a fiery orange and cast a golden light on the cliffs and rocks on Taravai's far side as dark clouds rolled in. Wild goats stood like statues on outcroppings above us as raindrops began to fall, distorting the visibility of the coral beneath us. Smoke rose from one of the houses and sank back down, settling into folds in the mountainside. We got a glimpse of French Polynesia's dramatic side for a few moments before the rain poured down and we sped back to the boat.
We were returning from an excursion to find some bok choi when a small, grey pickup slowed to a stop and a man wearing a bandanna Springstien style gave us a weary look. He asked in a thick French accent if we spoke German. We did not.
“Merde... Ok. Uh... Get in.”
We recognized this guy. He'd asked us the same question about a week before, to which Matt had responded, “Oh are you Fritz?” We'd read about Fritz, a German man who'd been living in Rikitea for years and made his washing machine available to people passing through on boats. And we were in desperate need of a laundry machine.
“Fritz? Fritz is an alcoholic,” this man had replied, looking disgusted. Then he drove off. (We later met Fritz. A friendly, sedentary older man whose preferred Hinano lager over coffee for breakfast, he spent his days watching old war movies on a grainy 10-inch square television while renting out his miniature washing machine for $6 a load.)
Anyway. This time, instead of asking any questions we crawled into the bed of his pickup just in time for him to speed up the rest of the hill, round the corner at the top, and bounce onto a dirt road without so much as feathering the brake. But not in time to notice the gun he had stashed in the backseat. The big boxer mutt who was standing guard in the driveway just watched.
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Venturing out of town in Rikitea means going uphill, no matter which direction you head. Rikitea is the main village on Mangareva, the largest island in the Gambier archipelago. These are the most remote of French Polynesia's islands. The weather station to which we'd followed the road sits perched on a flat lookout a third of the way up the mountain. On the day we'd arrived we'd been told by other sailors that there was a man here who grew bok choi, but all anyone knew was that he lived near the weather station. After a few halfhearted attempts and a lot of peering over fences, we'd finally stumbled upon a house in the shadow of Mangareva's highest peak, Mt. Duff, whose backyard was filled with rows of leafy greens and peppers. I'm usually the only one on the boat who gets excited about that kind of stuff (definitely the only one to use the term “leafy greens”), but after nearly three weeks at sea we were all feeling way past due for fresh vegetables. And finally finding it felt a bit like a bit of an achievement. For $10 we filled a plastic shopping bag full of bok choi, whole heads cut at the stem and dripping wet from being dunked in a five gallon bucket of fresh water. It was as we were cheerfully walking back down the hill from this successful mission that we bumped into Not Fritz.
He steered the truck down a steep curved driveway at the end of the dirt road. Our destination was a simple house tucked into the corner of a hill overlooking Rikitea's harbor. Our boat looked teeny and far away from up there. All around the house there was evidence of ongoing projects: a garage filled with tools and scrap metal, spare tires stacked outside, tarps keeping piles of stuff under cover here and there. There were a teeny kitten and two small dogs there to greet us – not the kind of big mutts you saw lying around town, but rather what you'd refer to as specialty breeds; had they been groomed and deodorized, you might find them stowed away in some woman's purse somewhere far, far away from Mangareva. And plants grew everywhere. Some in containers, some in a makeshift greenhouse, some just this side of wild spilling out from under hibiscus trees or the edges of the patio.
I spotted a few small tomatoes, a pepper plant, and a bunch of herbs and realized that this man hadn't brought us here to kidnap, kill or rob us. He wanted to feed us. Seeing us toting around a bag full of greens, he wanted to set us up with more fresh food straight from his own garden. He was already out of the truck and halfway into the forest behind his greenhouse when we came to this realization. We followed behind while the dogs scrambled around our ankles. Before long we were loaded up with an armful of starfruit and several heavy papayas.
We still didn't know his name. He was one of those people who does what he's doing without distraction, delay, or even a smile. At that moment he was on a mission to collect food and that was all. Also, he seemed fixed on the idea that we didn't speak French or German and he didn't speak English, so even when I'd attempt to stumble through the awkwardness he'd dismiss it and continue marching toward some other part of his garden, me trailing behind. But I persisted, telling him that I worked on farms and in greenhouses. When I tried to ask him about his orchids he softened a bit and we could get along a half step above our very basic, mostly nonverbal form of communication.
By the end of our short visit, the amount of fresh food we had in our possession had multiplied tenfold. In addition to our bok choi we carried bags full of little green bell peppers, bananas, starfruit, papaya, ginger, rosemary, Thai basil, and the thick, glossy leaves from a shrub he called bois d'Inde, or India wood (what I think was cardamom). We couldn't get him to take anything in return, Panamanian rum and fish we'd caught at Henderson Island being the only items of value we had for trading. He just laughed. “I have,” he told us, as if to remind us that there's not exactly a shortage of fish in the Gambiers.
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This wasn't our introduction to the kind of hospitality that French Polynesia is so famous for, but it is my favorite instance. There aren't many places where you can (or would) hop into a stranger's truck in a foreign country without speaking the language and without second thoughts as he whisks you away down a deeply quiet dirt road. And even fewer places where, after doing so, you'd end up not somewhere terrifyingly creepy, but instead in a mini-Eden on a tropical mountainside.
We'd sailed through the wide gap in the barrier reef that surrounds the Gambier archipelago after 18 days at sea and two nights amid the solitude of Henderson Island. To us, the whole place was a miniature Eden. The pointy summits of Mt. Mokoto and Mt. Duff rise over 400m above the sea, which is nothing compared to the giants of the Marquesas and Tahiti but looked pretty magnificent to us. Mokoto and Duff are often hidden behind low passing clouds, and the rest of the island seems to have melted down from their peaks rather than risen up from below the sea. The vegetation is lush, deep green, and covers every fold in the land. From where we stared up at all of this on Tamata, the foreground was an electric blue sea separated from the shore by a splotchy border of pale turquoise.
On land, there was the usual abundance of coconuts and plenty of banana and breadfruit trees. But also there were bright green pamplemouse – a sweeter version of the citrusy grapefruit I grew up eating – hanging from untended trees, mangoes ripening on shady branches, pumpkins swelling in ditches beside the road. The village bakery cranked out hundreds of baguettes each morning, as well as pain du chocolate and croissants on the weekends. There was a takeaway counter at one of the little shops (magasins) that served up steak frites and chow mein, plates that should rank alongside poisson cru as national dishes if not for the quality of the food, at least for their ubiquity on menus throughout French Polynesia.
We settled in pretty quickly. I especially fell in love with the more temperate climate and self-sufficient, independent feel of the Gambiers. For us, most days in the village anchorage would go something like this: we'd wake up just before sunrise in order to make it to the bakery before the baguettes sold out, return to the boat for hot coffee and fresh bread, and then spend a few hours working around the boat. We'd usually head into town to do something around lunchtime, and spend the afternoon swimming and rotating our endless rotation of laundry. Sometimes we'd take long walks hoping to stumble upon the bok choi man. Most afternoons we'd make a few runs to the dock at the far end of town where there was a fresh water source. We'd paid $5 for what was essentially an endless supply so we wouldn't have to run the water maker. If you're planning on doing a month's worth of laundry in a five gallon bucket, you either need consistently rainy afternoons or a steady supply of fresh water. As it got close to 4 'clock the sun would grow weaker and sink lower, leaving us to finish up whatever work we had in the cool shadow of the south facing hillside for the rest of the afternoon. It was dark by six. Though the Gambiers are semi-tropical, they are situated at 23 degrees South. At that latitude, winter makes itself felt.
One morning we hiked Mt. Mokoto, Mangareva's bald peak. Though it wasn't the most challenging hike, it was one of the best I've ever done. The end was a bit steep and completely above the tree line, leaving unobstructed views on either side of the narrow trail. One of those sides was a sloping, chartreuse meadow, the other a cliff. There were wild goats scampering around the rocks below us and way beyond them were miniature pearl shacks floating in a haze of blue. Such an incredible hike.
When I think back on it now, it doesn't seem like we did a whole lot during our time in Rikitea. But just as on a boat, everyday chores in a remote place like the Gambiers take at least twice as long to accomplish as they normally would. Life slows down, each morning's “to do” list dissolves into a languid afternoon, and night sets in early. Our time there passed quickly.
