South Pacific 4

SouthPacific (part four)

Tahiti - part two

Two months have slipped by and we have reached the 2nd anniversary of our leaving England (Falmouth) on November 13th 2000. We are now packing up the boat and getting ready for our 7 week trip (by air) to UK. We are moored for the cyclone season, until the end of April 2003, in the marina at Port Phaeton - Tahiti's "cyclone hole". We really enjoyed having two of our children (Barnaby and Cassandra) with us in September and made their visit the reason for a 4-wheel drive tour across Tahiti in a Land Rover. This enabled us to enjoy the dramatic volcanic scenery, the extensive marae at Farehape, a swim in one of the river pools, and a tasty lunch at the Relais de la Maroto perched on a volcanic ridge in the centre of the island. There are no longer any villages in the centre of Tahiti, but Marae Farahape is a reconstruction of a large area of ancient temples with altars, carved stone seating, platforms and walls, set in a lush green area surrounded by jagged mountains. With Barnaby and Cassandra we sailed to Moorea to revisit the anchorages we had liked best on our first visit, but also tried out new ones on the sparsely populated southeast coast. Swimming with stingrays was quite a feelie experience (like wet velvet), and on another occasion the appearance of two sharks provoked a speedy exit from the water just in case they were unfriendly! We went walking on several occasions over the island's central ridge, from Cook's Bay to Vaiare, up towards the Trois Cocotiers viewpoint. Only Barnaby and Cassandra got to the latter as Jim and I somehow followed the wrong track, this had it's compensation as we found a small river canyon with waterfall and pool where we shared a refreshing swim with freshwater crayfish. Back in Tahiti we had an interesting visit to the Museum of Tahiti and its Islands, reckoned to have one of the best collections of Polynesian artefacts in the Pacific, including stone tikis in the garden. Not all has been sweetness and light in Tahiti however. Apart from the expense of items here, we ran into French bureaucracy with our request to extend our stay. After much to-ing and fro-ing to their High Commission and payment of 9000CPF (�50) we were only allowed a 2 month extension up to our flights to UK. According to European law we should get 12 months automatically like French citizens, but we don't fancy challenging the local government in court! The gas cylinder we bought in Panama could not be filled here, so we had to acquire yet another cylinder - this one from Tahiti Gaz (so we now have a total of 3, having ditched a large Spanish one; our trusty Calor gas has been filled in several locations). Another irritation is the fact that the ATM machines will not give us money using either bank or Mastercard credit cards, so we are back to queueing in banks. We had a near crisis in one supermarket which was unable to process our credit card, fortunately we had enough cash at the time. Everyone we speak to about this agrees with our complaints, but c'est la vie en Polynesie Francaise! The weakness of the male bladder had an unexpected advantage when Jim spotted thieves at work on a neighbouring yacht's dinghy in the middle of the night. The cry went up, other sailors with high-speed outboards gave chase, a scuffle ensued, and the stolen dinghy was retrieved plus the outrigger canoe the thieves had arrived in but abandoned in their flight. My calls on the VHF for police assistance produced no help at all and unfortunately when the dinghy owner contacted the police next day with the canoe, he found them totally disinterested and they merely suggested the canoe be left on the shore!

Easter Island

By the end of October we were ready for our flight to Easter Island (Rapa Nui). (Click here for a map of Easter Island) visit, in spite of a few setbacks, was a great experience. The scenery was not unlike that of Scotland in summer with addition of Volcanoes (long extinct). A fair number of cattle and horses on the hills but no sheep. The climate, apart from rather too much rain during our first few days, was very pleasant, sunny and windy during the day, cool at night. We were glad that we had decided to stay a week rather than the shorter 4-day stay which most people make, as we were able to see all the sights at a leisurely pace.

We stayed with a very interesting French lady called Lili. We had our own bungalow with verandah and a marvellous view over the bay at Hanga-Roa. The state of the sea confirmed that we had made the right decision to fly rather than sail and anchor in the bay. Watching the local fishermen tackling the breakers into the harbour convinced us our little dinghy and 2HP outboard would not have coped. Lili looked after us like a mother, we were greeted at the airport with flower garlands (shell necklaces on departure). The meals we ate in her house (full of paintings, carvings and statuary and other souvenirs of her career in the French diplomatic service) were beautifully presented and tasted delicious. One blow was that her husband, a direct descendent of a recent King of Rapa Nui was away in mainland Chile buying building materials for an extension to their property. The famous Moai (big brooding stone statues) are amazing. An island population, which probably never exceeded 15000 people, carved over 1000 of them and erected them all round the coast on straight stone platforms overlooking the villages (their backs to the sea). With their huge red topknots and staring white coral and black obsidian eyes, the villagers can never have forgotten that their important ancestors were watching them! The biggest Moai is 21m tall and weighs about 250 tons but was probably too big to move without metals or animals and still lies in the quarry. Another, 10m tall and over 90 tons is amongst those which have recently been re-erected, but a huge modern crane was imported for the job. The ancient Rapa Nui people also developed a form of writing rongorongo) which has still not been deciphered as only a few examples carved on wooden tablets have survived. Alas, the moais got too many and too big; all the island trees were cut down for statue transport and the culture came to an abrupt end with civil war and the deliberate casting down of almost all the statues just before the first European visitors in 1722. Later, slavery and smallpox reduced the Rapa Nui people to just a few hundred but before that, in the 18th and 19th centuries, the "bird-man" cult flourished as the petroglyphs and reconstructed dwellings at Orongo bear witness.

Ed: The symbols on the Rongorongo include a fascinating multitude of little figures of men in a variety of positions, flying birds, animals, and what appear to be plant, celestial objects, and geometrical forms. They are complex in detail yet at the same time drawn with calligraphic flow. There are hundreds of different signs - far too many to suggest any sort of phonetic alphabet.

Once a year the athletes descended the precipitous cliffs by the huge Kau crater on the southwest corner of the island, swam to an offshore islet and camped to await the arrival of breeding birds. The first athlete to take an egg safely back to shore and up the cliffs gave it to the chosen member of their clan who became birdman (sort of king of the island) for a year. We were a little alarmed in the middle of one night when a loud rumbling noise woke us at about 3.00 am. It sounded like a rock fall and proved to be the collapse of the large rock wall behind our bungalow following 24 hours of heavy rain - no lasting damage however. The island was quite a contrast to Tahiti, the internet access was much faster and cheaper, the ATM machine very co-operative, Chilean wine very palatable (and inexpensive), sunset not until 8.30 (about two and a half hours later), very little traffic on the roads, with the occasional horse and rider to be avoided on the pavements. The local people were very friendly in spite of our limited Spanish and even the dogs seemed better tempered. We had one horse-riding expedition inland under the guidance of Rinaldo (who spoke no English) to the only group of moai which look toward the sea - reputed to represent the 7 young men sent by King Hotu Matua as an advance party to prepare for the main colonisation.

On our last day we hired a quad bike to further explore some of the moai platforms and the quarry. No sooner had we left the paved road on the far side of the island when the front axle broke and a front wheel dropped off! We abandoned the bike and started the 18km walk back.....an hour later found us tired and hot, nibbling on guavas growing wild on the road side and being mobbed closely by a hawk which must have a had a nest nearby. Fortunately a van came soon after and the owner gave us a lift back to town, so we were able to make the flight back to Tahiti. Our return found forest fires raging on the mountainsides, an amazing sight from the plane as we flew in to Tahiti at night. The ash was blown as far as our boat, so we were glad to be heading south after a couple of days. We anchored overnight at two places en route to Port Phaeton. In this way we were able to call at and swim in the large and spooky freshwater pool at the Maraa Grotto, and visit the Paul Gaugain Museum and Botanic Gardens. The most memorable event of those few days however, was exiting through the reef at Passe Toapiro which appeared to me (on the bow) to be only about 10m wide with coral clearly visible under the boat as we bounced out into the rollers: the surfers around shouting "Yahoo!" made us think that few sailing boats use that pass..I can understand why! With only 6 days to go before we fly back to UK Jim is busy checking the boat equipment, making a shopping list for boat parts etc. Rosie has been trying to check that the clothes, food and boat interior are left clean and insect-free but has been hampered by a recurrent fever which might be dengue (we were bitten by mosquitoes in the museum a few days ago). Also it is rather hot here at the moment and a visit to UK seems very