We’re just taking it easy today. No adventures or anything. Did a few boat projects, Ann did the laundry (which is actually a huge undertaking), I dove on the anchor (more on that below) and we rowed ashore for a little walk. We’re getting ready to leave tomorrow morning and sail the 20 miles down to Taiohae Bay on the south side of the island. That is the largest town out here and best chance to provision for the next month that we’ll spend in the Tuamotus. We won’t find much in the way of fresh anything there, so whatever we can carry and keep is what we’ll have. Otherwise, it’s pasta, potatoes, well, you get the picture. We also need fuel and it’s the only semi-reliable place in the Marquesas to get it.

About the anchor- several other boats in our little bay had a hard time getting their anchors up. Apparently their chain tangled on rock. One boat needed a diver from one of the other boats. He spent more than ½ an hour under water trying to untangle things. Word has it that as long as you are in 40 feet of water, you’re over sand, but closer in and you get the coral/rock problem. We dropped just in 40 feet, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed. Everyone else including our friends on Orcinius who are behind us and closer in, have had problems. Orcinius and we have agreed to leave at the same time tomorrow. That way if one has a problem, the other can hang around and help. There’s no-one else except a couple other boats and nothing on shore. Not like you can call the tow truck.

I’m making some curry dinner right now since we were lucky to find a couple eggplants and some onions and string beans! They are the long French kind. I’m sautéing the eggplant, onion, a wild pepper, and tomatoes we found from a local who grew them, in olive oil and coconut milk. Later I’ll add some of Ann’s home-made yogurt, curry powder, then serve over rice. Fried bananas in coconut cream on the side. Unbelievably we’re getting close to out of bananas. The last two days we’ve collected a dozen mangoes though, so soon we’ll have a “mango problem” as they all ripen. I’ll probably be making some mango curry. I think we may have also collected enough limes to get us to Tahiti. There are lots of wild lime trees, so we procured a small backpack full. People tell us we may be able to trade for stuff with the limes when we’re in Tuamotus.

While the curry was simmering, we stopped for evening Charismas. The Australian boat, Samba, that was near us stopped by to share some vegetable news with us. Apparently they hiked around the bay to the west and found a vegetable gardener. So they are going around the anchorage telling everyone. They also had some books to share with us so Pete took our thumb drive and brought back some good books. Unfortunately, both boats suddenly seemed to be closer than normal. Could be a wind change or that one of our anchors had come unhooked from a coral head. We let Pete know that we would be happy to re-anchor if he felt it necessary. Politeness abounds here. Pete said he’d just watch it and call us if he thought it was becoming a problem. As dusk was setting we decided, why wait? So in a half of an hour’s time we pulled up our anchor, moved and re-anchored further out so we all could sleep better. Not bad.

With our friends John and Lisa from Orcinius. On this hike we filled our backpack with limes growing wild on the hillside. Enough for Charismas all the way to Tahiti!

View from the top of the ridge. Then down to the other bay for some sightseeing and all the way back.

In the jungle on the way over and back

And I do mean “over”. Wow, did we get some exercise today. The proposed hike was from Anaho to Hatiheu, which is the next bay over. There are two “saddles” in the hillside here. One is a low saddle that looks obvious, but it turns out terminates over a cliff on the other side. The other saddle is high, high up the seemingly vertical mountain side. “We’re going there?!” was my comment. But, we decided if we could find a trail, we would attempt it.

First, we collected our friends John and Lisa on Orcinius. Or to be more correct, they collected us. They came over in their dinghy and the four of us rode in. Nothing’s really very easy here. Sometimes the dinghy rides are hair-raising, death defying trips through the surf. This time, we had to find an entrance through the coral that stands outside the reef. Fortunately the sun came out and we could clearly see the really light blue water which signaled the path.

Once inside, we anchored the dinghy in the very shallow water off the beach and waded in. We were in knee high water at fairly low tide. This was to become more interesting later in the day when we came back.

Off we went down the beach looking for the path over the mountain. We ran into a couple locals and tried to ask in our best French, which is none too good, how to get over the hill. We consistently received a pointed finger down the beach and a somewhat skeptical look, so we knew we were headed in the right direction.

We finally ran across a path that went at right angles to the beach and disappeared into the jungle. A likely looking trail! So, we followed it a bit and almost immediately it started going uphill…very steeply. Aha! So up we went. And up. And up. After almost an hour of switchbacks combined with occasional stops to pick fruit (wild mangoes and limes) we broke out of the jungle on the top of the ridge. What a view! The only problem we saw at this point was that it was starting to squall and rain. Hard. It was getting very muddy. And while we WERE on the top of the ridge, we were only half way. We now had to go back down to sea level to the next bay. That meant we also had to go all the way back up and down again to get back. Oh well, what the heck. An adventure a day and all that.

After about two hours and much slipping, sliding giggling and such we finally came out of the jungle to the seashore. We were in Hatiheu Bay. It’s a typically small town. One street, a few houses and a Catholic Church. In this case, there was also a very good little restaurant. We were pooped, so a beer and some food sounded great! Again, a typical spot. No doors or windows, just a roof and a view out onto the endless Pacific Ocean. Beautiful. The waitress brought a hand written sign for a menu and we ordered; Poisson Cru (Ann), Goat Curry (John), Sauteed Prawns (Lisa) and I had Poisson Grille. All came with delicious sides of breadfruit and tomatoes with cucumbers. Yummm. The beer hit the spot too. After lunch the proprietress walked around to a stream just outside the roof and started throwing scraps in the water. And it started boiling! We thought it must be piranhas and ran outside to watch the commotion. Turned out to be fresh water eels and they were going nuts. There were probably a dozen of them, each at least three feet long and four inches across at their head. The grabbed the scraps, bones and all. Whew, don’t wade across that stream anytime near lunch time.

Lunch was followed by a little walk around town (which took about 10 minutes) and then we could delay no more the hike back up the steep hillside and over back to our bay. We got back around 4PM or so and found it was now high tide. The dinghy we left anchored in knee deep water was now neck deep. So like the locals do, John and I waded out (almost swam), pulled the anchor and walked the dinghy back in towards the beach so Ann and Lisa could get in. In the mean time I was thinking about the shark attack reported here a couple weeks ago. Turns out I should have been looking more at my feet. Ann and Lisa had seen a couple stingrays in the sand. They can leave a nasty sting if you don’t shuffle your feet and kind of nudge them out of the way. Got lucky this time that I didn’t step on one while watching for sharks.

We got back to Charisma, cleaned the fruit we picked (nothing goes into the boat that hasn’t been soaked in a germicide, we’re very careful to keep bugs out) and mixed a couple of Charismas with which to watch the sunset. Just as we settled down to enjoy our cocktails, the young guy on the boat next to us came over in his dinghy to say “hi”. We met him and his cousin on the beach today and he came over to just get to know us better. That’s one of the things we love about cruising. The camaraderie is phenomenal. Jessie (his name and his boat is Obelisk) is 30 years old. He scraped together enough money to buy a sound boat that needed a lot of work so he could sail around the world. So far he has come from Chesapeake Bay via Bahamas, Azores, West Africa, East South American, around Cape Horn, etc. So we chatted a while until a squall started spitting and he decided it best to get back. We’ll look forward to seeing more of him and his cousin.

Well, that’s our day today. Like I said, an adventure a day is all we ask.