We left Rikitea on Mangareva and headed over to the next island south called Taravai. We were feeling pretty grateful that another boat had given us their tracks around the Gambiers to import into our navigation software when we had to traverse over a shallow patch of coral in order to get into the anchorage. I’m not sure we would have trusted there was enough depth to avoid hitting it if we hadn’t had that clear path to follow. But, we ended up in a beautiful anchorage in time for the weekly Sunday barbeque.
Herve and Valerie have a home in the bay on the water and invite all the visiting boats to their home on Sundays during the summer. Their modest home has the most incredible view and is surrounded by gardens and fruit trees. On this Sunday there were boats from the US, France, New Zealand and Austria. Everyone brought some meat to throw on the open pit BBQ as well as a potluck dish to share, which included rice, potatoes, papaya salad, pasta salad, squash, etc. and tons of desserts.
There aren’t many people who live on Taravai. Herve and Valerie enjoy opening up their home to make new friends from all over the world. And, they love having boats with kids join so that their son has some new friends to play with. The day was filled with lots of laughter and games. There were many petanque games (French version of bocce ball) and lots of volleyball. We were very humbled by their warmth and generosity and looked forward to returning the next Sunday.
At the south end of Taravai, we met another couple living in their own remote paradise. We took the dinghy to the only home in the southern bay to meet Eduard and Denise. Eduard had just returned from spearfishing with a Frenchman named Pierre and showed us their catch. They had speared these beautiful surgeonfish that were black with unique orange and yellow markings on them. I later looked them up in my fish guide to find out they were called Orangespine Unicornfish.
As Eduard and Pierre were cleaning the fish, we walked up to the house to meet our friend Diana who was speaking with Denise. I was glad Diana was there to introduce us (and her French is better than mine), because it feels a bit awkward to walk up to someone’s house across their property without an invitation. But, Denise was very happy to meet us and give us kisses hello. We were also greeted by her puppy Roxy who was a little white fluff ball and couldn’t have been more than a couple of months old.
Cruisers regularly visit Denise and Eduard to do some “shopping” as they have more than a garden. I would call it an orchard if it looked like some kind of organized planting. But, really you just walk behind their home into a forest of banana stalks, lime trees, orange trees, papaya trees, breadfruit trees, etc. She also grows lots of herbs. We walked around pointing at what we would like, and she picked the ripe fruits for us which we quickly piled into our bags. Eduard came around and cut off a huge stalk of green bananas for us to hang in our cockpit while they ripen. Finally, Denise cut some fresh basil, mint and green onions and tied them in a bouquet for us. It was the best grocery shopping we have done here!
We actually had a few days of projected calm weather, so we headed across the lagoon to a small motu called Kouaku with our friends on Kini Popo. Getting there was a bit of a challenge as we had to navigate through the pearl farms. In order to develop the pearls, they hang lines or racks with the live oysters underwater suspended by buoys at the surface. We’ve been told that the oysters have to hang at 80% of the water column, so the depth of the where the oysters hang depends on how deep the water is in that spot. When navigating through the area, all we can see are the buoys at the surface, and sometimes the buoys get submerged just below the surface. The oyster lines are usually strung between two buoys, but from the surface it is impossible to tell which two buoys! So, I was up on the bow trying to navigate while Mike was at the helm. If I could see lines or submerged buoys I would yell back to him. Most of the lines were deep enough to go over. We would put the boat in neutral just in case and coast over them, but one set was definitely too shallow, and I had to yell to Mike to turn the boat quickly to starboard to go around the raised buoy which was several hundred feet away.
Once we got to the anchorage, we then had to be on the lookout for reefs and bommies. This area of the lagoon is uncharted, but we knew other boats had been there. We navigated our way through the coral reefs, found a sandy spot and dropped anchor. We had to float our chain to avoid getting caught on anything below. And, as soon as we were set, we jumped in with our masks to swim a 360 degree circle around the boat to make sure we had swing room over the coral. We dropped the anchor in 30 feet of sand, but there were coral heads that reached just 8 feet below the surface (enough for us to swing over).
We had a fun couple of days exploring the small island and snorkeling the reef outside the lagoon. We had noticed a couple on the island, who we don’t think permanently live there but were certainly camping out for a few days fishing and playing on the beach. We’re always curious about what fish the locals eat due to the ciguatera issue (dangerous fish toxin I’ve mentioned before). The locals always seem to know which fish on which reefs are safe to eat. So, when the couple came by our boat one afternoon we were pleasantly surprised to have them give us a fish they had just caught. They had quite a few of them in their boat and were genuinely happy to share their bounty without any requests in return. We didn’t get to talk to them much as they were trying to get back before sunset, but we were very excited to try out the fish. It was some sort of snapper or emperor. I couldn’t identify the exact species in our book, but I just decided to call it ceviche.
We took the ceviche over to Kini Popo for a feast that night with the lamb chops Dan put on the grill. It was a bittersweet evening as we said goodbye to Dan and Staci. They left the next morning for the Marquesas. The Marquesas would be Dan’s jumping off point for the long passage up to Hawaii and then the Pacific Northwest. It’s been a fun last two years hanging out with Kini Popo, but our paths now go separate ways…his back to the States and ours to New Zealand.
~katie