How much fruit?

Hanamoenoa Bay on Tahuata has become quite a popular anchorage since we arrived. There were initially just two other boats when we showed up, and now there are nine! It’s been fun getting to know a few of the boats here, and we have been invited to sundowners on different boats each night we’ve been here.

Our first day here we started the party atmosphere by throwing our beach chairs, a cooler of beer and some frisbees in the dinghy and heading to the beach. We set up camp under the shade of some palm trees to admire the beautiful view. Soon our small party attracted several other boats as others beached their dinghies or swam in to join the fun. We made some great new friends and had a nice day.

Dan (on Kini Popo) had two friends joining him who were arriving in Hiva Oa by plane. The anchorage at Atuona on Hiva Oa was only 10 miles away. We had heard the anchorage there can be crowded and difficult. Since Dan’s windlass still wasn’t working, Mike volunteered to go over with him. One of them would stay on the boat doing donuts in the outer harbor while the other launched the dinghy and went to pick up his crew.

Since Mike and Dan were going to be gone all day, Ben and Molly from Ripple invited me to go diving with them. Another boat in the anchorage loaned them dive gear, and they wanted to check out the reef around the anchorage. I happily agreed and we made a plan to dive from Adagio, as our boat was right above the beginning of the coral.

Their loaned dive gear didn’t have compasses, and I was the only one with a dive compass. That made me the leader underwater and responsible for getting us back to the boat. If you’ve read my previous dive adventures, you could see why this is pretty funny. Anyway, we descended and were amazed by all the colorful fish and interesting coral.

I was trying to lead us in a bit of a circle so that we would end up back at Adagio. As we were in the last turn, I was beginning to wonder if I had gotten us completely lost, as I did not see our boat or the anchor chain. I turned around and kind of shrugged at Molly to let her know I was unsure where we were. But, we kept going a little further in the same direction and the anchor chain appeared right in front of us. I was pretty proud I had navigated us right back to the boat underwater.

Mike and Dan returned that afternoon with the new crew of Dan #2 and Michelle. Unfortunately, one of their bags didn’t make it and they were going to have to go back to Hiva Oa the next day to retrieve it. In the meantime, Mike and I decided that instead of trying to get provisions in Atuona, we would try to see what we could find in the little village of Vaitahu about two miles away on Tahuata.

We anchored in the deep bay at Vaitahu and headed to shore. It was just before 2 pm, and usually the stores in FP close for a couple of hours in the middle of the day. The magasin wasn’t open yet, and some locals sitting at a cafe hollered for us to come over. They had some pamplemousse and mango to sell, but they wanted $3 for a pamplemousse and $10 for a small bag of mangos, which is ridiculous. Or, they would trade us some fruit for a bottle of whiskey, which we didn’t have. We told them we would think about it and moved on.

We started walking up the main road mainly to kill time waiting on the magasin to open. We saw a man getting in a pickup with his wife and adorable baby daughter right under a huge mango tree. Mike went over to him and asked if we could buy some mangos. The man, Oliver, jumped out and started loading up a huge bag of mangos for us. He wanted $10 for 20 good size mangos, about 5 times as many mangos as the guys at the cafe. We agreed, and then Oliver asked if we wanted pamplemousse and banana. He told us to jump in the back of his pickup and he would take us up to his farm.

We didn’t know what we were getting into as we went round and round up the mountainside with some of the most amazing views of the ocean below. We stopped at a property full of fruit trees, and Oliver went in search of fruit coming back several times with pamplemousse after pamplemousse and two huge stalks of freshly cut bananas. He then came back with a small cow on a rope who he started feeding some over ripe mangos. It was funny seeing the cow slobber the mangos eating the pit and all.

As we headed back down the mountain, we stopped at another property where Oliver dumped several buckets of the over ripe mangos to feed more cows and fill up their water trough. While we were waiting, he hacked into some green coconuts for us to drink, and we got to snap some pictures of our boat in the bay below. (I’ll post pictures when I get wifi again!)

Oliver offered to give us a ride to the magasin and wait for us, helping us get all of our bags in the dinghy. He also stopped along the way and picked us some papayas. We bought some canned goods and a few other staples at the magasin and headed back to the dinghy. In total we paid Oliver $40 for the 20 mangos, 12 pamplemousse, 2 huge banana stalks, 3 papayas, the coconut and the ride. I think we made out pretty good! I would say that we would have trouble eating all this fruit, but if you know Mike you know he eats a ridiculous amount of fruit. We might have to share some bananas though, because those are the ones to that are going to be hard to eat all of if they ripen at the same time. There must be at least 50 bananas!

We returned to Hanamoenoa and looked for a sandy spot to drop anchor among all the other boats. We still had some daylight and decided to snorkel around the boat. The water is still very clear, and there are lots of fish. We had a huge manta ray swim right by the boat!

Mike dove down about 30 feet and sat on the bottom next to a coral head. He made the noise that he calls the snapper call. He’s used it to great success spearfishing, although we weren’t spearfishing here due to ciguatera concern. Anyway, as soon as he made the noise, a six foot black tip reef shark came charging toward him to investigate. As soon as Mike made a move to head to the surface, that shark took off. Mike wondered if it was a coincidence. So, of course he did it again! And, two more times the exact same thing happened and that shark came toward him out of nowhere. The reef shark had no intentions of harming Mike, but I told Mike no more snapper call here. We do not want to attract a bigger shark!

I think we’ll likely hang out in this anchorage for a few more days as it is really lovely and we would like to do more diving. We’ll update you again when we’re moving on…

Katie

p.s. I made some goat stew from the goat meat we got from Desiderata, and it was delicious!