After four amazing days diving the south pass of Fakarava, the wind picked up and gave us our first opportunity to try out our new kiteboarding equipment. We had been trying to coordinate with a French guy on a sailboat who offered lessons, as we were true beginners. But, it just didn’t seem to work out to meet up with him. As luck would have it, there was another boat in the anchorage with a couple of expert kiteboarders who were willing to give us a bit of a tutorial to get us started. They were extremely generous with their time and knowledge spending a couple of days with us to at least get the beginnings of trying to learn this sport.
There is a pretty big learning curve in kiteboarding, so you have to struggle through those initial stages to get up and running. First, you have to learn to control this huge kite, getting it up in the air and steering it while it pulls you around. Learning to fly the kite you start by body dragging where the kite pulls you around in the water without a board. Once you have that down, you can finally try getting up on a board.
I’m still working on controlling the kite. My first few hours of trying to get the kite up, keep it up and steer it in the water resulted in my swallowing and inhaling more salt water than is good for you. When the kite starts dragging you without you having full control over it, you get sucked under the water with the salt water getting shoved up your nose and involuntarily cleaning out your sinuses! Of course Mike caught on to the kite much faster than me. He was up on the board in two days, but I still have a long way to go…
After two days, the wind shut down on us and we decided to head to the north end of Fakarava and the village of Rotoava. This is the biggest town we have been to in the Tuamotus, which means the one road is actually paved. There is more activity here though. They have an airport and a few small hotels. There are some dive shops and tour boats to entertain the tourists.
One of our objectives in Rotoava was to find some pearls. We have seen the pearl farms throughout the Tuamotus, but we had heard that Rotoava was a place you could actually purchase the pearls without the huge markup you would find in Tahiti. So, we set out on bicycles one morning to head down to a pearl farm that had a showroom with pearls for sale.
We biked several miles south of town until we came to a small sign on the road for the pearl farm. It took us a few minutes to find the “showroom” which was really just the living room of the owner of the pearl farm that had a couple of tables set up with jewelry and loose pearls to view. These pearls are not your grandmother’s pearls. They are black pearls, which is really a misnomer. The pearls aren’t black but various shades of grey. They are beautiful.
The owner of the pearl farm took the time to explain the pearl making process and how pearls are rated. The pearls have classifications, a bit like diamonds, based on the size, color, any imperfections and the amount of sheen. We were really interested in how the pearls are cultivated. The owner explained how the Chinese had developed the technique of grafting to get the round pearls. They insert a “nucleus” into the oyster that is part of a shell from a freshwater mussel from Mississippi of all places. The inserted shell is round and the oyster forms the pearl around the nucleus. He showed us a pearl that had been cut in half so that you could see the inside of it. Apparently it takes 18 months for the pearl to be created. When they remove the pearl, they can insert another nucleus the size of the pearl that was removed to create an even bigger pearl, and they can do this with an oyster up to four times.
We perused the jewelry that he had to offer and bought a few pieces as well as some loose pearls that we can take to a jeweler back in the States to make some gifts for people. They really are unique, and I was quite happy with our purchases for a pretty reasonable price.
We spent a few more days hanging out in Rotoava and snorkeling the north pass and some nearby reefs. We were waiting for the supply ship to come in, so that the stores would have fresh food. We knew we would need to provision up for a couple of weeks before we made our way to Tahiti, and we were just about out of all fresh fruits, vegetables and meat.
Everybody in town knows when the supply ship is coming into town, and the dock is full of people waiting for the goods they ordered to be offloaded from the ship. Likewise, everyone is in the stores waiting for the new goods to be put out. We were in one of the magazins waiting for the produce to arrive and were not the only people standing around the store. As the store workers started setting out the apples, oranges, lettuce, broccoli, eggplant, etc., there was a bit of a feeding frenzy as the store patrons surrounded the bins and filled up their baskets. We were pretty excited to have some fresh food.
We had spent about two weeks in Fakarava, and it was time to move on. So, we made the decision to head up to the next atoll, Toau. More on that next time…
~Katie