This is our fourth day in Fatu Hiva. It truly is a tropical
\nparadise. The island has about 600 inhabitants, and the little
\nvillage that we are anchored next to probably has 150 of those
\ninhabitants. Everyone barters for goods. No one is interested
\nin money. We only wish we had stocked up on more goods to
\ntrade. The big items to trade to get fresh fruit (pamplemousse
\n(like pomelos), bananas, papayas) seem to be soap, perfume,
\nearrings, hair dye, sun-glasses and flip-flops. Getting fish is
\ntrickier, and in fact, we have not yet been able to swing a
\ndeal. The fisherman want liquor, fishing lures, strong rope,
\nboat fenders, or, strangely enough- bullets! We don’t want to
\ngive them liquor as we have heard that this leads to some pretty
\nbad behavior among the men (also it is illegal to trade), and we
\ndon’t have spare fishing lures, rope, or fenders. We certainly
\ndon’t have bullets. We are really trying to figure out what
\nthey want the bullets for.<\/p>\n
If you walk along the road there are mango trees, but
\nunfortunately we are a few weeks past mango season, so there is
\nnot much to pick. Apparently you could pick all you wanted if
\nyou arrived earlier. There are lots of lime trees, and you can
\nalso pick your own pamplemousse and bananas as long as you are
\ncareful not to take from someone’s personal yard. Yesterday we
\ntraded one of my button down cotton shirts and a bar of soap for
\na big stalk of bananas (about 50) and eight huge pamplemousse.
\nThe lady that we traded with was just standing in her garden –
\nand we noticed that she had a huge pamplemousse tree, filled
\nwith fruit, and on it she had hung several large stalks of
\nbananas. She was very shy, and sweet, and seemed quite pleased
\nwith our exchange, even though what she really wanted were
\nsunglasses, earrings and nail files. When we were walking down
\nthe road, another lady beckoned us over from her house. She was
\ndressed in her sarong and a ratty bra – I think she was quite
\nyoung, but she had a lot of grey hair and only a few teeth. She
\nwanted to arrange a trade with us. We didn’t seem to have
\nanything she wanted, and then she mentioned hair-dye. Bingo! A
\ndeal was struck. I happen to have a dozen or so bottles around
\nthe boat and so we arranged to do an exchange for fruit. I think
\nwe will wait a few days until we finish up some of the stuff we
\nhave on board first. When I think of all the old earrings, small
\nbottles of perfume, beaded necklaces and other valuables I
\ntossed when we moved out of our house I get upset. I could have
\nhad a veritable boatload of fruit for that stuff.<\/p>\n
Luckily, a few of the families do cook dinners for the boaters
\nin exchange for money ( hooray!). Our second night here another
\nboat helped organize a dinner party on shore at one of the
\nhouses who apparently do this at least once a week. It was
\ngreat. There are anywhere from 15 to 20 boats in the harbour at
\nany time, and that night, people from 11 or 12 boats came to the
\nparty. We knew almost all of them, and the few that we had not
\nmet before, seemed familiar to us as we had seen their boats or
\nheard them on the radio. Since we all just made this huge
\nocean crossing there is a strong feeling of camaraderie among
\nthe boaters, so it was really fun to have dinner with them. It
\nwas served on someone’s verandah – and the family had prepared a
\nfeast of local food – raw fish marinated in coconut milk ( which
\nwas delicious), chicken also cooked in coconut milk (very bony
\nchicken), pork with beans (yuck), barbecued bananas, bread,
\nrice, some type of salad ( no greens), barbequed breadfruit(also
\nan acquired taste) and pamplemousse for dessert. Some of the
\ncruisers brought wine. The husband of the family played ukelele
\nand guitar, and their little 3 year old did an incredible
\nPolynesian dance. There were several people there that we like
\nvery much, particularly an Austrian couple on the boat Rishu
\nMaru who are traveling around the world with their 9 year old
\nson. They built Rishu Maru from wood and epoxy themselves. It
\nwas really fun. It is interesting to note that we were the only
\nAmerican boat in the group – the others were from Austria (3
\nboats), Germany, France, Switzerland, Turkey, Canada, South
\nAfrica and Italy.<\/p>\n
Our legs are still kind of weak from sitting on the boat so
\nlong, but we have taken a few walks. The anchorage is known as
\none of the most beautiful in the world, and it truly lives up to
\nits reputation, so we are not even that anxious to leave the
\nboat as the view is so amazing. The walks, however, are
\nincredible, as it does not take much to get up to a high
\nviewpoint and then the colors of green, the high peaks, the
\njagged pinnacles, the black outcroppings, the smooth green
\nvalleys, are all just simply astounding.<\/p>\n
All of the boats arriving here have a thick layer of barnacles
\nand green scum that somehow accumlated during the voyage. We
\ntook one look at our boat, and groaned thinking about how much
\nwork it would be to scrape it all clean. Very fortunately for
\nus, however, there is another boat near us – Robyn’s Nest, with
\na crew of 5 very young and energetic people who were anxious to
\nmake some money and they offered to clean our boat for us. We
\ngladly agreed and two of them spent 3 hours bobbing and diving
\nin the warm water cleaning the boat to perfection.<\/p>\n
You are supposed to check in with the local authority (the
\ngendarme) when you arrive here, and then apparently he gives you
\nonly 2 or 3 days at most before he says you must leave and do
\nthe official check-in at the more populated island of Hiva Oa.
\nLuckily for us, as soon as we got into the harbour
\nsomeone told us that the “gendarme” hangs around the dinghy
\ndock in the morning and tries to catch all the new boaters and
\nregister them and give them their 48-72 hourwarning as soon as
\nthey come. Since we are not anxious to leave this place, we
\nhave been avoiding him by not going into town until late in the
\nafternoon. Whenever he finally catches us we will have to
\npretend we just arrived. Apparently he doesn’t even have a
\nboat, and you can’t see the boats in the harbour very
\nclearly from the shore, so he doesn’t really know who is here.
\nWe have been very straight with all official rules up to this
\npoint on our trip, but we are going to have some big issues with
\ngetting a three month visa here once we do officially check in,
\nso we want to stretch our pre-check in time as long as we can.
\nNot a bad place to hang out, that is for sure.<\/p>\n
Last night, we had a funny exchange for food, but it was with
\nother yachties, not with the locals. Apparently word got out
\nthat we have eggs on our boat. Believe it or not, but it is
\nimpossible to get eggs here. So some of the other boats, with
\nwomen who like to cook, approached me to see what they could
\ntrade with me to get a few eggs. We were thrilled to find that
\nthey, unlike us, had caught so many fish on their trip that they
\ndidn’t know what to do with them, and it was all in their
\nfreezer. So we ended up trading 8 eggs for a large hunk of
\nfresh caught tuna. We finally had our fish dinner – and they
\napparently made cornbread and mango bread (must be like zuchini
\nbread). Very funny. We had actually approached a fisherman on
\nshore yesterday evening and simply could not swing a deal with
\nhim to get fish. Money? No. T-shirts? No. Coffee? No. He either
\nwanted boat line or bullets, so we just had to walk away.<\/p>\n
Our second night here we came into town for a walk and found
\nthat there was a village wide celebration in honor of the Virgin
\nMary. Everyone in town was in the church, all dressed up, the
\nwomen in their mumus and the men in clean t-shirts and shorts.
\nThey were singing some very pretty songs accompanied by the
\nukelele and guitar. We wanted to sit in to listen to the
\nservice, but we were on a mission. As we were taking our
\ndinghy into shore, another boat had frantically called us over.
\n They pointed to the boat in front of them, a large catamaran
\ncalled Miss Jody, and said that Miss Jody was dragging her
\nanchor. It looked like Miss Jody was going to be right on top of
\nthe other boat, and then possibly onto the adjacent cliffs in a
\nvery short time. They told us that the crew of Miss Jody were
\non shore and asked if we could find them and tell them that
\ntheir boat was dragging. We had never met Miss Jody so we didn’t
\nknow what they looked like, but there aren’t too many foreigners
\nhere and we figured we could pick them out from the locals
\neasily enough. So when we got to shore, and saw everyone at the
\nchurch we just kept walking down the road trying to find these
\npeople. We ended up having a lovely walk (our first walk on
\nland), but after an hour and a half it was getting dark and we
\nstarted heading back to town. Just as we got back to town we
\nfound the people from Miss Jody, who had apparently been in the
\nharbour the whole time, just visiting other boats on their
\ndinghy, and their boat was ok. Then just a minute later the
\nentire village approached us, in procession, singing, and
\ncarrying statues of the Virgin Mary, all adorned with flowers.
\nWe joined the group ( along with several other yachties), and
\nreally enjoyed the whole event – as they stopped at 3 different
\nflower adorned displays in honor of the Virgin Mary and sang
\nsongs and prayers.<\/p>\n
P.S. I can not begin to tell you how handy my French has come
\nin. Not only is it very fun for me, but it is unbelievably
\nuseful.
\nL.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is our fourth day in Fatu Hiva. It truly is a tropical paradise. The island has about 600 inhabitants, and the little village that we are anchored next to probably has 150 of those inhabitants. Everyone barters for goods. No one is interested in money. We only wish we had stocked up on more … <\/p>\n