Hana Moe Noe

Karinya
Tim And Vicki Schofield, Captain Cal 7 and Jess 4
Fri 24 Jun 2011 21:14
9.54s 1.39.06w

Hiva Oa was a friendly island, but a dreadful anchorage. Dirty water, lots
of bugs, rolly, sharks so no swimming. However, I did manage a 3 mile run
for 3 days, which almost crippled me, but felt good all the same. The
island is much larger than the last with a few shops and sites. We visited
Gauguin's grave, who was a famous French painter and sampled the local
weekly fresh market. This consisted of the back of someone's van with a
very few but good quality salad items. How fantastic was it to have
something fresh and green!!!! Tim, however, couldn't help but complain
about the price of all of this, he just couldn't stop himself...but £17 for
2 cucumbers, 4 tomatoes, bunch of green beans, 3 lettuce, 1 aubergine and
some spring onions, cant really blame him I guess.

Anyway, we moved around the corner to an island called Hana Moe Noe. A very
pretty bay, with swimming . We had a beautiful snorkel, lots of amazing
colourful fish, the ones you see on the front of tropical fish books. At
last they actually do exist!!! We then decided to go to the beach and play.
The surf was very strong which proved difficult bringing the dingy in and
out on the beach, we did manage to take a wave and fill the dingy, which
Callum thought was 'cool'. As you can imagine that was not our thoughts!
We had heard that there were some sharks around, but it didn't stop
us....yet. Some guy swims from his anchored dingy with a 4 ft Mahi Mahi
onto the shore to gut it. Yes you can imagine the smell. He then stood in
the sea waiting to swim back to the dingy with the gutted fish. The
children and I are in the water. Tim is on the shore and suddenly shouts
'shark!!!'. We swam rather fast out and he was right. Only about 1.5
meters and think only a black reefed shark, but none the less, a big hungry
fish, clearly moving towards his food. 10 minutes later and the guy still
swims back to his boat, with the fish under water. We do meet some crazy
people.
We had a lovely time and were able to catch up with all our friends at last,
KatyC, Telos, Dream Catcher. Callum and Jessica are overjoyed as they now
have friends to play with. Callum especially,y has a boy, a year older than
him and they have lots of fun sailing and playing around the boat.
We are now moving to the last of our Marquesian islands before moving to the
Tuamotos.