Hanging out in Raroia

Nickanddenisesailing
Mon 19 Jun 2017 00:00
16.02.32 S, 142.28.18 W

Well we have already totally lost track of time and the days fly by.

We have had a great time in Raroia, if this is a sign of things to come then we are totally stoked. Bring on the rest of the Tuamotos - warning - we may never leave......

I think we had just under a week in Rarioa. We spent a lot of our time in the water and enjoying all that island life has to offer. We made friends with a local guy called Kauli who is about the same age as us and is into his windsurfing and surfing. He became our un offical tour guide for a day or two. We spent many hours snorkeling around the various reef areas, including the outer reef - which was just stunning. Incredible clear water (around 40-50m visibility), beautiful corals, large fish and many reef sharks. He warned us away from snorkeling through the pass its self as there have been a few large tiger sharks in the area - we happily obliged. He also took us to one of the more remote islands and showed us a whole load of coconut crabs. I think they are the largest crabs in the world and are totally awesome to look at. Definitely worth a google if you get the chance.

We have spent most of our days hanging out with our boaty mates on Sun of Moondance which has been great fun. We had an exciting dinner one night on board where Nick taught us all about shark fishing. Jasper (10 years old) was totally amazed and is now very excited about more fishing adventures with Nick. We also had a hilarious snorkel trip with the gang. We came across some ramoras (the 'SOM' guys call them 'Shark Suckers' - the fish that stick onto the bottom of larger fish and sharks - we get many under the boat too). These fish would just not leave us alone. It was so funny to watch as each of us looked down at our tummies and saw that we had a new friend. This was all well and good until our fishy friends decided to suck on and what a weird feeling - a bit like a bite so not all that comfortable! There were many shrieks and lots of laughter as we all tried to cope with our new mates which did not want to leave us alone. Needless to say we were very distracted on our sno
rkeling
trip. Hopefully they found themselves some new friends when we left. I will put some photos up and there is one of Nick with one that took a real shine to him.

We also had a great evening at some of the locals house. We had donated our batteries (which we had replaced in Panama) to the guys in the village and had been, firstly given a handful of fish and then secondly been invited to a drumming jam session in the evening at one of the houses on the beach. People from all four of the cruising boats (that were anchored up in the bay) were there and we had a great time hanging out, drinking, relaxing and drumming. Nick really enjoyed himself and after we stumbled back onto the boat he proclaimed 'BEST NIGHT EVER' haha :)

Despite having all this fun we have been busy doing a few job boats but we have also been scoping out the place for future research and possible work opportunities. There is a real need in the island for some sort of food security. At the moment they rely on a supply ship from Tahiti which comes once every 3 weeks. This is one of the only sources of fresh veggies they get - and they are extremely expensive. Many people are trying desperately to grow their own food but its so arid and the soil so poor. There is so much potential for aquaponics to make a real difference here. We have already talked about it a lot and it was great to finally start putting things into action. I had a really successful meeting with the Mayor and am pleased that we have their contact details and support if we go ahead and apply for funding when we get back to NZ. Our plan is to meet with as many people as possible and start the conversation.

Anyway after all that fun we decided to leave Raroia last night in a bit of a hurry to get slack tide going out of the pass. We are now anchored up in another atoll - Makemo. I will send the next update from here in a couple of days.










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