Tuamotos - Fakarava
Questionable Logic
Ewan Briggs
Fri 19 Jun 2009 08:46
Position: 16 03.5S
145 37.3W
This is another
stunning atol (we've come to the conclusion that they're all beautiful) much
more developed than the last one, and much bigger.
Once through the
wide and easy pass, we made for the village in the north east (Rotoava). Here we
found Son of the Sun who were our neighbours in Shelter Bay in Panama - small
world! We've also since bumped into Celandine, the super yacht that Mairi has
been working on.
One of the things
we've learnt about French Polynesian culture is to be very skeptical about their
opening times. Getting to the pizza place when it was actually open and making
pizzas was more challenging that it perhaps ought to have been, but the end
result was a good one. And further south the resort restaurant does some great
burgers - so we've been catching up on our fast food quota (and loosing our
castaway skinny bodies to some extent - time for another
passage!!).
Having cleaned up
the waterline it was time to get under the boat and clean off the weed and
barnicles. Fortunately there weren't many and they came off pretty easily. The
back antifoul is doing a great job of hiding the worst of it I'm sure (turned
out to be a much better choice than white!).
Jem Duncan (from Sea
Topaz) and I dove the pass with a local centre. This dive is just awesome - the
visibility, sharks, fish, coral all stunning. And with it being a drift dive you
don't really have to do that much work to see it all. Apparently the southern
pass is even more stunning to dive and snorkel (Celandine were there this
morning and recon they saw about 200 sharks - nice.
So life is pretty
tough really. The scenery is just awesome, beautiful sunsets, turquoise water,
palm trees and beaches everywhere and the hopsitality of our new support boat
(Mum and Dad on Sea Topaz)!
Next we're planning
to head south down the atol to find a quiet spot to anchor for a night or two
before heading down to the southern pass where we'll try to do some diving and
snorkelling if the weather holds up.