Varo

Rhiann Marie - Round the World
Stewart Graham
Sun 23 May 2010 08:02
May23rd 2030 Local May24th 0624 UTC       
 
15:18.41S 146:22.81W
 
When I last blogged we were just leaving Fakarava and heading on North. It is strange this North South thing. We are used to talking about the cold North wind and in Tetamanu in Fakarava, they were complaining that it was very cold due to the South wind! We are now heading North to get warmer as it was only 29 degrees way down south in Fakarava....
 
Anyway enough of the obvious. Our trip from Fakarava was uneventful and I dont even think I fished as we had a backlog of food in the fridge to eat. It seems every time Trish takes something out of the freezer for dinner I catch or sometimes even cadge a fish.
 
There was barely a breath of wind the whole way so we motored up the 40 miles or so to the north of Toau. This is a strange pass. It is a "blind" one and simply takes you into a lagoon, but a very gorgeous one at that. ( I really am sorry but none of these adjectives do any justice to the places we are visiting and there is only so many times that "beautiful" and "gorgeous" can be used with any impact). This place is called Anse Amyot and there are a couple of families living there. We anchored up right in the middle of the lagoon and it wasn't long before a plywood speed boat arrived into the anchorage from afar. We hailed them over and met two very jolly local people who we invited aboard for a cold drink after their long trip from Apataki. They were still half gassed from their all night Tuesday party in Apataki. It seems they go up to Apataki, the next atoll North, every Tuesday to meet the supply boat from tahiti and they said it always ends up a bit of a party. Three of them had travelled up, but there were only two on the boat returning. They said that he couldn't be wakened when they had to leave and the supply ship would drop the third member of the party back outside their bay later!
 
Anyway, aboard they came and we had a howling laugh with them. It turns out they are Gaston and Valentine, he from Tahiti iti and she from the Tuamoto's and a direct relative of the last Queen of the Tuamotos. They are well known to cruisers in the area and are very friendly. As fellow islanders we hope we are too and we hit it off with them. We thought we would only anchor there for lunch before going on to Apataki, but off course we ended up staying two days with them.
 
Now you may never have heard of this creature, but if you like your crustaecians there is none better - the Varo. One of the rarest shellfish you will ever find and it lives only in Toau and in lesser numbers in one or two other islands. Well, having read about the Varo, I asked Gaston about it and he was impressed that I knew about it. It wasn't difficult it was right there in my pilot book!  Anyway to cut a long story short we went fishing the next morning and "we" (Gaston) caught four of them. This thing - yes THING - lives in burrows in the sand under 2 foot of water or so. A mature one is about 2 inches wide and 18 inches long from tail to end of "praying mantis" like claws and is the most delicious shellfish you could ever taste ( if you don't eat Scottish shellfish that is - seriously). The fishing method is to spot a small hole in the sandy seabed indicating his burrow, bend down with your ass in the air and you face masked face in the water and tap a fish wrapped twig across the hole with one hand, while your other hand waits to grab the Varo's claws as he takes the bait. Then firmly holding his pincers with one hand the other is thrust into the sand to grab his body and hoik him out. I have never seen such a bizarre creature in my life. I can't truly describe it but will post a photo soon.
 
Gaston and Valentine were putting on a dinner that night for the boats and Varo was on the menu. Being the fishing companion I was not only shown the cooking method in the kitchen but I was given the lions share of the Varo. On this one occasion I put my normal shy disposition to one side and I did not hesitate for one second to devour every bit of the Varo I could get. I think me "sooking" the innards out of the head as I do at home with Scottish Prawns impressed them so they just gave me more. We had a great time and a great dinner.      
 
The night before however we had a great dinner also. Rhiann Marie's coconut fish curry. Her's the recipe:
 
Climb one coconut tree and recover several coconuts. Pick the bark out off your grazed forearms after
Split off husk without chopping off your fingers or stabbing yourself
Chop top off nut with machete and pour water into glass - (drink half when nobody is looking)     
Split coconut in half with aforementioned machete being careful not to cut your hand off at the wrist - ala convicted Arabian thief - what would people think?
Grind out or scrape out coconut 
"Wring" the ground coconut in dish cloth to squeeze out milk, being careful not to rip cloth in two with the tension - I did........
Sit down and have a cold drink ..... then take spear gun and jump over the side. Shoot one or two fish when the sharks are not looking. I decided on parrot fish and a red snapper because they came in close range and were edible (if you believe some of the locals but not the others)
Scale, gut and skin fish on back of boat being careful not to cut into your teak or your toes 
 
Ask your wife to do the chopping of onions and garlic and peppers and set the cooking tools out as by now you are exhausted and blood is present on most of your limbs (on the outside) and it does not look good on the onions.
 
Marinade the fish in salt, pepper, olive oil, wholegrain mustard (go easy), tartare sauce - yes, tartare sauce (1 teaspoon) then a sprinkling from some jar of "Fish Spices" that you once bought on holiday in Thailand and leave for half an hour till your wife finishes the chopping bit.
 
Now heat up your cooking oil; in with the onions, garlic, peppers, fish, a splash of "Susies" hot chilli sauce, a sprinkling of curry powder, coconut milk prepared earlier, the half glass of coconut water you didn't drink ....... un be luddy lievable!
 
Alternatively, if you are a bit pushed for time or neither you nor anyone on your street has a coconut tree just nip down to Tescos and you can get a jar for two quid and you will probably keep all your limbs intact too. 
 
Again we were sad to leave but the show must go on..... but not before Gaston and Valentine came to give us gifts and had us write up their visitors book. In return we had given them gifts and supplied them with some medicines and such like that they requested, along with lemons which we had and they needed for the raw fish dish which they made for us at the dinner.
 
I had also repaired Gaston's outboard engine, which I had diagnosed as being starved of fuel and cured by removing the beach from his fuel filter - "but it's only six months old" he said in bewilderment......... so everyone was happy and we could feel we had given a little something back for their kindness to us and other cruising yachtsmen.    
 
After leaving Toau ( To ah oo - boy, do they like their vowels) we headed over the twenty or so miles to the pass at Apataki. On leaving the anchorage at Toau where Nika had joined us the previous day I made a bit of a foopah.
 
I have done several silly things on this trip so far. 
 
One day fired my speargun's first shot from the cockpit into the water - never to see the spear again and to be whiplashed by the cord which snapped when there was no water resistance to slow the spear down. 
 
Another day, not content with my thought through policy of dumping bottles at sea when far off shore, and in thousands of feet of water, I thought it would be a good idea to break the bottles while dumping them over the side. So - I took the first bottle - a clear one - and let it drop over the side with one hand while smashing it with a hammer with the other. Excellent idea - except that the bottle exploded when hit with the hammer (even though it had no lid) and impregnated me from head to waist with glass and sprayed the whole afterdeck with clear, difficult to see shards of glass - well you get the picture....... 
 
I can't remember the other ones now but I will tell you when I remember. Anyway I was telling you about leaving the anchorage - you see I have developed this very clever idea of stringing two fenders together and tying them off under the transom at night, which minimises any bottom slapping in the evening if you know what I mean. However if you drive off from an anchorage with them still tied in place, waving your goodbyes, it is not so clever, eh!
 
This whole blog is going on a bit and I know that some of the Gael Force staff read it - so to minimise the disruption to service I will leave this one now and tell you all about the amazing time we have had in Apataki and some other stupid things I have done if I can remember them!  By for now ........... and you lot GET BACK TO WORK!