27/6/08  18:00

We walked around town.  Everyone is very friendly.  Lots of young people in the street.  Everything is pretty immaculate.  The French infrastructure in evidence. I went to the Gendarmerie to check in and it was closed.  Someone said come back two hours later which I did and there was no one there. I waited an hour and someone turned up and we did what we had to do.

While walking around the village- and there are some 1500 people scattered through out this atoll- a voice  called out “mangez mangez” and a group of fishermen, at least I assumed they were fishermen, insisted we join them.  They had a Parrot Fish which was fantastic.  They put a cocoanut milk mixture in a half shell into which they dipped most of what they ate, which included what I think was bread fruit.  It took a while to get used to the proliferation of flies but the company were absolutely charming.  They warned us not to leave the boat unlocked as there are many thieves here, so we cut short our visit and rushed back to the boat which was fine as we are anchored out and not in the little harbour.

Tonight we will try one of the two restaurants and tomorrow we will go to what looked like a really nice spot on the way in for a swim and if we like it, we’ll stay another day before heading off to the next atoll some 20 miles away.

28/6/08  10:00

It turns out we are an hour earlier here than we thought i.e. GMT -10 which probably accounts for some of the confusion trying to find the Gendarme yesterday.  Dinner last night was in a very charming local place, we were the only customers but maybe it’s because we were an hour early….  There were seven yachts here last week and they stayed for a week.  I have been befriended by Tony White a local whose father owns big chunks of land here and in Moorea.  He has 5 brothers and three sisters because he says his parents didn’t have television.  I had arranged to meet him at 8 this morning and was a bit put out when he didn’t show not realizing I had the time wrong.  He turned up a 7:30 and we went to his family house to use the internet as I had to download some very large EQUUS files from Ted in New York.  The PC pretended to download for about an hour and I thought the connection must really be slow.  I restarted and in did the lot in 10 minutes, about 15 meg. Yesterday’s lunch host was Tony’s cousin who apparently has a few every day and is quite merry.

We can vouch for that.