Fatu Hiva 4

VulcanSpirit
Richard & Alison Brunstrom
Wed 23 May 2012 03:05
The main industry here is copra - oil extracted from the white internal flesh of the coconut. There must be a lot of money in it, because everyone here is driving round in late model Japanese pick-ups. Here is copra, drying in a special shelter:
 
 
It needs to dry in the sun, but it musn't get wet and it rains a lot here. So the copra drying sheds have sliding roofs going backwards and forwards on rails as you can see on the left of this picture:
 
 
These are manually operated, so someone has to sit here ready to cover the copra up if it rains. It's always showery here at present, so there is a lot of to-ing and fro-ing.
 
The village is remarkably spick and span, no litter to be seen(no MacDonald's!), the grass is cut and people have neat tidy gardens (often, since this is French, with a gate sliding on rails). Completely and utterly different to the mess of the Caribbean, even the French islands. It's so clean that this street reminded us a bit of Austria - mountains, flowers everywhere and tidy: 
 
 
This is what the houses used to look like, but nowadays almost everyone lives in a nice smart modern bungalow:
 
 
All in all a very nice place - but I wouldn't want to live here.