16:44S 151:10W

 

We’ve had a few very relaxing days in Raiatea which has been fantastic.  After Chick and Pete left on Thursday we headed to the main town of Uta Roa to provision, then down to a stunning spot on the east coast anchoring in the lee of a lovely motu (island).   Our friends Chris and Sara from Tulu were there and so the next day we headed off to explore a nearby river by dinghy with them.  It’s the only navigable river in French Polynesia and we headed about a mile up it.  It was very lush with tropical vegetation and at the end were the Botanic Gardens – a nice bonus.

 

Then it was time for chores – cleaning Bandit’s bottom (we’d opted not to haul in Raiatea so had to scrub off the marine growth!), polishing stainless and waxing the hull and topsides.  In between times we headed out to the reef to snorkel and saw some lovely fish and nice coral  On our third snorkel we spied a rather large black tip reef shark – the largest we have ever seen – so opted to call it a day.  They are non aggressive but we felt it was a good time to leave the water!

 

A friendly local chap PeeWee lives on a boat in the lagoon and works at the nearby pearl farm.  He had some gorgeous pearls from his own farm (he farms 1000 oysters) and as we believe in supporting locals when we can, we bought a few more to add to our growing collection.  Tahitian black pearls are an acquired taste.....we love them more and more!  Can’t wait to get home and have a necklace made up.

 

After the weekend we headed up to the dock in Utu Roa for more provisioning and to fill up with fuel and camping gas.  It was the first time we’d been on a dock since Panama and it was easy to jerry jug diesel from the nearby gas station and refill our camping gas bottles.  It’s only a few weeks until we head away on our next leg so we made the most of being on a dock to do all these things.  It’s certainly easier wheeling a trolley full of supplies back to Bandit than having to load them into the tender – sheer bliss!

 

We’re now midway to Huahine and have just lost a huge mahimahi much to David’s disgust.  It’s the fourth we’ve lost.  This one we managed to get right to the back of the boat.  I was secretly pleased it got off as it was big and beautiful.....and I took photos to prove it.  However, that doesn’t solve the problem of tonight’s dinner.  The supermarket in Huahine has fresh tuna so we may have to resort to that unless another fish comes along.