Dan departed early on Tuesday morning leaving just Phil and us for the next couple of days before he heads home as well. We decided to remain in Taiohae until he leaves and have had a super time, hiking out to the headland at the mouth of the bay, enjoying delicious Marquesan food in company, attending a traditional Polynesian afternoon of dancing, flowers and food-tasting and finally the World ARC awards evening last night.
We were also very touched when the children on the rally conducted their own awards ceremony and presented Tumi with a 'good luck T-shirt’ for fishing. After learning of the theft of our fishing rod in Puerto Ayora, they thought we deserved some luck and so made the t-shirt for us, decorating it with writing and fish. We were very touched but it did bring us luck …. we caught 5 fish on the leg to the Marquesas, the joint highest tally of the fleet.
The weather forecast for sailing down to the Tuamotos archipelago is not looking too good …. no wind! We would like to see a bit more of Nuka Hiva before we leave so we are thinking of going along to a neighbouring bay tomorrow to hike to a waterfall, the third highest in the world, and then the following day around to the north coast to a beautiful bay. Hopefully the winds will return for us to then sail down to Fakarava! Just a bit more provisioning and comms to do as we'll be even more off the grid there than we are here. And talking of provisioning, the prices here are very high .... $7 for a head of celery, $4.50 a dozen eggs, $16+ for a bottle of table wine and $25+ for a recognisable variety; $2.50 for a green pepper or can of coke ... and this is all assuming you can find any! Rumour has is that there might be some tomatoes available this morning .... we'll get up early to see!
Excellent attempt at a haka Paul.
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Wasn't that so thoughtful of the children x
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