If you recall from a previous blog we did a fairly difficult hike in Bora-Bora. Well, here we are in Maupiti many days past the sore muscle agony of Mount Otemaun. Our "friend" Gavin from Pacific Flyer has told us that this hike is no where near as strenuous as the mountain on Bora-Bora. Great, we love a good hike but are maybe not up for another straight uphill scramble. Voyageur decided to do the hike a day earlier than us, Nikolai came by to report that although it was about half as long as the infamous Bora-Bora hike it may well be a little more difficult. Oh boy! We are committed at this point and so the next morning we get up and dutifully prepare for the hike. We are going with Full Monty and Sueno. The hike starts out with a steep climb up about 50 concrete stairs. These actually lead to a house that looks like it may have been destroyed in the last cyclone. I cannot imagine doing these stairs daily, never mind with groceries. (But think of the chiseled legs you would have) We continue straight uphill, just as steep as our last hike and more in the hot sun, but no crying for these seasoned hikers. The male children (Zack, Guillaume, Max and Colin) have raced ahead and meet us occasionally only to tell us how long they have been waiting for us slow pokes before they race off again. They don't even look tired and they are definitely not sweating, unlike us who are panting like dogs. The first rope climb is simple, the second a little longer and more challenging. We are nearing the top and there is a rock cliff about 100 feet tall and I cannot imagine we are going to climb this even with a rope. We get to the base and the trail does continue upwards, except as steep as this is there is no rope to help you up. I would have turned around at this point except that my son is already at the top and is throwing down taunts. He has scaled this cliff, in crocs, like it was absolutely nothing. OK, here we go. Up was actually not all that bad, a few tough spots but definitely doable. The view from the top is amazing, absolutely worth the hike, we can see the whole island and the fringing reef and Motus. (small outer islands) The only issue is Zack walking around like he is in a field somewhere safe and not on the top of a sheer cliff. I do my best not to lecture and over mother because he is 7 and his buddies and 11 and 13, so if I baby him I get a big lecture myself when we get home. Fortunately he does not fall and we all have some lunch and get ready to go back down. I am very nervous about the descent, it is always more difficult going down. Zack races ahead and is down the cliff face before I can get to him and make him go down with David behind him. He is very good at getting away from me if he thinks I will baby him in front of his buddies. As it was David had to help me down the cliff. We hustled on to catch up with the group and met them at the rope climb. Only one person can go down at a time so we caught up with Zack. I told him to go down with David and if looks could kill I would not be writing this blog now. He went down by himself! The rest of the hike down was easy and the kids met us at the bottom. I had nightmares that night and vowed to never hike anything that steep again, because what kind of mother would let her 7 year old do that. David laughed at me the next morning when I told him and Zack said the hike was easy. So I guess I am just over protective and anyway I was out voted I guess we will be doing all hikes in the future. We spent the next day provisioning for our passage to Suwarrow in the Cook Islands. We found a nice little bakery with baguette and pastries. I got an eclair, a Paris Breast and a huge cream puff to surprise Zack, which we ate in one sitting as soon as I got home, right before lunch. You only live once. We also found a good vegetable stand and were able to get very fresh lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and cucumbers.

We headed out of Maupiti with very light winds that were predicted to increase moderately during our passage. Perfect. As we came out of the pass the winds were almost non-existent and "increase" was a bit of an overstatement. We poled the jib out and put the staysail on the opposite side, wing on wing and we were off, at about 2 knots for a 700 mile passage. The winds remained light but did increase a bit. We were making OK time and the sail was very pleasant with calm seas. That and we were dusting Full Monty and Sueno!! We check in on twice-daily SSB nets and we were 60 to 70 miles ahead of them for most of the trip. This was great and all until the end of the trip when we realized we would not be able to make Suwarrow in the daylight and would be there between 7 and 9 PM. We had to slow down and hold off all night. The winds were very light but as soon as we pulled in most of our sail the winds and seas picked up. We bounced around like a cork for the entire night. It was miserable and we got no sleep at all. Teach us to gloat about being fast!

Suwarrow is a nature preserve in the Cook Islands, which belong to New Zealand, We are back into English speaking countries which is easier but less exotic. Zack was working hard on learning French so hopefully we can keep going with that. As we pulled in and were looking for a spot to drop our anchor David spotted a guy in a dinghy motioning for us to come to him. We guessed it must be one of the rangers and headed over. He was waving for us to put the boat a lot closer to shore that we were comfortable with and right on top of a bunch of coral. We dropped the hook and he left to "help" another boat anchor. He came back and got on board and proceeded to tell us how this is his job and people don't want to listen to him and if they don't he pulls up their anchor and tells them to leave. We just placated him, but I really wanted to tell him he would have a better response if he used actual words when dealing with the cruisers instead of just hand motions, but that sort of thing never goes over that well so we just stood there nodding our heads and agreeing. We have since watched him parking other boats and one can only wonder why he does not see the need to change his approach.

As soon as he left Zack was ready to go for a snorkel. The issue was that there were numerous sharks swimming around our boat. Mostly black tips and reef sharks. Zack said "they are more afraid of you than you are of them" so we jumped in and snorkeled over to say hi to Waka Irie and Voyageur and than into the beach for a bit. After that it was nap time!!