My neck hurts from looking up. We walked up this valley, surrounded by vertical crumbly rock spires and walls. It's green everywhere, even on the vertical rock. Some rocks look like terraced gardens. There are "fields" of coconut trees and bananas. We are hiking on a simple concrete one lane road. Then we branch off onto a dirt trail (mud actually) and past a house that likes dogs. Oh, how they bark. They are the "landmark". On we go into the jungle and the road becomes an overgrown trail. All grass. Do they have snakes here? They have something that makes the grass move in front of me... Eventually we reach some rock cairns. Those mark the trail. Its a steep uneven "trail" through a jungle. Only a few rock cairns mark the path but we keep going. Eventually we come to the waterfall. It is about 150 feet high with a rock wall around 3/4 of a circle. Under that rock wall is the pool of fresh water. It is a perfect temperature...probably around 75 or 80F. Wow, does this feel good or what. And the views are absolutely awesome. Karen and I swim and lay in the sun until time go go home to the boat. We did this in shifts...first Kent and Katie while we watched the boat, then Larry and Karen while Kent and Katie watched the boat.

On the way back we were stopped by the Police. He only spoke french which made it pretty tough for him to make clear that we had to go to Hiva Oa and do our check in. We said we would do it tomorrow and he seemed to think that was the best he could do. There is a story not yet completely told about another boat SV Lightspeed that has been given some sort of ticket for them to clear up in Papette. We don't know what it means but we will hope to avoid it ourselves. In the meantime we are having a great time in paradise at the end of a very long passage.

Tonight we are going into town for a dinner ashore which a local is preparing for us. It appears to be how they do a "restaurant". With luck we'll report back on that experience tomorrow. I don't know if we will have goat. They have been shooting them today. You may think this is easy, and the shooting part probably is. But the getting after the shooting is nontrivial. We like watching the goats and really aren't very happy about this, so we cheer for the goats. We've seen some absolutely amazing goat acrobatics among the rocks.