Sunday and to Church
15 April 2007 | Hanavave Bay
Debbie
We went to church yesterday, with my new best friend Blandine. Church services in these remote South Sea Islands is a treat, as the whole village attends and it was all singing,involving all the children, guitar playing and very moving. We had a great day. After church we came back and changed, picked up our friends on the other boat, Magnum and went to meet Blandine who took us to an Island waterfall (we couldn't find it the day before after walking for 2 hours - no wonder, it's quite difficult and they made it sound so easy with their instructions). Maxim from Magnum is French, so they even gave him the directions in French and drew us a map on the ground with a stone. You've got to remember, this is a little village with one tiny shop, no tourist offices and no printed directions of how to go anywhere and no signs on the path for directions to anywhere. You really need to take a local!!!! We were climbing over rocks and boulders near the end, over streams, beside horses, all the time picking up Mangoes that had just dropped on the ground and eating them, YUMMY. Finally got there and all jumped in the water except Blandine, she'd brought her son, 10 yrs old and an 8 yr old nephew, gorgeous boys. We arrived back in the village and she asked if we'd like to go to her sister's for lunch. Well, they had a feast prepared for us. Ceviche,(raw fish marinated in coconut, onion, garlic and fresh limes), Pomme frits,(french fries) rice, wonderful BBQ beef smoked with coconut husks (from Australia or New Zealand), this was the only main thing on the menu that hadn't been grown or caught on the island) . After we finished they put on the dancing music and you know who got up with Baladine's sister and gorgeous 20 yr old son to dance about 6 Marquesan dances. Moi, we had lots of claps and they said afterwards I could join their dance troop.
Today, Monday, we will take Volaré to a bigger village 3 miles by water Omoa, then when we return in the afternoon I have to go ashore to bring my new friends, the school teacher and her school teacher nephew out to the boat for Banana cake and a cup of tea. I have to do more trading. They make Rosewood carvings here and Tapa (paintings on the bark of trees) and black pearl Jewellery, amongst other things.
This truly is one of the most magical places we have ever been to, certainly a South Sea Island Paradise.
We are having alternator troubles again, so Greg has replaced the Balmar alternator with the original one which only charges the batteries very slowly - at best putting in 30 - 40 amps. When you need to replace 400 amps its a slow process. We are going to buy a wind generator when we get to Papeete that will compliment the solar panels and hopefully lessen the reliance on running the engine to generate power. Eventually we will replace the batteries with a different type and reduce the Amp Hour capacity down to 600 from 1000. The big downside to having a large battery bank is you need a massive alternator to charge them (like most US yachts, Volaré was kept in a marina in the US, therefore relying on shore power to charge the batteries).
We are finding it more and more difficult to send and receive emails as our closest Sail mail repeater station is now Honolulu and that's about 2500 miles away. We can only get out during the night time and even that's not always possible.