Whew! It's been a long but very interesting day.

It rained a lot last night, but we stayed dry and had a fine evening below. We even watched a movie! I play sound through our stereo system and we watch the image on my iPad. It's perfectly fine for very occasional use.

Marae…a social and religious structure for Polynesians, from their arrival in the 800AD until the cultures were destroyed by the Europeans. Captain Cook probably saw the societies here at their height in the 1760s.

A Marae is a rectangular arrangement of stone, variable in size, but always with very square corners and flat top. The actual purpose evolved over time, of course, but they always had a social significance, and the religious context was added much later. Although they varied by location in the Polynesian islands, they had many more similarities. The group of Maraes here in Huahine is enormous: at least eight, of different sizes and ages. Polynesians at that time had a form of ancestor worship, along with a few deities thrown in for good measure. Both ancestors and deities were worshipped and visited at the Marae, especially at the central structure that appeared much later. There were Maraes built for various political groupings, from "international" to local, or even familial. Everything from a successful planting to the death of a local king was celebrated at the Marae. Everyone in the local group was directed by the priests to contribute their portion of the rock that was needed for new construction.

The urge to create a rectangular structure simply stuns me. NOTHING in their lives was rectangular, so why that shape? It's so…artificial, at least compared to the round and curved structures that nature produces. In addition, how did they make a rectangular structure? These days, we'd use a 3-4-5 triangle, but how did they do it? And the tops were fairly level, too. How'd they do that? No one knows the answer to any of those questions, of course, and no oral tradition has survived. Take a look at the photos and see what you think.

I also wonder about humans' need to seem to control nature, either by ancestor worship or appealing to deities. They never seemed to be distressed by the poor performance of either method. Crazy, huh?

We knew from a guidebook that Huahine had an especially large group of Marae, but they are 7 km outside of town and we didn't know that we'd want to walk it. In the end, we did just that and had a great time during the stroll. On our return, a local guy offered us a ride for the last 1.5 km, but we walked the rest, both ways.

On the way out, we did get a bit hungry and not a little thirsty, and we just happened on a small "country store". We walked out with the last baguette, a package of Societé Roquefort, and a 1.5 L Orangina. We made it about 100m before we found a large flat rock in the shade and enjoyed our viands. Luscious!

When we departed our nice ride, we walked to the beach to found the remains of the Bali Hai Resort, said to house some interesting archeological ruins, but we could find no trace of the hotel in the location it was supposed to be.

We also found a very close business that claims to do laundry, so we'll arise early enough to get our laundry to them as early as possible. A last stop at the grocery store might net me a small machete: I'm tired of missing the chance of quenching our thirst with all of the coconuts around us!

We plan to leave on Tuesday AM and sail the three days to Fakarava, weather permitting. Our only communications during that three days is the SSB.