Rapturous!

Solitude in a spectacularly beautiful bay, a hike to a waterfall and lunch with a Marquesan family. It doesn't get better than this. It was a relief to weigh anchor and leave the repairs and town life behind. We motored the six miles from Taiohae Bay amazed by the majesty of the cliffs looking so much like Kauai's Napoli Coast. The narrow opening to the bay looked almost too small to fit through but once we rounded the headland, the double lobed bay opened up. The anchorage was empty, just us and the frigate birds. The bay is an ancient caldera so one side is bordered by cliffs 2000 feet high while the inland side has a deep valley covered with dense vegetation with coconut palms providing vertical texture. We had towed Velocirapture so it didn't take us long to mount the outboard and go exploring. We sussed out our hike for the following morning and headed back to the boat for a swim and shower before Captain's hour and dinner. It was a clear night with magnificent stars but at 1:30 in the morning it started to rain. Having sealed up the dorades we did not have the deluge we experienced during our first squall in the ITCZ but the seam in the headliner above our bed started to leak. Lacking a tarp, I spread a roll of garbage bags across our mattress hoping to have a damp rather than soggy bed to return to after the squall. 6 months ago I would never have accepted that I would sleep soundly in damp bedding. Oh, the joys of a boating life. Corned beef hash for breakfast. Yes, Polynesia has at least 4 different brands of corned beef all subsidized by the French government. Subsidized items cost significantly less than other, usually imported products. Except for liquor we find that subsidized prices are similar to prices in San Francisco. Local beer is cheap, about$ 6.50 a six-pack and good French wines are reasonable, about $30.00 a bottle. Anyway, back to breakfast. We're still drinking Peet's coffee, savoring the last few pots. Fueled with buckets of grease, we headed out for our hike to the waterfall. From the white sand beach we followed a narrow footpath past wild hibiscus and variegated bougainvillea stepping carefully between the fallen mangos on the path. Soon we forded a wide, shallow river and into a carefully maintained inhabited area with closely trimmed lawns, banana trees, lemon and grapefruit trees, a random horse tethered to a fence and multiple chickens running loose. This was the trail head. Having paid our $10.00 entrance fee, we continued up the valley. Almost sheer volcanic walls rose to one side of the trail topped by sugar loaf pinnacles. White terns wheeled against the verdant green cliffs and the intensely blue sky. The soil in the valley is rich and dark, almost black providing nutrients for all that plant life. Only a few people live in the valley and there are no fences. All the fruit trees and coconuts were planted by the local families but not in neat rows or orchards. Although the fruit looks wild it isn't okay to pick it, anymore that it would be to go into someone's yard and pick their fruit. The footpath climbed gradually into the forest which was dark and wet. Pools of stagnant water evoked images of Mirkwood and, no doubt, bred the mosquitoes and no-seeums that plagued us. This used to be a thriving community and the forest hides many ruined structures of straight walls and raised platforms made of large knapped rocks . Tikis and Banyan trees indicate the location of a ceremonial temple where human sacrifices may have been conducted. The places feel spiritual but I didn't find them spooky. After about an hour we were able to see the waterfall, a long dribble of water spilling deep in a cleft of the cliffs. Now it began to look unreal, like computer enhanced graphics. We kept waiting for swooping dragons or at least a Devonian dragon fly. I wish I could post a photo, but even that would never convey the scale and the technicolor of the place. Another half hour of walking brought us to the base of the waterfall where we swam in the cool water and just stared at the magnificent landscape. Our cool swim kept the heat and humidity of the return walk to a minimum. At the bottom we were greeted by a local woman who invited us to lunch. I had been warned to expect this and I had brought a little gift of colored pencils and a frisbee. She wasn't too impressed preferring perhaps something for herself but she and her husband treated us royally to barbecued pork from a pig he had hunted the day before, salad made of grated green mango, papaya and other fruit and fried taro. "All organic, no chemics", she said with pride. That was followed by the best coconut ice-cream I've ever tasted made by them in their tin roofed hut. Everything they served was either grown by them or sourced from the wild. They have three large solar panels that provide all the electricity they need. She said that she'd had the panels for three years and never had any problems or downtime with them. Now that's sustainable. You just need to live in Eden to achieve it.