Kauehi Atoll, Tuamotus

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Friday the 13th sailing

13 June 2003, Friday - We don't really take much heed in superstition, but today IS Friday the 13th AND a full moon!

Rouser and Merlin's Magic at anchor

We still have an hour to go to cross the lagoon. We should be settled there by lunchtime if all goes well, knock on wood. :)

But seriously, having not left port on a Friday, we should be fine. We are just now pulling into Kauehi Atoll. The pass was quite wild by appearance. It had standing waves at the entrance which made everywhere look like a bad place to go. In reality, they were just waves created from the current, most in 60 feet of water. We made it through without any problems. We had to keep our sails up and the motor on to maintain good speed, but all went smoothly.

We are now heading over to the village. We are still hoping to see some

Local grocery store

black pearls before leaving the Tuamotus. In Makemo, we tried to speak with local oyster farmers. They had already shipped all of their

Fishing boat anchored in the lagoon

late-season pearls (who knew that pearls had a season?!?) to Tahiti to be sold. We hope that isn't the case here. Apparently, some farmers have "rejects" that aren't quite perfect. We were thinking it would be fun to trade for some. They typically won't sell them to you because they don't feel that it reflects well on their farm. The rejects are the ones that are more natural and less "perfect" - this is odd to me... it seems like the ones made by nature would BE the most perfect! It's possible we won't find any until Tahiti, which would be unfortunate. We

Shore of the lagoon

would love to see the perfect imperfectness of the nature-made pearls, which won't be sold in Tahiti.

The passage was very smooth. Just one overnight now feels like a jaunt! In the afternoon, we enjoyed the showing of a triple rainbow!! Throughout the nighttime, we were chaperoned by the beautiful full moon. The moonset was spectacular around 4 AM. It settled happily between two clouds and looked much like a large orange pumpkin sitting on the horizon. It was SO orange against the indigo sky.

Exploring the shore

Us with Anne & Tomos on the quay

Two girls that joined us

Road back to town

14 June 2003, Saturday -

Road to the outer shore

Walking along the shore

Local fisherman

Eric learning about the tricks to fishing

We walked around town today with John, Anne and Tomos from Merlin's Magic, exploring all that the little village had to offer. There is one church, one grocery store and then just the homes of everyone who lives here. We were told by the Director of the local school that there are 208 people living on the atoll. The school is beautiful for a town of its size.

After walking

Coral and shells along the outer shoreline

around town, we followed the road east to the outer shoreline. On the road, we met three kids. They seemed content just to have some visitors on the atoll to follow around. They were very surprised and happy when Eric started to perform some small magic tricks for them. We only had a few bits and pieces with us to work with, but even pulling coins "out of their ears" was enough to make them ooh and ah. Our perfect audience. When we got out to the shore, the kids started pointing out all sorts of cool shells and interesting things that they found. The little boy, Firipa, took a liking to Angela and began offering her tons of little shells and urchin spikes that he found on the shore. We still don't know how he spotted all the sea urchin spikes! We looked and looked and found none while he found dozens!

After exploring the reefs and learning some tips from local fishermen out there, we made our way back through town. When we returned, the kids ran ahead and informed their friends of Eric's many magical talents. He performed his few tricks for them. Then we all played foosball together at the table just outside of the one grocery store. While playing, Angela brought up the topic of soccer. Did they play? Of course they did! We decided to meet up the next day and have a soccer game. We hoped that more kids would show up as well, since otherwise it would be a pretty empty field.

Soccer or bust

15 June 2003, Sunday -

Eric playing games with kids in the sand

Today, Angela went in with Anne to the local church. When we walked in, everybody turned to see who these non-locals were that were joining them. When the kids looked around and recognized us, they smiled and waved and were generally distracted from whatever else was going on. It was

Boys from the village

fathers day (HAPPY FATHER'S DAY JIM & RICH!!!), but there were very few fathers in the church that day. We were later told that several were off the atoll for work and returned only after a week or so. This was lucky, because we hadn't thought about the fact that we had invited our new friends to play soccer with us and be away from their dads on father's day!

As usual in French Polynesia, the singing was absolutely spectacular! It was phenomenal! Women and men would come in at different times and harmonize beautifully with each other. When church let out, we were instantly surrounded by every single little girl and boy in the village. They wanted to know what time Eric and I would be coming in to join them in a game of soccer. We planned to meet just after lunch, and then we were escorted by over a dozen children back to our

Eric doing magic tricks with Nadia

Ang with kids going wild after a game of soccer with us

dinghy on the quay.

When we returned that afternoon for the big match, there were kids lined up on the quay to take our painter. After tying up the dinghy, we migrated over the soccer and field, singing and

Ang with the kids on the quay

skipping and generally being kid-like the whole way there. It was great! The kids were very patient with our French and helped try to figure out what we wanted to say when we got stuck.

When we finally got the game going, the girls decided that it would be to their advantage to play a girls against boys game - mostly because there were 2 more girls! The game started off serious, with everyone participating and having a good time. After a while though, one kid would snag Ang's hand and draw something for her in the sand or another might stop Eric and ask him to spell his name and then spell his or her own name out for him, all of this while other kids were whizzing by trying to play a real game of soccer. It got to be quite comical and eventually the game died out as more and more kids wanted to write their names out for us in the sand and listen to us try to pronounce (read mispronounce) it. We performed some more magic for them and they showed us a trick that they knew as well. They ALL knew it, so we're sure they were excited to have an unknowing audience for once!

We had our digital camera with us and all the kids loved to see their photos in the little 1" LCD screen after one of us took their photo. We told them that we would return the next afternoon when school let out to hand out copies of their photographs.

Picture perfect!

16 June 2003, Monday - We printed off a bunch of photos for kids and brought them in to the village. We arrived a little early and were able to witness the mass chaos of school letting out. They all

Paul and friends swimming in our life jackets

flocked over to us and started looking at and laughing about the photos. Some were silly and fun to view. All the kids wanted to have a copy, but they were very good about giving copies to others who did not have any yet.

The problem came when there were several kids from the school that weren't around the day

No room for us in our dinghy

before to have their photos taken and therefore didn't receive one. They thought it was a very neat treat that they were missing out on. We didn't want to cut anyone short, so Ang took some more photos of them on the quay. In the process, some of them asked about the dinghy and the life jackets. We gave some of the older kids life jackets to try on and they played with them in the water for an hour! A fun new floating toy! One of the adults that was nearby even popped over and asked if it would be okay if she could have a photo of herself too. Just call us Insta-Print!

Before we left, our little friend Firipa, whom we had met the very first day ashore, ran up to Angela and gave her a beautiful shell necklace. We thanked them all very much and said we'd be back the next day.

Generous spirits

The next day, we found some small stickers that we had on board (which we bought from Sam's Club just for this purpose) and went ashore with our stack of photos. We doled out the goodies and then spent a bunch of time sitting in the shade with them on the church steps and drawing things in the sand. They would draw pictures and then have us say what it was in English and they would say the word in French. Then, we would all try to say what the others had said in their language, causing much laughter and fun at all of our mispronunciations.

We were again given some shell necklaces by the family of our friend Firipa and his sister Brenda. We thanked them many times and then Eric was led off down the road by another kid named Paul. The rest of us went in search of him. It took a while despite the fact that everyone knew where

Another fun day on the quay

Paul's house was. We moved along very slowly, because Firipa and some of the other boys decided that it would be very funny to try to hide behind a bush and then jump out and scare the rest of us. The first time, I acted dramatically scared and feigned surprise (I could see their feet and hear their laughter behind the bush as we approached). This got such a great reaction, that each and every bush, fence, coconut tree or pebble was hid behind by every kid on the way to Paul's house in order to win the same response.

Eventually, we all made it in one piece to Paul's home. We found Eric sitting in a chair overlooking the lagoon with Paul, his mother, and his father, also Paul. He had a fresh coconut in his hand with the top cut off so that he could drink it. When we all pulled in, the kids huddled around and Paul (young or old, I don't recall) pulled over a chair for Ang to sit in. Immediately after, a hatchet was brought forth and another coconut was opened up for her to drink. We talked for a while (the elder Paul speaks English quite well) about life on the atoll and life in general.

Just before we were planning to go, we were given some amazing shells and then four coconuts. Since we didn't have a sack to carry them in (we didn't realize that this was a problem), a solution was immediately sought. Paul's wife grabbed some fronds from a coconut tree and sat down with them. We had no idea what she had in mind. She very quickly began to weave a basket out of the fronds. She finished in no time at all! We could not believe it! It was not only beautiful, but it was STRONG! It fit all four coconuts and supported them, strapped over Eric's shoulder, perfectly.

Black pearl appetizers

After an unbelievable time on shore, we were ready to head back to the boat. Since school had let out early, it was still just after noon. We were stopped at another home on the way back to the dinghy. The parents of our friends Elodie (8 y.o.) and Blandine (11 y.o.) wanted to show us some black pearls. They gave us a small handful of pearls and thanked us for everything that we did with their kids and the others in the community. In the end, we had almost 50 black pearls of varying size and quality, many of them quite lovely! Everyone was so generous and kind. We tried to say no, that it was not at all necessary and that we couldn't take their pearls. This was only laughed off as the girls' mom closed my hand around the bag of pearls.

After talking with them a little longer, we invited the two girls and their family out to our boat for dinner. They agreed, but only Elodie, Blandine, their younger brother Mark and their mom could make it (In all, the family has TWELVE kids - we didn't know this, but it's certainly more than Rouser could accommodate! Many of them are away at school in either Makemo atoll or Tahiti.). When they came, we tried to thank them for their generosity by giving them some things that they could use. We had some knives and fishing equipment that we had bought in Mexico that their dad could use. Angela also purchased some colorful fabrics in Mexico that could be used for anything, clothes or curtains. Finally, Angela parted with a little teddy bear (named Berry), that she knew the two girls would love. They planned to leave for school on Makemo for the first time away from home later in July. They said that they would take Berry with them and it would help them to not be homesick. Before they left the boat, they were able to meet Berry's other little stuffed friends on board. They loved the little lamb and crab and asked if when Angela wrote to them, maybe the lamb and crab could write to their friend Berry. This, of course, seemed like a plausible solution!

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