Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Havamenu - Hiva Oa



The guide books said it was "uninhabited, pick all the fruit you want while in season and bathe in the beautiful river." ... The natives forgot to read the guide book. There are 3 parties here, a vacationing group of fishermen from Tahiti, a big group we recognized from Atuona and a group living in a hut that is apparently maintaining the fruit trees and trails between them.

There was one other boat here, Avventura. A couple of young guys from California. They had a breadfruit and not much idea how to cook it, so Trinda invited them and their breadfruit to supper. She fried it with bacon bits and onions. We all enjoyed it. If any of you have any special recipes for breadfruit, please e-mail them to the winlink address.

Oh well, we hiked up past them, looked at the coconuts and funny trees, then waded in the river.

Today we took the dinghy around to the next little bay, really just the other half of this one. The surf was big and the shore had rocks and coral so we anchored the dinghy off and swam ashore. It was quite a swim through the under tow. I put our rubber shoes in the snorkeling mesh collecting bag along with the mosquito repellent and my hat, and swam. Yeah, the hat got wet. There we hiked back quite a ways then we heard gun shots and became nervios. So we started back to the beach where we left the
swim fins and masks. On the way back, we saw the locals from the camp on the other side, on the top of the ridge, hunting. So we relaxed a little.

We managed to find a few breadfruit. Most of them were at the top of 100 foot tall trees. Donnie shinnied up a small, short tree and got the first one. Then we shook a few more out of other short trees. They may be green, but we'll try them anyway. We heard there were mangos ripe, but we failed to find those trees.

We are heading for Oa Pau tonight. It is about 60 miles, so we'll leave well after dark in hopes of a daylight land fall. It is about 20 miles from Nuka Hiva, where my replacement parts are supposed to be.

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