Hiking twin-peaked mount Pahia

We hiked Mt. Pahia on Bora Bora a couple of days ago. It was a very steep and challenging ascent with lots of wet slippery roots and rocks. Thankfully there were some ropes already attached in the steepest sections. Along the way, there were views of the small islets (motus), the lagoon, and the reef far below. We enjoyed walking under the cool canopy of trees, giant ferns, hanging vines, and pandanus. Near the top, there were pink hibiscus bushes amid tall wild grass and I also spotted some wild ginger root in the rocky crevices. 

When we reached the first peak with the Bora Bora flag, the view became mostly white - swirling clouds which occasionally parted for a second. We were always too late to capture the vision on camera. There was no point in continuing to the higher peak as rain seemed likely. The scramble down was slow as we had to go backwards on all fours in the slippery areas where ropes were impractical. Our friend Bob had brought a light 60ft rope which Chris volunteered to tie to tree trunks and sturdy roots at some steep pitches. That really helped the rest of us. 

We celebrated in the evening by going in for "happy hour" at the Mai Kai restaurant. It was very therapeutic and a good social with friends from three other yachts. My rum cocktail was delicious but I was unable to do anything else when we rowed back to the boat. We put off our planned departure for Maupiti as neither of us felt like rising at 4am!

Chris sailing - Mount Pahia is to the upper left.

The hike took us through towering ferns.

View back to our mooring off the Mai Kai restaurant

Bob and Anne from Charisma San Francisco joined us on the hike. Note the rock face that we hiked beneath as we  rounded the mountain to the other side where the trail ascended again.

Several sections of the hike were roped.

Rani, Bob, and Anne arrive at a rest spot.

Estelle is a naturalist on the cruise ship Paul Gaugin. Herbert - above her is a baker on board.

Happy to be at the lower summit - note the tiny patch of view through the clouds.

Under the flag on Pahia lower summit. Note the fine clear view (of cloud).

Climbing back down was made more interesting by a downpour. Here we are using Bob's rope.

Glad to be down. Note the blue Cowichan Outdoor Group ribbon that now marks the start of the trail.

Photos from Heiva in Tahaa

A few photos from the Heivas we attended in Tahaa. The singers and dancers had come from the neighboring islands to take part. Most were billeted nearby and a frequent site was a bus load of colorfully costumed Polynesians passing us as we hiked the 4 kms from where we anchored our boat to the site of the festival. The lighting was difficult, so some of the pictures are a bit grainy.

 

Singers

Powerful drumming accompanies all the dancing.

We met Herman before the show when he served Chris a plate of the food that was provided for all the dancers and spectators. He is a chief dancer and leads a group of men in the various moves.

A vanilla vine at the agricultural exhibit.

I think these are 'greater yams'.

Tahaa drummers

Tahaa drummers

Offerings of produce

Singers always sit during their group himenes.

Local scenes in Raiatea and Tahaa

A few pictures from our recent visit to Tahaa and Raiatea. Please refer to earlier posts for more details.

Coral gardens off Tahaa - Photo courtesy of Bob from Charisma San Francisco

Carpet anemone and damsel fish - coral gardens off Tahaa - Photo courtesy of Bob from Charisma San Francisco 

Coral gardens off Tahaa - Photo courtesy of Bob from Charisma San Francisco 

Mike from Astarte - Photo courtesy of Bob from Charisma San Francisco 

Marae Taputapuatea - father of all sacred sites in Polynesia

Carving - Marae Taputapuatea

Offering - Marae Taputapuatea

Stone carving -  Marae Taputapuatea

Children playing at  Marae Taputapuatea

Tahaa - view of Bora Bora

Tahaa - sunset over Bora Bora

Tahaa - copra drying

Maki preparing a drinking coconut

Maki scooping meat from a drinking coconut

Hiking in an agricultural valley near Patio, Tahaa

Preparing copra

Manolina dances for us

Vanilla plantation - black screen provides dappled shade

Pamplemousse on steroids

Marae Taputapuatea - photo courtesy of Bob on Charisma San Francisco

Tahaa anchorage -  - photo courtesy of Bob on Charisma San Francisco

Ladybug and rainbow - photo courtesy of Bob on Charisma San Francisco

Tautau Islet with Bora Bora behind - photo courtesy of Bob on Charisma San Francisco

Huahine Heiva Pictures

Thanks to Petero Koerber, who was the official photographer for this event for these lovely photos. (Rani did not bring a camera that evening.

Cruising Computers

We carry two netbook computers on board that we have come to depend on for many facets of our cruising life. We chose netbooks rather than full-sized laptops because they are inexpensive (< $200), consume much less power (< 2 amps versus 5+ amps), having smaller processors and screens, and are easy to carry with us to shore in a small dry bag. A viable alternative is Apple's iPad and we have seen several cruisers with these. Excellent applications are available and the built in GPS in some models makes them very useful for navigation. Our netbooks run Windows, which gives us access to loads of free or inexpensive software, useful on board.

When netbooks first became available a few years ago, I bought a little Asus EeePC, which came with the Linux operating system, 512 MB of RAM, and a 4 GB flash drive (no hard drive). Before we left on this cruise, I wiped out the operating system, which was no longer well supported, and installed a tiny stripped down version of Windows XP, specifically tailored for this computer. I added an 8 GB SD drive to store documents and navigation data, and installed the following software:

OpenCPN - a free charting/navigation program. We installed vector charts of the world, which provide detail to harbour level in most countries. We have a USB GPS that was easy to interface to this software and provides real-time positioning of our boat on the chart - very cool for those of us used to paper charts :)

Libre Office - MS Word/Excel compatible open source software (a light version of Open Office). We use this to write and do spreadsheet calculations.

Chrome browser for internet access/email.

Airmail - for Pactor II radio emails. Also needed to install drivers for USB to serial adapter to talk to the modem. This includes GRIB (weather) file viewer and weather fax software. Free.

WXTide - worldwide tide and current prediction software - free.

VLC media player - to watch movies - free.

Skype - to make phone calls.

PaintShop Pro V 4.0 - ancient (1998) but adequate image processing software

Avast antivirus - free edition to protect the computer when connected to the Internet.

PDF XChange - free PDF viewer with editing capabilities. This is great if you need to modify a PDF file when dealing with paperwork remotely.

Calibre ebook management software to manage our large collection of ebooks.

Our other netbook has similar software installed but adds MaxSea - a commercial navigation program and runs Windows 7. We like to use the built-in Microsoft software for photo management, which includes some nice tools to touch up and improve photos. We have found that with the slow processor in this machine that we need to resize (shrink) our photos before editing them with this software. For this we use Easy Thumbnails which allows us to quickly resize an entire folder of pictures (free software). The newer netbook has a 10 inch screen (the EeePc has a 7 inch one) so is much better for photo processing and watching movies.

Incidentally, OpenCPN provides an easier to view interface on these small computers than MaxSea, whose charts are very cluttered. Perhaps there is an option in MaxSea to improve this, but the program is complex and not all that intuitive, so we rarely use it.

The only limitations we have come across so far using these machines is that very high definition movies sometimes refuse to play properly. This has been a problem with only one series of videos, where each hour of video is about 3 GB. With smaller AVI files, we have not had a problem.

Bora Bora

We nearly gave Bora Bora a miss due to its reputation for being the expensive playgrounds of well-heeled tourists. We are very glad we decided to stop here. Despite being anchored off a Hilton resort with over-the-water palm thatch bungalows, the water is clear and the views are gorgeous. Cloud shrouded volcanic Mt.Mauaohunoa rises behind the resort's private island and behind us is the dull roar of surf on the reef a half mile away.

The wind has been calm for a few days so we have been snorkeling on a nearby reef to see the many varieties of colourful corals and fish. Yesterday we swam near spotted eagle rays in deeper water. They looked like birds flying below us in a down-under sapphire blue sky. In the shallower waters of a small island we came across two large moray eels hiding in coral castles. This morning we watched another moray dart out of it's home towards a diver who sprayed something out of a small canister, probably shrimp or fish meal. We were surrounded by little yellow butterfly fish and black and white banded fish and it felt like we were in an aquarium.

There are more tourists here than in the other islands we have visited but this anchorage is fairly quiet. Last night we rowed to the main town to watch some Polynesian dancing - two miles of rowing each way in the moonlit night was good exercise. It was also somewhat challenging navigating through the shallow coral field in the passage between two little islands near our boat. I held a flashlight in the bow directing Chris around the coral head. I tried to do my share of rowing in the deeper water but Chris was not impressed by my steering - I blamed the chop!

One Fine Day

We were walking along the main road to town one morning in Tahaa when a woman hailed us from her driveway.

"Do you like bananas?", she asked.

"Yes, we do!"

And with that we were led into Maki's backyard. She lifted a hemp sack from a makeshift table and removed eight just-ripe bananas from a large stalk. As we placed these in our backpack, she cut down a couple of coconuts from a palm leaning over the ocean. With a few swift strokes of the machete, she opened the nuts for us to drink. Does life get any better than this? We were quenching our thirst with sweet coconut water in a lovely lady's garden with a misty view of Bora Bora rising out of the ocean like a mirage.

The land we stood upon was reclaimed from the reef bordering the island of Tahaa. I asked whether it was dangerous to live so close to the water and she recounted that her original home was destroyed by a cyclone in the late seventies. The new house is a pre-fabricated vinyl sided bungalow supplied by the French government after that catastrophe. All she has to do is pay the annual property taxes, which are modest. She was shocked when We told her that the amount she pays is less than a tenth of what one would pay in Canada. As we looked out across the lagoon dotted with the outlying motus, she told us that one of the larger of these islands belongs to her family. The copra they harvest there provides the money for necessities, other than food, which is plentiful on her land. We agreed that she truly lives in paradise. We shall return for a visit to thank her with something from our gift bag.

Later on the same hike we walked along a stream that flows out of a lush valley. Te pavement ended and we plunged into the rain forest, which in places had been cleared for banana and papaya plantings. The road dipped down over a hill and across the stream, where it ended in a small plantation.

We asked a family here if we could buy some pamplemousse from their garden. Their trees were literally sagging with the heavy bunches. The young couple were cutting open coconuts for copra and their 4 year old daughter was dancing and singing nearby. They said to take as many as we wished. I gave little Manolina a shell bracelet I was wearing and a necklace of seeds. She was delighted, even offering up her cheek for a little kiss. However when Chris tried to show Manolina the Polynesian dance steps he had picked up in Papeete and Moorea, she looked concerned and told him to "Arret, Arret!".

We staggered back to the main road with 14 large pamplemousse bulging from cloth bags and backpack. Back on the pavement, a man called down to us from his farm plot. Seeing that we liked pamplemousse, he invited us to taste one from a large tree in his own garden. His girlfriend watched as he cut slices and handed them to us. As we talked they would spontaneously burst into uncontrollable fits of laughter. Perhaps they were enjoying the effects of another home grown plant common in these parts.

On the main road I stuck out my thumb and we were picked up by the first car going by. The driver was a retired French teacher who had traveled and taught all over the world. We can see why he chose to retire here.