Now I know what it must be like for a baby to sleep in a crib that gently rocks – my bunk exactly !!! I love sleeping on this ship – especially when I wake up to another jagged wild prehistoric island with the warm golden glow of the sun licking its jagged peaks and low clouds embracing its valleys. Another hard dock and off the boat at 8am to climb aboard another 4-person 4WD on the back. This drive to Hohoi and back took 3hrs and lifted us high above the main town of Hakahau nestled between two ridges with needle-like volcanic pillars in the backdrop caused by prehistoric magma bursting its way through holes in the upper crust and super cooling underwater since these islands were once under water. We made 3 viewpoint stops, which the photos will describe below before we got to another archeological site known as Pae Pae outside the tiny village of Mauia. This was a meeting place for the first Polynesians on the island but contains replicas of the houses they would have lived in nearby. This place also sacrificed people at one point to rid off Tsunamis and the site is fall of mango trees and other tropical fruits such as lychees, bananas, star fruit, abiu, rambutan. There are in fact 47 varieties of mangoes in French Polynesia and they are definitely sweeter and tastier than the Ozzie Queenslanders !!! The highlight of this first morning drive was Hohoi Beach with millions of huge rounded stones as its shore instead of sand. Here is the best place to find what this island is famous for – Kea Pau or Flower Stone which is in fact a very rare volcanic rock known as “Garnet Phonolite” only to be found in Brazil and Ethiopia other than here. But that is not why it is famous. Unlike the other places, the caramel coloured smooth stone here is dotted with many golden patterns shaped like flower pedals and hence the name !!! Extraordinary. We were given ample time to forage the beach and find our own – see mine below – one of the best according to the guides. We drove back the same way and arrived at the Cultural Centre of Hakahau at 1130am, just in time for a nearby swim before lunch. Steve and I walked to a nice sandy beach next to the boat and enjoyed the 32C water ! After the swim I wanted to fly my drone before lunch but much to my surprise there was an airport block on my drone even though none appeared in the official website of my drone maker !!! This actually happened to me on Fakarava but I was able to get a local to drive me out of the restriction zone. I figured that our next drive this afternoon may take me out of the restriction zone. Lunch featured the signature raw fish ceviche of French Polynesia but surprised us with stir-fry beef. We saw cows on this island, which is one of few to be able to support them. The stir-fry came with soy, which attests to the early presence of the Chinese as mentioned before. Our afternoon drive at 130pm began with a big downpour but it was short lived. This drive was along the coast as opposed to inland in the morning. Another 3 hrs of cliffside spectacle and shimmering oceans, which only the photos below can describe. This drive made another 3 scenic stops for photos until we reached the seaside village of Hakahetau. Hardly anyone lives here but the whole town emerged to entertain us with music and dancing and a good helping of local fruits and coconut. Once again I was unable to send up my drone and was disappointed that I could not bring you sights of this island from above. I would leave this island wondering if the drone would have been outside the restricted zone at Hohoi which is the furthest from the airport but because this island is so small, the whole place may be restricted. I will never know.
Then absolute disaster hit at 7pm just before dinner as I was working away on my blog – the battery on my MacBook Air died !!! It blanked out and I was unable to restart it. I died. How the hell was I going to continue my blog. The pictures of Day 5 and 6 (this post) where on the hard drive of my Mac and nowhere else. I panicked. Werner kindly offered me his Windows ThinkPad so I could write the text but my biggest problem was the photos trapped on my Mac hard drive. I plugged my Mac into power but it would start then cut out – why the FCUK did Apple decide to route power through the battery !!! I had the shits big time. Suffice to say that dinner that night was lousy and subdued for me. I returned to my cabin and used Werner’s laptop to write the text for this post and plug my Mac into power overnight in the hope that it would give me enough time to copy pictures for this post and last onto my Solid State Drive (SSD) which I would then plug into Werner’s laptop and post my blog from his machine. I would use Werner’s laptop for the rest of the cruise and hopefully buy a new battery or Mac or Laptop in Papeete. Tomorrow I also planned to ask the crew if any of them had a Mac or an IT tech that may be able to scrape my hard disk should the power never return. Stay tuned for the result…
UA POU STATS:
Distance from Papeete: 1,366km
Size compared to Sydney: 0.9% (13km by 8km)
Coastline: 65km
Population: 2,168
Highest Peak: 1,230m
Claim to fame: Home to the strange volcanic “Flower Stone”
I hope you are reading this and enjoying the photos below…
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