Commodore
April 19, 2023

Wednesday 19 April – e-biking around the atoll

Our neighbouring boat, not part of the Arc fleet, kindly dropped by at 7:45am to let us know the supply boat had been in and the fresh produce was in the supermarkets, and that we should move fast before it all runs out! That got us galvanised and out on JeldiJeldi, we decided to go into a beach much closer to the supermarket to save us a hot walk and less distance to carry the provisions. Rowan stayed with JeldiJeldi while I went and shopped, it was well worth it, there were plenty of tomatoes to make our breakfast complete! Loaded up with lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, red onions, some leeks, green peppers and fresh tuna, we were soon back at PolePole with Rowan back in his role cooking up a breakfast feast.

Later we headed back into the dinghy dock and did a very long sweaty walk to find e-bikes we had heard about. We finally hired two great bikes for the day, really comfy with fat tyres and very good batteries, with full power than can do over 100km. At least its flat here! There is one paved road here that stretches from the airport 4kms on the one side of town, to 11kms the other side of town. We planned to stop in at a couple of Pearl farms or places selling pearls, but most places were closed. We found one place that was open, but somehow they lose their appeal seeing hundreds of them! A lot of the jewellery was a bit over contrived. It was a boiling hot day having gone almost the 11 kms the one way we headed back. We found a supermarket in the middle of nowhere and were surprised by their good selection, better looking tomatoes and nice Navel oranges. We also found a frying pan to replace our lovely pan that we bought in the Canaries, sadly the coating, has all peeled off and every morning we wonder how much Teflon we are consuming! We stopped off at a little snack bar for a salad lunch, a very sweet rustic little place with very friendly locals. We had a swim there and had a read on our ipads for a while, long enough to do our daily Soduku. Trying to find shade under palms trees is very tricky as they are all laden with coconuts, and the locals are always telling you to be careful if they see you underneath one.

We headed back visiting two old coral light houses, one in the town and the other halfway to the airport, it looks like a Mayan ruin from a distance. We had the bikes until 5pm but we were too hot and sweaty to carry on, after dropping off our new provisions in JeldiJeldi, so that we did not have to do the long hike back to the boat carrying everything. We arrived at the E-bike place only to find it empty, they are also the only taxi service on the island and we had seen their two vehicles doing the airport run. As we waited we were joined by a young South African Afrikaans couple who are circumnavigating, having left Cape Town a year and a half ago. Gosh their travels are hugely complicated by their South African passports and having to get visas for so many countries, including French Polynesia. This will only mean anything for the South Africans reading this, the couple were both originally from land locked Vereeniging. He went to school in Bloemfontein, he is 42 and I wondered if he knew my sister’s kids who also lived there, but he went to a different school. Great admiration for them as getting visas into so many of the countries has been so difficult, crossing the Atlantic from Cape Town they couldn’t get into Brazil and made land fall in Surinam where they were welcomed with no visas. Quite a few of the Caribbean islands did not let them in.

We finally paid and headed back after finding some fishermen who had just come in with a catch of some impressive sized fish, the guts and blood had attracted some weird looking sharks.

Rowan invited Kane, a British single hander on a boat called Spirit of Argo, for supper. Rowan had read his blog, which is mainly done through the eyes of his old dog. Poor chap his wife left him last year and he is obviously still struggling with it. He has been sailing around here for the last 12 years, his dog he got as a puppy here when they first arrived, a very cute old Irish Terrier called Quinn. He joined us too and was very sweet. Rowan wanted to pick his brains about the best places to visit as he has so much local knowledge which was very interesting. Poor Kane says he is staying here in FP until poor Quinn passes away, as heading west he hits all sorts of quarantine issues. It was very interesting to discover that Kane used to be a policeman in the UK, a very gentle seeming guy devoted to his dog. A good contact for us for the next couple of months as we pootle around these atolls and islands.