There's not much to the town. People gather in an undercover area straight in front of the small dock where we tie our kayak to sell food and veges, like a market. A smokey grill is usually getting a workout, and I saw ice cream being retrieved from the depths of a big esky and handed down to an expectant young girl. But there's only one lady who sells produce close by. She usually has tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, green capsicum and lettuce. That's the only food available here. I noticed that she does occasionally have new things like limes, but grab them while they're there or never see them again. I discovered a lone pineapple in amongst her wares one day. The lady looked at me like I was crazy when I asked if she had any more. She also wouldn't let me throw out the spikey top, which is interesting. From her enthusiastic hand gestures I think the message she was trying to convey was that they use the leaves when they make skirts worn for traditional dances.
There's also a bakery near town and a few small shops with not much in them. I went into one and found chocolate, cigarettes, baguettes and ice cream. That was it. Very few people speak English. Liesbet asked the locals what they eat and the answer was a lot of starch. Breadfruit, baguettes and whatever vegetables are available. I wish I'd brought more meat with me! Food doesnt get delivered over here very often, so once they run out that's it for a while. But we certainly haven't been going hungry. While there's not much variety, the vegetables here come in big bunches and are cheap. Plus I bought large amounts of brie before we left Bora Bora.
There's a few houses in town with rickety 'artesian' signs out the front. One of them was set up as an actual shop rather than leading to a path into somebody's backyard, so I wasn't afraid to go in and have a look around. We're on such a tight budget and I always feel bad wandering through somebody's house to look at the beautiful things they've created when I have no intention of actually buying anything. The shop had mostly shell jewelry, but it was absolutely beautiful. I don't usually look twice at the jewelery when we're going through markets or souvenir stores. When am I going to wear pretty earrings or expensive necklaces!? But these were amazing. Everything was so elaborate, with coloured shells layered in beautiful patterns. Some of the designs were subtle and detailed at the same time, while others were huge affairs which reminded me of the peacock displays usually adorning the necks of older rich ladies. I ended up getting a ring and some little earnings, the second and third things I've bought in over a year that served no purpose other to be pretty (I splurged on a fake flower for my hair in Bora Bora). We also picked out pretty wind chimes made out of shells as our souvenir from French Polynesia. I'm glad I found something made locally instead of mass produced junk from a tourist trap.
There was a young woman sitting outside who spoke very broken English and I asked her to weave a ring for Garth, who constantly loses his wedding ring. After the original went over the side I've been replacing it with a new one in each country. She quickly put something together for me which was miracously just the right size. She even made it look more rugged and manly than the pretty shell one I had just purchased for myself.
We chatted for a while and I found out that they use palm fronds for weaving here instead of pandamas leaves like in all the other countries we've visited. I really want to weave a basket for my bike, so time to gather some leaves! She wasn't wearing a ring herself but had one tattooed on. With some very vigorous miming and hand gestures, she explained that she decided she and her husband should have their rings tattooed on so he couldn't go running around with his wedding ring in his pocket and other women in his bed. I actually find it quite interesting that we were able to have such an in depth conversation without speaking the same language. I'd never before realized how easy it is to converse using mostly mime.
She was surprised when I said we didn't have any children - she has two kids in school and a little one at home. I asked if she liked living here and her answer was a very enthusiastic yes. Of course she does. It's beautiful and quiet, without all the nonsense going on in Bora Bora with the tourists and shops. Her nose even crinkled up as she mentioned Bora Bora. She has food growing in her yard, along with friends and family close by. I love that these people don't need much more than that to be happy, because if you think about it that's really all you need. I'm not even sure all the houses here have running water. There's taps placed regularly along the road and yesterday I walked past a lady heading towards one with a wheelbarrow full of empty plastic bottles. After living on a boat my views about the world have changed so much. Why do you need running water anyway? We have taps on board, but we have to refill our water with plastic bottles and jerry cans. Water has to come from somewhere, and taps make you think about that a lot less. That's how droughts effect areas that they really shouldn't - it's from people not caring where their water comes from. I remember thinking how horrible it was when everybody in QLD was supposed to start taking 2 minute showers to save water. But I can't remember the last time I had a shower that lasted a whole 2 minutes, knowing how much effort it takes to refill the water on our boat.
There aren't really many activities to partake in here. It's quiet, peaceful and beautiful, but there isn't much to do aside from live. This is partly because a trip to the shops takes only 10 minutes, so we don't end up wandering around town all day. So we've been fixing things. I cleaned the boat from top to bottom. Once I ran out of things to clean I started baking. I can't actually remember the last time I baked something just because I could and for no other reason, which is an invigorating realization.
Other than that we've just been relaxing. Like people do on real holidays. The longer we stay here the more I like it, probably because I'm capable of entertaining myself. I put the trapeze up and now I can play on it morning and night. It's pretty exciting having a trapeze right next to my bedroom. I love being able to swing around upside down over the water, with the sun setting on one side of me and white beaches stretching out on the other. So that's been a lot of fun.
We've had dinner with Liesbet and Mark a few times, as well as joining them on the beach for drinks one day as the sun was setting. I even got to test out the new LED poi I bought in Australia, which was really exciting. They're amazing! They're soft so they don't hurt, and there's so many different settings (the fire one actually looks like fire! The brand is Podpoi in case anybody is interested).
When we first decided to buy a boat I pictured myself doing yoga on the beach every morning, with my trapeze hanging off a nearby tree. I thought I'd be watching the sun set every day from the comfort of a fluffy towel laid out along the sand, and I'd read books in my hammock. In over a year this was the first time we've actually gone to the beach from the boat and had drinks in front of the setting sun (first time I've had the trapeze hooked up properly as well). So it feels like we've arrived at our destination. We've achieved what we set out to do, which was to enjoy life without having to rush off to the next place. It feels good.
The most exciting thing about Maupiti is that there's supposed to be a lot of manta rays. Without a dinghy we can't really go chasing them, so Mark and Liesbet took us snorkeling to try and find some underwater life. The water here is really murky. It's the first place we've been in a long time where you can't see very far under the water, which is strange considering how clear it is in Bora Bora. We explored the reef on either side of the pass, crossing between the two against quite a8 strong current. There was a lot of dead coral, which we've come to expect. The fish were definitely more abundant on the Eastern side and we found a few interesting things, including two eelsand some huge sting rays. You see them everywhere but I've never been swimming with them before. So that was a lot of fun, but no manta rays. Mark and Liesbet went looking for them nearly every day and couldn't find any either. It must be the wrong time of year, because they're supposed to hang out at the surface here.
(Edit: They finally found some after we left. Damn! They even got some pictures, which is awesome).
We've also spent a lot of time trying to kite. It's the wrong season for kiting, as the wind isn't very strong. We need 15 knots to get our kite going. It keeps getting up to 10 and then staying there. So we've been out on the deck every half hour measuring the wind speed with the anometer. Garth would get in the kayak and paddle out to see if it was stronger in different places. We would take all our gear to shore and Garth would set up, launch the kite, then stand there holding it for a while before it fell out of the sky and curled up on the sand or water in a sad little ball. There's just not enough wind.
Finally we gave up. We'd set the kite up so many times for nothing, and it's a lot of work to get all the gear to shore in an inflatable kayak. We had just come back from shore and were planning on spending our last day in Maupiti just lying around. Then Mark radioed us from a different anchorage to let us know that they had 17 knots over there. I was packing away lunch before he'd finished talking and a few minutes later we were off, with the kayak towing behind and the trapeze dangling down from its spot on the spinnaker pole. Not exactly a safe state to travel in.
I let Garth go to shore alone, because he would get there faster without me and I was sick of watching him not kite. It was heartbreaking. But the wind stayed, the kite flew and he was off, zipping around our favourite Motu for a few hours. The friendly dogs showed up to play again and one of them was really excited by the kite. He chased Garth for ages, paddling out into deep water to be near his new friend and the big zippy toy. A few times he got too close and Garth had to stop suddenly, spraying the pup with a huge wave of water. The happy fellow wasn't bothered at all and just sat there waiting for the fun to start again, wagging his tail as fast as he could.
I had to swim to shore against a strong current to have my go... It's definitely time for us to get a new dinghy. I had a lot of trouble with the kite - I'm still very much learning and the water was really shallow and covered in rocks where Garth wanted me to kite. So whenever I fell over I got dragged across the rocks. Not cool. We've also done a temporary fix on the kite lines after breaking them in the Whitsundays, because we can't get the line we need to fix them properly here. So the kite flies again, but I can't reach the bar when it's flying. Every time I fell and let go of the bar so it wouldn't nosedive along with me, I couldn't reach up to save it before it crashed as well. So I didn't do very well. But I eventually made it out into waist deep water and got going for a bit, where Garth managed to teach me a few new things before the sun went down. The puppy started following me as well, expecting the fun to start again. After nearly running over him a few times I had to yell at him to go home. He was so confused as to why his friends were being angry when he just wanted to play, it was the saddest thing I'd ever seen.
So that was Maupiti. I really love it here, but we can't stay forever. We're heading back to Bora Bora tomorrow with the intention of buying wood and building a dinghy. Which sounds stupid but it's the most logical thing to do considering we cant afford a new one and wouldnt be able to buy one until we make it to Tahiti in a month so anyway. Hopefully it will only take a few days and shouldn't cost too much, depending on the price of wood out here in the middle of nowhere.
Xxx Monique
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