Pick One

Five and a half months - it's been a very very good run in French Polynesia.

Especially considering that we're here on three month visas.

Yesterday, walking home from the an internet session at the post, I saw one of those flower trees that you see everywhere in Polynesia.  Are they tiare?  I think so, but I dunno.  Botany isn't my strength.

I did something that I've never done before.  I picked one and tucked it behind my ear and strolled on down the street, looking fine, I'm sure.

My shorthand description of Polynesia has always been that it is the place where strangers give you flowers.  But I figured, why wait for someone else to do the giving?  When's the next time that I'm going to be in a place where I can wear a flower behind my ear?

So long to all this

Elias and I have had our last snorkel for the season.  We identified three new-to-us species from the pictures that we took - an ID session afterwards is a part of our routine.

What a pleasure, snorkeling with him.  I suppose there's no one who's so comfortable to do something fun with as your eight-year-old son.  May it ever be thus.

Parrot fish are our bane.  How could we not be able to
identify this fish?  It seems like it should be so obvious

For all the talk of the Gambier as being "special", Alisa and Elias went into the village today in search of local fruit, and were floored by the response they got.  A shop owner buried them in gifts of fruit and veg and fresh eggs, just because.

Polynesia never fails to overwhelm.

They'll be treasures at sea - and there were bananas, too

So, yes, as you have no doubt guessed, the weather is looking very good to leave for Chile in a few days, and we're on our final countdown.  I have a painful ear infection and am a bit swamped with finishing science commitments via the very poor internet here, but I'm sure it will all come together, just as it always does.

And, in the midst of our countdown, Alisa took the time to cook a proper Thanksgiving meal for ourselves and our new mates on Windora, who are also heading for Valdivia.  It's not something that I would do on my own, to have people over for a holiday meal a couple days before a three+ week passage.  But we all had a great time - Alisa is good at making it happen.

Alisa can do a holiday justice

And, that's us.  I've got to get some sleep.

The things we've done in these five and a half months - they'll give us memories for a lifetime.

Special

We came to the Gambier expecting nothing transcendent.  For months we had been hearing the same thing from people in the position to know – most notably a couple of public health nurses who work all over French Polynesia – that the people of Mangareva, the main island in the Gambier, are "special".

"Special" sounded pretty good.  Until out informants told us that they meant "special" as in especially difficult.

There are introduced berries on Mangareva.  You can tell
Elias is really an Alaskan kid by how excited he gets
about picking them

Travel, to us, means getting down with the local people to whatever extent our language skills and stamina might allow.  So a place like the Gambier (that's GAM-bee-EHH, all you American and Australian mononglot apes) where the Polynesian magic is supposed to be long since erased – by tourism, by the once-booming culture of black pearls, by too many yachts, by whatever – we naturally look on a place like that as a stepping stone to somewhere else.

One day's haul

And the pie his mom baked

But, it always works out this way.  If we come somewhere expecting little, we find a lot to like.

I want to reach to the hackneyed language that sports enthusiasts use to describe the latest 17-yr old phenom - the Gambier is a incredible physical specimen.  It is a wonderful example of the remote tropical island – a high volcanic island well on its way to becoming an atoll.  High mountains scattered here and there and surrounded by a mostly-submerged reef. 

There are heaps of anchorages to explore, which is a real change after being tied to the quai in Rapa.  There are tracks up the hills.  And the hills are just the right scale – steep and impressive-looking from the deck of your boat, but small enough for an eight-year-old to happily tramp to the top of.

Just the right scale

After all the social interaction in Ra'ivavae and Rapa we're happy to tend our own garden for a bit, and we've made precious little attempt to get down with the locals.  But there is a nice company of like-minded sailors here – our old friends on Hera, a delightful Kiwi couple who are also heading to Valdivia, and with whom we have a ton of friends in common, and a smattering of French boats that are mostly taking a break – for months or for years – from the peripatetic life.

It'll do for us.

Another milestone - the boys' first unaccompanied dinghy
trip together.

One eye on the passage ahead - what's left in those
food lockers, anyway?

And, meanwhile, having another Chile-bound boat for company has brought our excitement at this next grand chapter to a boil.

The weather is looking great for the passage.  The southeast Pacific high looks to be very well set up, which has established a huge area of counter-clockwise winds over this part of the world.  All we have to do is to get a thousand nautical miles – in round numbers – south of here, and then we should have beautiful westerlies to carry us on our way.

The trick, of course, is getting across those thousand miles, many of them with no wind at all…

Australia - France

The French national team beat Australia at rugby this week.

France (l) chases Australia (r)

You might have missed that result.  We would have, except that we found ourselves in the company of two rugby fans - one French, one Kiwi - on the day the match was broadcast here in the Gambier.

A couple days later, the enormity of this outcome finally sank in.

"How could France be any good at rugby?" I asked Alisa.  We were in the comfortable confines of the Marital Seabunk, enjoying the sleepy 15 minutes of independence that we enjoy every day, between the time the boys go to sleep and the time when we nod off.

"I mean," I continued, warming to my theme, "it seems to suggest that there's something lacking in my understanding of France.  Or of rugby."

Alisa didn't have much to contribute on the theme, so I went on.

"Think about it.  France is good at so many things.  And Australia is good at so few.  And then France went and beat Australia at one of the few things Australia is good at.  Hardly seems fair."

This picture, and below - the boys discovering their rugby roots with a Kiwi
enthusiast and a French enthusiast on Taravai Island, the Gambier.  I was
safely on board Galactic, doing some science thing or another

The boys couldn't have enjoyed it more