Fakaravai; Taumotus

We have been a few days in Fakarava and at the moment the weather is foul. It is raining with strong winds. We are well protected as far as the wind goes as we are behind the island. What is interesting is the swell that we are getting from the SW. This is due to a storm to the south west of here and most probably something that is lurking around New Zealand or just past there. As these seas are very large they come over the reef into the atoll and affect us on the inside. This atoll is massive. Maybe I could just add in here how they form and what causes them to be as they are. Once there was a volcano here with a reef growing around it. Over the ions the volcano slowly subsides due to the ocean floor subsiding. This happens so slowly that the coral can keep pace and keeps growing for the surface. Eventually the volcano disappears under the surface and only the coral is left, leaving a very flat atoll. As the seas really hammer the atoll from the south west most of the atolls have little to no land to form islands on that side. Most of the land is on the north and east sides and this is where you normally find the town/villages. So with nothing to stop the big seas crashing in over the southern sides, the swells although small, still make it all the way up here 21-25 miles to the NW corner. The passes are also of interest. When the volcano was still above the surface it would have had rivers that would have flowed off it into the ocean. At these points the coral would not have grown and so the passes were formed. Also with the seas coming in over the reef on the SW corner putting tons of extra water into the atoll a very strong current develops through the pass making it difficult to get into the atoll. So with high seas/swells from the SW and rain and strong winds 25-30kn from the SE we are staying put. The wind should die down by Thursday and we will head on down to Papeete on Tahiti. We have spent a lot of time just walking around the village and along the seaward side of the atoll. The land area from lagoon to the sea is between 300m and 500m wide and it only rises a few meters above sea level. The ground is loose coral with some hard rocky areas and not much sand. The island has a good covering of palm trees and the locals process the coconuts for the copra. The copra is apparently subsidised to give the people a form of income, but even this does not seem to cover the costs of all the toil to get to copra to the point where it is dry. The gardens are sparse and many people seem to grow their plants in pots. We did come across one person with a small market garden. There are two problems with growing anything here. The poor soil and the lack of water. We were lucky to find some low coconut palms again as we walked around and got these opened up to drink. The green ones are sweet but the yellow ones have a lovely fizz to them. They really are lovely cooled, but then the trees don't grow on ice. Something that has surprised us on most of our travels so far is the lack of beaches. One always sees tropical islands advertised as white sandy beaches and palms where you can sit and relax and drink your coconut and read a book and laze around.... sadly not, there are very few beaches and that goes for the Caribbean as well. The atolls are rough coral reefs on the outside with very little in a way of a beach on the inside. Even in the Marquesas the beaches are stony heads of a bay and anything outside the bay is cliff and rock territory with usually large swells and waves to go with it. The shops here are so expensive that we have avoided them since our first shopping expedition. US$8 for a 2ltr coke and the cheese... Oh well we can get some more in Tahiti. Part of the problem is that the islanders do not pay any personal tax. Very nice... However they have a consumer's tax like GST/VAT. Now that's a great idea, but it does make things expensive for us. But the good side is that everyone pays there share according to what they spend. The people again are very friendly and they all great you and smile as they go by. There is not much else here so I guess I will end off here for now. Till next time...

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