6th repeat stops; Nuka Hiva & Ua Pou

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Nuku Hiva and Ua Pou
Feb 18th 2009
Terry and I are still struggling with the computer camera thing. We spent a few hours this morning with Bernard at his computer in Ottawa, Canon on their customer help line, Terry on our machine and moi on the ship’s Internet trying to get help, still nada!
We skipped the 2 hour archeological site visit situated at the middle of the bay and stayed on board: these islands are very humid and people came back completely drenched- good call in our part.
This afternoon, we stop at Mila’s home island, a second stop for the Aranui on this voyage as it bring goods from Tahiti, the big port but also insures exchanges between the smaller islands. We will swim on the black sand beach and maybe snorkel there although we are told that because the water is colder here (a few degrees only) there are no coral formations. This happens for the same reasons there are harbors at the foot of bays: The fresh water coming down the mountains make for a dilution of the bay waters, they are not salty enough for corals to grow there. Each port seems to have a small window of opportunity for the ship to slowly get in close to the land, having traversed a narrow path between coral reefs, best example is in Papeete on Tahiti.
Lovely lunch, food and company. We came into the dock at Ua Pou as expected and walked off the ship, over to the end of the ship and swam right there, watching the crew unload the cargo. We were in the water for abot an hour and a half, swimming, floating and talking and playing with a few Marquesian children. Nice way to end our stay in the Marquesas.
Tomorrow sea day, then last stop in Rangiroa. Off to dinner … Karaoke tonight for some, early bed for us probably.

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