Second stop in the Marquesa Islands

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Lovely
Ua Pou, Marquesas, Feb 13th
Our hybrid freighter/cruise ship started working (doing freight exchange) today, fascinating.
We pulled into a dock on the island of Ua Pou, and they started unloading onions, refrigerated crates, other crates (6 feet by 6 feet by 6 feet) full of boxes which seemed to be destined for grocery stores- water, coke, beer, insect repellent, etc.
Terry and I walked to a lovely church with fantastic carvings; we also walked up a 450 m hill, Terry turned back and I continued to the top, about half way up the mountain and I could see over to another bay across the island with surf and beautiful shades of South Pacific Ocean.
We had lunch at Tata Rosalie’s restaurant: buffet included poisson cru, pieuvre, pork and beef, bananas stewed, fried and pudding and bland breadfruit, desert was fresh papaya and watermelon. Lovely.
We boarded the boat and circled the island, passing a hilly airport, which I missed (Terry will describe it for you later I am sure) and whale boated into a harbor full of kids frolicking in the crashing surf around boulders. Again we visited the church with sculptured pulpit as seen all over Polynesia and walked up to a huge slab of rock now used to dry coconuts (human bones in the olden days. I picked lemons and a lime, people bought avocado from the natives and we saw papaya, breadfruit and mango. Hot day, we are drinking from water bottles continuously and I had 3 swims in the boat pool today between outings. While waiting for our whale boat to return to the ship, the seamen were unloading tons of toilet paper for the inhabitants along with water and beer; they also picked up empty beer bottles to be refilled in Tahiti, at great expense no doubt.
Tonight dinner was salad as usual, a bit different always with meats and vegetables, salmon of the gods (a white fish) with rice and eggplant caviar, crème brûlée for desert with white wine.
Tomorrow we dock at Nuka Hiva, the biggest island at 6 am! And we won’t get home till 5 pm. Off to bed.

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