Pitufa.at

It’s our third visit to Raivavae, but this year we’re lucky with the weather for the first time–sunny skies make such a difference…
We’ve been dividing our time between writing/boat projects and fun activities with our cruiser friends. Three days ago we hiked up Mt. Hiro, the highest mountain, together: 8 cruisers in a row
To get to the path we had to cross a private garden. Instead of complaining about us trespassing the friendly local couple had a bag of lychees, a few stacks of bananas and some taro prepared for us when we got back down after a fabulous hike with breathtaking views.

We hear reports from Tahiti and Moorea that thefts and vandalism are becoming more frequent. It seems that some sections of the population are getting fed up with the numerous sailboats.

Here sailboats are still rare and each time we get off the boat we have some pleasant encounter. Yesterday we took the dinghy ashore where our friends from Avatar where just getting ready for a bike tour around the island. They discovered a flat tyre and a local girl who had been watching the scene immediately returned with her bike to lend it to them… Today we went to a little minimarket, asked whether they had bread and were told that they were sold out. We bought a few other items and just as we were leaving the shop the salesgirl handed us a baguette–she had taken one from the family freezer and wouldn’t let us pay for it.

These little, spontaneous gestures make life so pleasant on remote Polynesian islands…

Yesterday it was sunny, so we kicked ourselves to some activity even though we were still tired from the passage–you never know how long the nice weather will last in the Australs…
We went to the mayor’s office, didn’t get a map, but some vague advice about hiking tracks. We hitched a ride along the cross-island road–after friendly Rurutu we were surprised how many cars passed by before one stopped for us. The women set us off at the beginning of the dirtroad to Taitaa, the highest mountain.
It turned out that the trail was well-marked, because there will be a sports event in about two weeks here: the Lychee run criss-crosses all over the island and we only had to follow the red arrows up the ridge. At some point we heard a noisy engine behind us and prepared to hop into the ditch next to the narrow trail. When the source of the noise eventually turned up slowly it turned out to be a community tractor with a mowing trailer making the trail even smother for the runners. The driver invited us up, we hopped on the mud guard wings, jiggled and joggled slowly up the mountain holding on for dear life.

The driver set us off where the trail becomes a footpath and we hiked up another steep slope to the highest peak of Tubuai where large boulders are piled up precariously–looking along the ridge we were more than grateful for the ride. We descended according to the instructions of the community worker down the other side of the mountain where the trail leads down almost vertically–those runners will have to be incredible athletes to make it up there…

We got back to Pitufa after more than 4 hours of hiking. This morning it was overcast, the peak invisible in a cloud and we were happy we had done the hike with blue skies. Carpe diem!

The past three days it was still blowing hard, so we stayed in Avera bay where it was bouncy, but at least safe. The sun was out again and we explored the last few corners of the island we had not seen yet: we walked along the beach to a spectacular cave just north of Avera, hiked along the ridge southwards and today we made a last visit to the main village Moerai. The harbour still looks frightening, so we’re glad we made it to the other side in time.

There are two dogs who usually hang out in the harbour and walked along with us when we were still located there. Today they were thrilled to see us again and hiked all the way up to a lookout above the cliffs north of Moerai where we had a picnic. Fortunately we always carry some catfood our spoiled princess refused, so the dogs had a picknick, too

Tomorrow the wind will turn to the northeast and then north again, so we can make another hop eastwards to Tubuai, the next island of the Australs.

We’ve been confined to the boat for 5 days during nasty weather with lots of rain, sustained winds of 30 knots (54 km/h) and gusts howling down the mountains with up to 50 knots (90 km/h). We were feeling a bit sorry for ourselves until we read on the news that Europe has been hit by far worse weather with horrible floodings, mudslides and snow chaos in Austria and Italy…

There’s a front moving by just north of us and we get grey, rainy and very windy weather here. The wind’s howling over the montain and gusts up to 40 knots push Pitufa from one side to the other. Fortunately the sea’s are (still??) rather calm, so we’re having productive indoor-project days.

I got the jewellery workshop out, Christian’s working on the computer and Leeloo is concentrating on growing a thick winterfur. You’d think that a European cat might follow the European seasons in fur-thickness, but watching Leeloo we see that she grows fur according to changes in the temperature and adjusts surprisingly quickly. At the moment she looks as fluffy as a polar-rabbit