Wednesday June 6, 2007 — We went to meet Richard at the fancy hotel. We arrived early to explore the island with the hotel. There is an airport (complete with a passenger loading/unloading boat dock), three little souvenir shops selling jewelry made with locally raised black water pearls, and a couple of houses. The houses are farther apart than in town and have no fences. The views of the lagoon are beautiful. There are a lot of dragonflies around, too. We were surprised at the amount of trash strewn about. In addition to the usual bottles and cans, we saw a lot of broken sandals and buoys.

Back at the hotel, we watched some workers put a palm frond roof on a bungalow. There is a basic wooden frame. It looks like the two halves of the palm fronds are braided about a third of the way down from the stem. The fronds are laid down and nailed at the stem to the frame. The fronds are laid down a few inches apart and overlap one another. The fronds are covered with chicken wire to keep them from blowing away.

Richard treated us to wonderful lunch. We had raw fish in coconut milk, goat cheese salad, marinated pork (listed as “chest of pig” on the menu), and banana pastries hot out of the oven. We said our goodbyes to Richard. Big thanks to Richard for helping us with get across a big chunk of the Pacific Ocean!

Then we walked around to the south of the hotel. We passed through what looked like a coconut grove. Again, noticeable trash. Then there were lots of partially burned coconut fronds and nuts. Our understanding is that after coconuts are harvested, the meat needs to be dried out. In Fatu Hiva we saw some coconuts stacked up around a small fire, so we are sure that they use the heat from fires to dry them out. We are guessing the fronds are the kindling. We also saw some bundles of thatched fronds destined for the bungalow roof. The coconut grove wasn’t very wide and it seemed nothing was growing beyond it. We ventured over to have a look and lo and behold, there was mushy, almost quicksand like sand there! Of course, being a dork, Christi had to step in it to see if you really sink. You do.

Past the coconut grove was an enormous shallow area with ankle deep water. We walked around in the water for a while, passing a couple more houses on the shore. These two houses were far apart and had no fences. We also saw a huge crab run out of the water to shore. Then we went back to the hotel, hopped in the dinghy, and headed back to the Kosmos for the night.

The sunset was neat. The entire western sky was socked in by clouds, so we didn’t actually see the sun go down, but the east side of the sky turned red, pink, gold, and a blue-gray color. The colors were vivid.

On to another topic”¦Will someone with a fast internet connection look up something for us? We really want to know if we saw whales or dolphins in Nuka Hiva. We have heard them called peponocephala electra, pygmy orcas, dophins and melon-headed whales. Will someone look up all these terms and post a comment to help us figure out what it is we actually saw?