This morning we were up early to go to a festival in the town of Lakepa on the other side of the island. Eric and Gisela joined us. Lakepa happens to be the next village over from where we ended our island tour on Thursday, so after the fair we would continue the island tour. Several people had told us to be at the festival by 0730 or 0800 to get good food. It would be over by noon at the latest. We have noticed that in Polynesia, they tend to get an early start on the day. All the markets begin at or before dawn and are over by 0800, which is why we have never gone to one. Continue reading →

Thursday This morning we went by the bakery and picked up some bread and cookies on our way out of town. They had several types of white breads, such as loaves, rolls, cheese topped, etc. It is nice to have some bread choices. In most places in French Polynesia your only choice was a baguette, though occasionally we would find coconut bread. The bread was really good. Cookies were not.

We had decided to head south, figuring that Matapa would be our last stop of the day. The first stop on the southern route was Ana Ana lookout point. There was a short staircase leading to an extremely jagged coral ledge. We know this island is coral and limestone, but we were shocked to see that this ledge was definitely made out of coral. No doubt about it. It amazed us that at some point in time this 100 foot lookout was completely underwater and an abundant reef thriving with life. We later found out that the island had eroded into being basically just a reef and some tectonic activity somehow caused the island to rise up again from the bottom up, and suddenly the existing reef was the top of the island and a new reef formed at the bottom. Now we are wondering if what we had thought was lava rock on some of the other islands was also been dead coral that had somehow managed to surface. It is hard to believe that all the foliage on this island lives in this hostile appearing rock. Continue reading →