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Firefly - Fakarava



Well Sunday lunch did not materialise but instead we had a delicious supper of Steak et Frites followed by home made cheese cake in a small cafe on the shore close by to our anchorage. The girls running the place could not have been more helpful - even charging our cameras. Before arriving in French Polynesia we were warned that prices here could be high but this is not always the case; there are very few places in the world where you could get a 'quality' steak and chips for the equivalent of $10!



So we needed some exercise to work off this supper and this morning hired bikes to tour the atoll. We cycled 16 km South until the road ran out then back to the North, again till the road ran out at the airport. When we got back to the boat we had cycled just under 40km. The only flaw in this healthy plan was we stopped for second breakfast of cheese omelet baguettes at a pretty beach cafe. The cycle tour also stopped at a pearl farm. Culturing black pearls is particular to these Polynesian lagoons and is a lengthy process. Young oysters are gathered, sorted and let to grow inside nets for six months, they are then sorted again, cleaned, and hung in strings before the small natural nucleus of the pearl is grafted on. Finally they are dipped back into the lagoon for another 18 months to four years and regularly sorted and cleaned as the pearl forms around the intruder. We watched a well organised and industrious team of locals clean and graft on the nucleus and tie them back into nets.



We hired the bikes from Aldric, a very pleasant Frenchman who with his wife runs the local Fakarava Yacht Services. They came here six months ago from Riatea (an island near Tahiti) for a quieter life!



As we write this more World ARC boats have arrived - Brizo, Seaduced, Alpharatz, Boingo, Chika Lu and Clementina - so Aldric will be hoping to be busy!



Paul, David and Peter

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