We arrived in Huahine at 9:30 AM. We decided to anchor just inside the pass offshore of Fare, the main village on the island. There were four other boats already in this area, one of which was Plan B, a large catamaran with a nice family aboard that had been part of our Moorea gang and had also just arrived in Huahine. Graham, the father of the family, soon came over to our boat and told us the not very nice story of their arrival. Seems one of the other boats there had a grumpy fellow aboard who thought that Plan B had anchored to close to his boat. He chose to make his opinion on the subject known by screaming over unhelpful comments and using language Graham thought his 7 year old daughter did not need to hear. Let me add here that anchoring a boat isn't quite like parking a car, you don't always end up exactly where you think you will because the boat is still drifting around while you are lowering the anchor down to the bottom, and how much it drifts depends on how deep the water is and how hard the wind is blowing and if there is any current. You could stop the drift by putting the boat in gear, but you want the boat to drift some so your anchor chain doesn't just pile up onto itself, so you drift a little bit anyway. And, at least for us, the wind usually decides to clock around some right when we are anchoring, so you don't necessarily drift in exactly the direction you thought you were going to. So, it's a fairly common occurance to wind up a bit closer to someone than you intended. Graham admitted that he was closer to the other boat than he meant to be, and said that if the fellow had just been a bit more civil he would have moved. But once the screaming started Graham decided that he liked his spot just fine (he only planned to stay there a few hours anyway). However, he really didn't want to argue with the guy, so he just pretended he didn't speak English. He said he was Russian. He thought there'd be a slim chance the guy knew how to speak Russian and he was right. The grumpy guy probably didn't believe the no English thing, he was yelling about the boat being a US boat (which it says on the back of the boat for all to see), but Graham just kept saying "I don't understand - no English" over and over again with his best fake Russian accent until the guy went away. We're all laughing at the story and thinking this is a clever way to avoid a confrontation with someone who clearly wants one, until the next day when Graham is on the radio broadcasting in English on the public channel. We got on then and said, "hey Plan B, sounds like you speak pretty good English after all", intending to make Graham sweat a little. He handled it pretty well, so we came back on pretty soon and tried to explain that it was us, but somehow Graham thought the grumpy guy had caught him until days later when we saw him in another bay and could explain the whole thing in person.
After the anchoring drama and an egg bacon and cheese sandwich breakfast, we wound up sleeping most of our first day in Huahine because we hadn't slept much the night before. We went into town early the next day and got some more baguettes and some fresh produce and then pulled up the anchor and headed south inside the lagoon along the west side of the island. We wound up stopping near this lovely little beach where another boat, Kaama, that was also in our Moorea gang, was already anchored. They'd been there for a couple days and had met the caretaker of the beach. It seems that there was once a small resort behind the beach, but it was wiped out by a big storm in 2000. After that the president of Tahiti bought the property and hired Siki to be the caretaker. Nice job if you can get it! Siki was very nice fellow, and I wished our French was better so we could talk to him more, but he did manage to give us a bit of the history of the place. The only remains of the resort were the skeleton of the kitchen, some really nice plantings, and the pool and spa areas which were half filled with swampy water, but still managed to look good. We also hiked up to an overlook point where we could look down at the boats, the water, the reef and over to the next island (it's always nice when you can see the next one - that means it's a short sail to get there!)
Siki also offered to show us how to cook breadfruit, which was something we'd seen for sale at some of the produce stands but hadn't tried yet. Well, Siki didn't get his breadfruit at no stand - no sir. Siki took us over to the next bay and then proceeded to cut a 12 foot pole about 4 inches in diameter which he leaned up against the breadfruit tree and then shimmied up using his feet and hands to reach the lower branches of the tree. Then he did what looked like a fun tree climb to about 30 feet, then he kept right on going to what looked like a scary tree climb to about 60 feet. Then he began pulling branches down toward him with the hooked stick that he had carried up with him. He used that to get the breadfruit close to him, then plucked them and tied them onto the other end of his stick with the piece of bark he'd peeled off it earlier. Needless to say, we were pretty impressed. After gathering the breadfruit, we trooped back to the main beach and Siki built a fire with some sticks and coconut husks and then got some small coconuts and split them open in about two seconds using a sharp stick he had hidden in a bush. Next he showed us an ingenious coconut shredding device that you put on a bench and sit on and the grater wheel sticks out in front of you between your legs. You put the bowl on the ground in front of you and start grating. We all took turns and the only tricky part was not kicking sand into the tupperware bowl during the personnel switch. Next Siki cut a few slits in the outside of the breadfruit with his machete and put them onto the fire propped up by more coconut husks. While they were cooking, Siki extracted the coconut milk from the shredded coconut by putting it all in a ball in a clean cloth and then twisting it over the tupperware bowl. After the breadfruit had cooked long enough it came off the fire and it's pulp went into the same cloth and then Siki beat it with a stick for a while. The final presentation was pieces of the mashed breadfruit in the coconut milk inside the coconut shells we had scraped clean. The texture was different enough that I can't think what to compare it to. The flaver was not strong but odd. But a little of it was quite filling, so I can see how it would be popular, particularly if you were living off the land, and while I'm not sure I'd climb a tree that high for that same dish again, I'd definitely like to try it prepared some more ways before we leave the islands.
We left the next morning for Raiatea.
No comments:
Post a Comment