An Outing to a Village on an Atoll. Tuamotu

An outing to a village on an atoll. Tuamotu. Sent via satellite. How many ships were lost before French baguettes became the national food. In the Tuamotu Archipelago (formerly known as the Paumotu) there are 76 different atolls. Those with an entrance into the inner lagoon are generally inhabited. The others are nesting grounds for birds and turtles. Ferdinand Magellan was the first to stumble upon the Tuamotu Archipelago. In 1521, by some miracle, his ships did not wreck on the low, inconspicuous islands. Over the next five centuries, hundreds of sailing vessels, and later motor vessels, came to grief in Tuamotu’s treacherous currents, shallows and reefs. Without electronic navigation, things were grim. Even with it, sailors sometimes failed to see an island until they found themselves in the danger zone. Most of the atolls rise no more than 5 m above sea level. In bad weather, you can’t make them out even from a mile away. The first one Magellan encountered was the eastern atoll of Puka-Puka (the moment our captain saw the name, he dreamed of visiting it without fail, but the wind sent us well away to the west). The atoll of Kauehi, where we arrived, is rather more prosaic: it isn’t called Puka, Magellan didn’t discover it, the island doesn’t have a second Russian name, and it is neither small nor gigantic, but somewhere in between. Its land area is only 15 sq. km, but the lagoon measures 16 x 20 km. On atolls, the land forms a narrow strip around an approximate circle, and nowadays as many as 350 people live on this ring. Incidentally, despite lying almost in the centre of the Tuamotus, our atoll was the last in the archipelago to be discovered, as late as 1835. And this is Magellan . From Yacht Life We had breakfast with a magical cake made by sailor Nastya, which she conjured up yesterday in honour of our arrival in the Tuamotus . The cake’s magical properties have a very simple explanation. The recipe contains just 5 ingredients: flour, sugar, powdered milk, baking soda and cocoa, plus water. Both the cream and the sponge are made from these. Fruit between the layers, according to taste and availability. Someday we’ll have sour cream, eggs and various kefirs on board, and then we’ll definitely bake a different cake. Over breakfast, quite unexpectedly, the captain and I began joining forces with our sailor to lay the foundations of her bright future, naturally. We identified 8 areas of self-education and personal development, all of which will be in perfect order by the time we return from our circumnavigation. We got so carried away that we nearly missed our trip ashore in the sailing dinghy across the azure lagoon. . Quiet as paradise The village, about a mile long and a hundred metres wide, has concrete roads—one and a half of them in total—and several cars, including a small truck. Among the few passers-by, we encountered a smiling cyclist coming towards us. The inscription on the back of his navy-blue civilian T-shirt proclaimed that this was no ordinary cyclist, but an actual representative of the Kauehi municipal police. Before meeting him, Andryukha had been wondering whether we ought to report to the gendarmerie and say, here we are, we’ve arrived. But the policeman offered us nothing more than a hearty bonjour—and that was the end of the gendarmerie question. We immediately fell in love with the village. Everyone smiles and calls out bonjour. Well, everyone who isn’t hiding :). There are at least three shops, the largest being a 1:100-scale model of an out-of-town hypermarket. According to the sweet saleswoman in the little shop opposite, this maxi-market will open tomorrow, and it may be possible to find a few vegetables there. Ice cream will materialise in two days’ time, when the supply ship arrives. For now, there is an entirely adequate, though not cheap, selection of tinned food, biscuits and drinks. And a speaker at the entrance is blaring out a popular Polynesian song. It’s interesting: how does the ship deliver goods to the village? Surely it doesn’t squeeze into the atoll? Or does it remain outside while motorised carts come out to collect the goods? It seems that, although this lagoon is large, a supply ship would look wildly out of place in it. We’ll see and tell you. Meanwhile, let’s have a look at the houses. The main decoration in a Polynesian home is curtains. They serve as drapes, screens, wallpaper, wall hangings... On Kauehi Atoll, the houses look like this: Local people’s homes and the “Town Hall” And here is a payphone and some kind of public office. An information centre of sorts And its waiting room The administration building and someone’s rusty anchor. It looks like one from the ships mentioned at the beginning of this report 🙂 Garage Something unknown to science. Obviously for catching fish The same thing, only close up. Material: shredded polyethylene During the day—not a soul anywhere To be continued tomorrow. Guys, thank you for your warm comments; the whole family reads them! There will be photographs once we reach internet access in Tahiti (we’ve arrived already, so now the photos have appeared). We won’t stay there long either. A lengthy stop is coming in just a couple of months, when we winter beyond the reach of hurricanes. We just don’t yet know whether we have definitely sailed past New Zealand, or whether we can still make it there to wait things out. Hugs to you, friends!