Fakarava north

Yesterday I rented a bike and rode about 30km along the northern island. I went southwards, where I found some hotel/pensions with beautiful beaches and some pearl farms. I also went to the airport in the north west, loved riding the bike through a diverse nature where you find corals, sand, pine trees (or whatever those are, similar to that) next to palm trees, green bushes and trees with the Tahiti flower. Fakarava is a touristy atoll, even a Cruis ship came here when we arrvied. On board: Jean-Michel Cousteau, the son of Jacques, the famous ocean researcher. With about 15 hotels/pesnions in this atoll this is the most tourism whe have seen so far - although you don't really see it when you're here. Everything looks normal. Clean as everywhere, (grocery) shopping is only half as good as in Makemo (BUT: I was able to buy a little bit of fresh food, we already had salad for 2 days now!), less pearl farms than in Mangareva (but made more for tourists). The anchorage is not beautiful, you can't go swimming here. Here in front of the town it's just to stock up food a bit, see the island with the bike and wait for the northerly wind to be over so that we can move to the supposedly beautiful south, where we hope to meet 3 friends boats, with whom Marcus can go diving. After that we're off to Tahiti.
Here are some pix of Fakarava:

 See the cruis ship in the background directly behind Alita?

 How to park a boat...

 Pearl Farm and Hotel & Restaurant Tavariki

 The airport

Tahanea

Hello hello. I am back to life. Actually the last 6 days I had the best times in a long time, maybe even on the whole trip. Not nature beauty wise, Patagonia is still my favourite. But sailing life wise.
On my 5ht daay of antibiotics I got into contact with other sailor friends, who had arrived at Tahenea or were about to arrvie and by talking to them over radio had announced I would love to do a beach party the following evening, hoping that some one comes. Midday next day only our swiss friends with the Catamarn "Mares" came. Well, better than nothing I thought. Then, a bit later, our dutch friends on their boat "Duende" arrvied (they have got the cutest girl) and all of a sudden in the evening, when I was just preparing dinner for going to the beach, our friends from New Zealand (State of Mine and Saliander) as well as our german friends on "Anico" came and we ende up having a great beach party. Oh, I was so happy. Rod from "State of Mind" said, "all because Michaela sounded so lonely". What I had started for that night ended up in a series of 5 social nights, 4 of them at the beach with BBQ and the last 2 nights (when 6 additional boats had arrived) with music and one (the seconde night) on board (due to rain) of State of Mind with drinks and snacks everyone had brought. It was that evening when the group seperated to women (under deck with all the food ;-) ) and  men (outside). We chatted about food, this and that, wome talk and dancing. All liked Salsa so I promised to teach them Salsa next morning. That was the beginning to a series of 4 morning workout sessions. Day one: warm-up and Salsa lesson. Day 2: Ballett. Day 3 and 4: 1hr warm-up and then Salsa-Jazz Dance choreography. We all had a lot of fun, and seeing the others enjoying it made me really happy and revitalized me.


Yesterday all but one (so 10 in total) sailboats left the anchorage. 4 went out yesterday (including us), most of the rest today. IN the morning we all changed the anchorage to near the pass so that we cna go out at a good timing (slack time, when there is the least current). 3 of us came to where we are now, FAKAREVA over night. It was an easy ride, where we all looked out to be not too fast so that we would not arrive too realy. Our timing was perfect, we were able to directly go in without problems. Too many times we have waited and wiated in front of the passes to find the right moment to go in.

I just uploaded pictures of Tahanea in to the photo gallery. Here is the link:
http://sailing.smichah.de/#!album-62

Here are some memories: (sorry, the upload does not really work, the photos did not all come up. please follow the link to see all picutes).

Morning sunrise on a calm day before everybody else was here: 

 Marcus had caught a coconut crab at night while hunting Lobster (which he also got) and shared it on our first BBQ night. It was the star of the evening.

My ladies morning work-out group (two missing here)