Author: Pam
As planned we rowed out and back and checked out of the hotel. When we were leaving the hotel we ran into Marianne, she is the head waitress and had been very nice to us. We had brought some stickers and bubble gum to give to her for her five daughters and we were planning to look for her on our way back down the hill (her house is on the way). Before leaving the hotel she gave us a big bag of ice and said she would meet us at our dinghy with some fruit she wanted to give to us. We waited a little while and she hadn’t come yet, so Scott rowed out to the boat again with the last of the water (we schlepped 70 gallons in total) and to meet Stephan who was coming by to start the engine to see if the pump was going to work. On his way out Stephan came by and gave him a tow to the boat. They tried the pump and found only one small leak that Stephan said would be no problem to fix. In the meantime, Marianne came down to the beach carrying a bucket of limes from the tree in her yard, two coconuts (Scott is anxious to try the juice of a young coconut, I don’t care for it) and five pomplumousse. What is pomplumousse? It is a large green grapefruit about the size of a soccer ball. They are sweeter, but still taste like grapefruit. They are huge and I have not figured out how two people eat one. The pomplumousse is our first new fruit or vegetable experience. While chatting with Marianne she asked how we were doing for drinking water. I told her we needed to buy some and asked which store she recommended. She said she had twenty four extra bottles of water we could have, she just needed to find someone with a car to get it down to the beach. I was stunned, but we have read you should not decline an offer it is considered rude. It was also going to be a huge help, because we really hadn’t figured out how we were going to get the water from the store to the dinghy, there are no taxis. We made arrangements to meet again at the beach at 17:00 to pick up the water. So, back to the boat with the fruit and to figure out the rest of our day. While Scott and Stephan finished up with the engine I sat in the dinghy and held all of the fruit in the water in a net back for bug control. This took a while, you can only put so many pomplumousse in one net bag. At 15:00 we headed into shore with Stephan following to make sure the outboard made it to go to the bank and the store to buy a few more waters to go with what we would later get from Marianne. After getting cash from the bank we paid Stephan and headed off to the store. We bought twelve more waters, two sodas and a case of beer. When we got outside Scott realized with horror the beer had cost $60.00. Yikes! This beer we did not need, they were very nice and refunded our money. Lesson learned, ask first. When we had so much to carry we were offered a ride by one of the guys who worked at the store. He pulled up in the most beat up vehicle I have ever ridden in. Scott being the gentleman sat in the back of this small jeep like creature, honestly he got the better deal. The seats were practically down to the springs and the driver wore his seatbelt pulled across him, but not attached to anything, so I did the same. They are apparently very strict about seatbelts on Nuku Hiva. We made it back to the dinghy and back to the boat with our bottled water in time to row over to the beach again to meet Marianne to pick up the water. As promised she was there with two cases of 1.5 liter bottles of drinking water. We still couldn’t believe our good fortune and her heartfelt generosity. She will be leaving Nuku Hiva on June 22nd, the hotel has transferred she and her husband to the property on Raiatea. We will probably stop by Raiatea so we can say hello to Marianne, we like the idea of already knowing someone there. Once back on the boat we rushed around to make some soup and change to go to shore again to watch the dancing and drumming. It was our first taste of the local culture and art of music and dance. They were practicing for the upcoming festival and competition in July, they were really great, even without traditional costumes. The men do one dance where they are calling the pig and apparently this is something all boys learn to do as a rite of passage into manhood. They eat the leaves of bread fruit and the bitterness causes something in there vocal cords to break so they can make a very low and husky noise to imitate the pig. It was quite impressive. If you are exhausted after reading this journal entry, you can only imagine how we felt as we fell into bed.
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