THE TUOMOTUS

These are a group of atolls to the south west of the Marquesas – once called the dangerous iles as they are all low lying – barely above sea level with a few palm trees growing on the top of them.
We visited Manihi where a lot of black pearl farming is done. We tried to buy pearls in the village but ‘the man’ wasn’t there – so oh well that’s that. Next day we tried to leave and couldn’t get our anchor up – tried for about an hour. Then we heard that ‘the man’ could fix it the next day. After a very disjointed radio conversation on the VHF the next morning in partial English and French, we gathered that he could come out and try to get the anchor up but we also got the impression that it was connected to us agreeing to go visit his pearl farm.
Out he came and free dived 20 meters on the anchor about a dozen times (this guy free dives to 30 meters and wasn’t a teenager) – after 45 minutes we were free and we asked how much – he wanted rope so David gave him 6 meters of Kevlar rope that we had on the deck. Happy chappy now – so next was the visit to the pearl farm.
Robert and I went out to the farm whilst David stayed on the boat – we weren’t game to anchor again – we were the 21st boat that season that he had to help with the anchor.
Very interesting time and we managed to purchase pearls that we harvested ourselves ie pulled the oysters up from where they grow on the farm (in the middle of the lagoon) and then they were opened and we extracted the pearl from the oyster – that is if there was one in it that had grown. Great time.
We next went to Rangiroa about 500 nm away and swam with reef sharks in the Blue Lagoon.
Next we went to Tikehau and anchored off ‘Bird Island” and swam and snorkeled on the surrounding reef. The local villages are built on the largest piece of land at the atolls and this might only give them 8 miles of road – and they all have cars – dead flat land – so why would you buy a car- where can you go – from one end of the road to the other!!!