The Tuamotos Continued ... Fakarava and Toau Atolls

It is over 50 miles from Tahanea Atoll to Fakarava Atoll, and in order to arrive in Fakarava in daylight, we had to leave Tahanea in the dark ...  very cautiously, with Ian on the foredeck armed with a high powered torch on the lookout for coral bommies and standing waves  in the pass.  Entering and leaving atolls in daylight is exciting enough, but in pitch dark the waves breaking over the foredeck really did seem huge!  The rest of the trip was uneventful, we sailed in company with Jadean and Impulse - unfortunately there were no available mooring buoys when we arrived in Fakarava so we had to anchor and float our chain with fenders to keep it off the coral..

Fakarava Tumakohua pass is famous for it's 'Wall of Sharks', mainly black tip, white tip and grey reef sharks, there are literally hundreds making their way in and out of the pass - a magnet for scuba and snorkellers, you time your dives so that the current pulls you into the atoll, past vast numbers of sharks.  The water is incredibly clear, and the sharks just ignore the divers as they make their way in and out of the atoll.

The South Pass, Fakarava - and the Wall of Sharks.  We ended up repeating the dive six times, and were never disappointed.

We left the South Pass and spent two nights anchored off the  village of Pakokota in the middle of the atoll before heading for the main town of Rotoava near the North Pass.  Rotoava is the main town, a 2012 Census states that the population at that time was 809 people - there is a school, several restaurants, two supermarkets and Fakarava Yacht Services where you can rent Bicycles, get your Cooking Gaz bottles filled and use the WiFi.  The WiFi was incredibly slow, but the bicycles were great - we rented a couple and set off to explore the island.

 Our first stop was a small Pearl Farm, Hinano Pearls.  Tahitian Pearls are dark in colour, but this is not the reason  they are known as Black Pearls - it's because they are cultivated in the Black Lipped Oyster - a very labour intensive and delicate job involving the insertion of a small shell bead and piece of mantle into the gonad of an oyster.  The oysters are delicate, and do not survive out of the water for long so the whole process has to be done rapidly, the oysters are returned to the sea, strung onto lines that are suspended 6m below the surface of the water where it takes appproximately 18 months for a sufficient number of layers of nacre to form around the bead.  Oysters who produce good quality, iridescent and blemish free pearls are re-used several times - those that produce mis sharpen or poor quality pearls are discarded.

The oyster was cut open, a large but low quality pearl was removed and the whole process explained to us.  The pearls are eye wateringly expensive - even simple bracelets on elastic thread were on offer for $150 to $250.

After the Pearl Farm we cycled along the only road to the northern end of Fakarava, past coconut plantations.  The last 6 km were on dirt track - the road had run out.

The North Pass, Fakarava.  One of the wider passes but also known to have some complex and unpredictable currents, so not suitable for diving unless in the company of a local guide. 

The final atoll we visited was Toau, an easy day sail from Fakarava - although we had the wind and the current with us in the pass, the waves are still pretty impressive - as was the fish we caught on the way into the atoll!

A Grouper - caught in the entrance to the Atoll, we let him go again.

We met a local family on Toau, they farm Copra and showed us how to open a coconut and remove the flesh in about 10 seconds - when we have tried, it's taken about an hour!

Very confident use of a large machete opens a coconut, and the husks are frequently burnt to keep the mosquitos and other insects away.

The Coconut meat is dried in the sun for two or three days then sent to Tahiti for the oil to be extracted.  We were also shown how to grate fresh coconuts to make coconut milk which forms a huge part of their diet.  We have been sailing in company with Yachts Jadean, Impulse, So What and Nahoa who are all anchored in the beautiful turquoise water of the atoll.

The locals also offered to take us all on a Coconut Crab hunt - Coconut Crabs are a species of terrestrial hermit crab, the juveniles use discarded shells for protection and as they mature they develop their own hard exoskeleton.  Apparently they can grow to have a leg span of 1 metre, but the ones we saw were not that large.

Although the crabs have claws strong enough to cut their way into coconuts, the coconut is only part of their diet - they eat any fruit, nuts and any other organic matter they find.

The crabs are nocturnal, and have no difficulty climbing trees in search of food.

We spent a couple of days at the South of Toau, then moved back up to the pass - the locals told us the sharks there were more aggressive, and we discovered this for ourselves when we were out in the dinghy.  We were motoring across the entrance when a shark attacked the engine, it's second pass stopped the motor - apparently it was only about 1.5m to 2m long but we were much more focussed on getting the engine going again to study it closely!  Needless to say, we did not do any diving in that location.

Our final days on Toau were spent on Anse Amyot in the north - a beautiful calm lagoon with mooring buoys where we could do some diving without worrying too much about the sharks.

Diving the coral drop off in Toau - it's like a huge underwater cliff, dropping from about 10 metres down to hundreds of metres.

We have loved our time in the Tuamotos, and thanks to Kim and Barry on yacht Jadean who have been taking us out in their RIB and filling our scuba tanks we have done some spectacular dives that we certainly would not have been able to do with out them.  It has been fantastic.

Our next stop is Tahiti - where there are supermarkets and shops, and a marina with shore power and showers, and where we are going to be meeting up again with Hugh and Annie on sailing yacht Vega.