Heaven, Purgatory and Hell
5 JUNE 2020
TUAMOTU, CENTRAL PACIFIC, FAKARAVA ATOLL.
We slowly discover life in a Polynesian atoll, where time flows like elsewhere, even if the impression is that it slows down, while it is always immediately evening. The houses are different from the other islands of the Society, although here too the garden is experienced and cared for as the dominant part, leaving the interiors to glimpse only open spaces, without rooms. A single environment where there is everything, except the bathroom, isolated and often outside the house. The garden is the strong point, floral, clean and welcoming and while in Fakarava it contains nothing but two or three chairs in the shade of a palm tree, in Moorea or Tahiti instead it is the custody of everything that the family possesses, both materially and as affections. You can see the cars, from the most recent more or less shiny depending on the social status, to the previous ones, now carcasses transformed into chicken coops.Then the boat, omnipresent and of the most varied shapes and materials, useful for fishing inside the reef, or simply to move from one village to another; not even the Polynesian canoe is missing, a typical thin and streamlined rocker structure. The state of maintenance of the canoe is a sign of the age of the inhabitants, or if the children in adolescence or a little further on are still at home, vice versa where the canoes lie abandoned it is a sign that only the elderly are left, who sooner or later they will end up in the home cemetery, or family grave, always in the same garden. In fact, it is customary to bury loved ones in the garden of the house, so that they remain close, witnesses of a timeless love.not even the Polynesian canoe is missing, a typical thin and streamlined rocker structure. The state of maintenance of the canoe is a sign of the age of the inhabitants, or if the children in adolescence or a little further on are still at home, vice versa where the canoes lie abandoned it is a sign that only the elderly are left, who sooner or later they will end up in the home cemetery, or family grave, always in the same garden. In fact, it is customary to bury loved ones in the garden of the house, so that they remain close, witnesses of a timeless love.not even the Polynesian canoe is missing, a typical thin and streamlined rocker structure. The state of maintenance of the canoe is a sign of the age of the inhabitants, or if the children in adolescence or a little further on are still at home, vice versa where the canoes lie abandoned it is a sign that only the elderly are left, who sooner or later they will end up in the home cemetery, or family grave, always in the same garden. In fact, it is customary to bury loved ones in the garden of the house, so that they remain close, witnesses of a timeless love.conversely, where the canoes lie abandoned it is a sign that only the elderly are left, who sooner or later will end up in the home cemetery, or family tomb, always in the same garden. In fact, it is customary to bury loved ones in the garden of the house, so that they remain close, witnesses of a timeless love.conversely, where the canoes lie abandoned it is a sign that only the elderly are left, who sooner or later will end up in the home cemetery, or family tomb, always in the same garden. In fact, it is customary to bury loved ones in the garden of the house, so that they remain close, witnesses of a timeless love.
Let’s go and visit the only Perl Farm in Fakarava, famous and today open only for us, while Gerard, the German owner, tells us the somewhat magical story of this game of nature, how the pearl oyster creates the pearl over time. . In fact, oysters are called pearly because they are able if a grain of sand, or a coral residue is sucked into their perennial movements of opening and closing the valves to filter the water, and retained in the gonads, over time is progressively coated with the component. translucent, hard, silver gray to anthracite, and make them reach dimensions proportional to the number of years that the procedure requires. Nature spontaneously creates irregular beads, then man understood that he could create perfect spherical beads.Here in the 1960s the Japanese invented the system of inserting in the gonads not a grain of sand, but a small sphere of mother-of-pearl, together with an epithelial component of the donor oyster, sacrificed and chosen on the basis of the internal color of its valve; in fact the pearl that the receiving host will carry in the womb will be the color of the donor oyster. And so the pearl oyster farms were born. Here in Fakarava there are 500,000 oysters, and an 8mm diameter pearl takes 6 years to grow in the belly of its mother oyster. However, nature always wins and perfect pearls do not always come out, despite the precision of the “surgeons”. And so there are spherical pearls, but others oval, pear-shaped, or completely anarchic, potato-shaped. The most valuable are the spherical ones, which in turn are classified with triple A max.The top, without imperfections. A pearl of one cm triple A max, can reach the market value of 500-700 dollars. Then there is the double A and the simple A, always pearls of the highest value, but ideal only for jewelery and not for the collection. Today there are Chinese pearls, with the thickness of the precious part, the gray one that made the oyster in so many years, very thin: as usual they have managed to devastate the market, sending many farms in crisis here in the Tuamotu, which have seen their earnings. But the real black pearl, the one that comes from the oysters of these waters, is only here.Today there are Chinese pearls, with the thickness of the precious part, the gray one that made the oyster in so many years, very thin: as usual they have managed to devastate the market, sending many farms in crisis here in the Tuamotu, which have seen their earnings. But the real black pearl, the one that comes from the oysters of these waters, is only here.Today there are Chinese pearls, with the thickness of the precious part, the gray one that made the oyster in so many years, very thin: as usual they have managed to devastate the market, sending many farms in crisis here in the Tuamotu, which have seen their earnings. But the real black pearl, the one that comes from the oysters of these waters, is only here.
Today we decide to leave early for the southern part of the atoll, which is large, like an immense, oval lake, 30 nautical miles (about 60 km) on the longer side and 20 on the short side. Crossing it can reserve unwelcome surprises if you don’t pay close attention. Coral heads on the water mark it as leopard spots, and it is a must to follow the digital cartography, fortunately detailed and faithful to the meter. But it is forbidden to go off the rails, too risky. The best channel is below the coast, that is, it follows the edge of the caldera of the old volcano, showing a sweet, soft, welcoming landscape that is so reminiscent of navigation on the Nile. Obviously we will discover this detail only on the return, because on the way we boldly take the central channel, initially pushed by a fresh wind.Unfortunately, here the weather changes perhaps more rapidly than in the Dolomites here, and suddenly the wind cools, both in temperature and intensity, the sky darkens, transforming the blue and the cottony white of the clouds into black masses full of water. Moments that we know well by now and soon we put Ariel in trim reducing the sails in safety, but what is completely lost is the visibility, the rain uniforms in a constellation of gray sky and sea, and all traces of the dangerous coral heads are lost. We cannot risk it and proceed with instrumental navigation progressively regaining the safest channel near the “coast”. Fortunately, these phenomena arrive so quickly and just as quickly go away, restoring a balance of colors,smells and images immediately returning the magic and peace of the atoll. But be careful, always pay attention, because in the event of wind rotations from the non-dominant side, situations can occur more from purgatory than from paradise, since the shelter is practically only from the winds of the North and East.
Fakarava can be accessed from two passes, the north, easy and wide, and the south, narrow and more tortuous, and therefore with currents reaching 8 knots! and which alternate in part every 6 hours. This seems difficult at first, but then the mathematical games of tide calculations become simple when you understand the mechanism. We anchor at lunchtime in a turquoise body of water while numerous, indeed very numerous black tip sharks approach the transom curiously while we drop the tender into the water and decide to postpone the swim …
The descent to earth makes us discover a place far away in time on the one hand, and on the other hand conquered by contemporaneity, with the aim of transforming it into an exclusive holiday place. Objective probably achieved in non-covid times, because now it is deserted, with only two tourists who also landed by boat and traveling around the circumnavigation, like us. We plan a dinner for the following day at the only possible place, a wooden terrace (you will see photos on the site) on stilts close to the pass, which can be reached by a walkway over a stretch of water where sharks and giant fish of all kind of placidly waiting for some piece of food. In fact, it is customary that the management of garbage in these places follows the same characteristics of us navigators. Separation of paper, plastic,glass and aluminum and all the organic in the sea; a real party for all of them. This pass is famous because it is inhabited by a number of sharks and other huge fish, never calculated by humans. Are too many. The diving center, however, now closed to the general public because it is absent, but available for us lucky ones, plans drift dives doing the so-called drifting, or at certain times, swimming with sharks. We opt for the simpler descent to the sea with the Kacù guide while snorkeling, or without cylinders, in favor of the current, going out towards the ocean, being very careful not to leave the wall of the pass too far away, to avoid being expelled. out to sea like champagne corks. Not without apprehension we leave and faithfully follow Kacù’s instructions. An exhilarating experience, lasting about 30 minutes,and return to an uncontaminated beach at the end of the village, swimming in the current with 40 kg Napoleon fish, black tip sharks, and some gray sharks, and other varieties of all colors, but huge and really in the thousands. I ask Kacù, who took 50 dollars each, if I can repeat the experience by myself, bringing other friends. Promoted. And as a student I become a guide and repeat the path three more times, capturing at each step details that escape a single dive. The last is the best, because you are relaxed, you know what awaits you in terms of difficulty, and you can concentrate on the fish, curious and absolutely harmless. Since then we have also been swimming with the gray tip sharks from the boat, then we give them the leftovers of the dinner, and you should see what feasting is!Before leaving Fakarava we decide to go back north, and stay inside the atoll, the weather is not good in the next few days due to a very heavy depression 200 miles from us which will bring strong winds from the west. So let’s take advantage of a magical day to sail towards Rotoava, in the north, actually the only place where, for better or worse, we can stay. Basically we are inside an atoll.
But I will tell this experience in the next episode. The hell.
See you soon from Paolo & Cecilia
