Once we had cleared in at the gendarmerie, we found an ATM where we could get some French Polynesian Francs (XPF) at about 100 to a U.S. Dollar, or about 0.90 Euros, and then went to the Mairie (Town Hall) to pay our trash, and water fees.
Taiohae waterfront is as beautiful as we remembered it to be - the sunshine moments certainly help make the views even more special
I hate to admit it, but one of my main memories from our first visit to Taiohae in 2017 was hours and hours spent sitting under a rain awning with twenty other people, as we all shared slow wifi that was being fed by a dial-up modem. Things have improved greatly in this regard since then. A quick trip to the local cell-phone store allowed us to pay first-world prices for data cards that would allow us to get almost first-world data speeds from the comfort of our boat, twenty-four hours a day. Now we could go ashore to go ashore, instead of just to see if we got any important emails.
We took our laundry ashore, and dumped our trash and recycling. After being told by several different sources that any public water source we would find in Taiohae was definitely NOT potable, we belayed that task for later.
As to finding food, Taiohae is a town of threes. There are three small grocery stores, three small cafés, which the French call "Snacks", and three restaurants. The closest snack to the dinghy landing – the one with the aforementioned rain awning – didn't have anything we were interested in eating. The next closest one is run by a very friendly woman who makes good coffee and has plenty of croissants and pain au chôcolates. It made for a quick and easy breakfast for days spent ashore. The third snack was closed every time we passed, so we never got to sample it.
Maryanne, being the Queen of long-distance provisioning, was keen to move onto the grocery stores, but I managed to convince her that maybe we should start with a restaurant, before we were lugging a big cartful of food. The place we picked was packed with Marquesans, which we took to be a good sign, but the rice dishes we ended up with seemed rather uninspired. Perhaps we were meant to order the wild boar that was on special.
At the stores, we were able to get most of what we wanted, with a few important exclusions that had Maryanne wringing her hands over how she was going to feed us. We are now in a part of the world where provisioning is hard. The nearest can of tomatoes is probably hidden behind something else on the bottom shelf of a Carrefour in Tahiti.
We've been through this before, though, and I consider Maryanne to be the world's foremost expert at adaptive cuisine. She'll whip up dish after dish of stuff so good that you'd never even know it was made without fennel, or a sprig of dill, or whatever it was supposed to be. She can make a meal where she'll substitute corn tortillas for ramen noodles and I'll be none the wiser.
Once we got most of our shore chores done, we set out to hike the trail to the Tehaatiki viewpoint at the eastern entrance to Taiohae harbor. It was long and hot along the way, but culminated in beautiful, sweeping views of the whole crater. For some reason, after we had made it there, we decided to continue further up along the path to Goat Rock. We don't know if we ever made it to the end, because the trail got so steep and overgrown that we decided to turn back. I was a little ahead of Maryanne, so I continued to a gap I could see in the thick undergrowth. I was rewarded with even higher views of the harbor from a loose ledge of rock beneath a steep overhang, where any fall would be at least ten seconds long before I hit anything. Yikes! I carefully picked my way back to Maryanne and the security of the claustrophobia-inducing undergrowth.
From town, we headed off to find the trail to the various viewpoints
We were pretty worn out by the time we made it back into town and sea level. We then got it into our minds that we could really use a meal and some refreshment. The problem was that it was Sunday between lunch and dinner. The only restaurant that was open was the one at the fancy resort way at the opposite side of town. We figured since we were already ashore and had already walked a long way anyway, what's an extra mile gonna hurt?
The resort is very nice, raised up on the hillside with a sweeping view of the bay. The outdoor dining area is centered around a small infinity pool. With our mud-streaked legs from our hike and our generally sweaty appearance, we felt more self-conscious than if we had been barely clad in swim gear, like the hotel's guests.
We found a table at the railing and had a look at their menu. Everything looked nice, and we were assured by other nearby guests that it was so, but it would have cost us less to eat in the restaurant inside the Eiffel Tower. Had we been dressed up for an evening out under the strings of lights and the tiki torches, maybe we would have considered it, but it was the middle of the afternoon, we were just hoping for something light to tide us over, and our closest company was a family of kids splashing in the pool. We decided instead to go for a couple of non-alcoholic umbrella cocktails. That's not what we ordered, but that's how they make ‘em. I wonder how long the rum bottles behind the bar last if you empty each one with an eyedropper? Next time, we'll order beers. You twist the cap off, you know what you're getting.
On the walk back to the dinghy dock on the other side of town, we popped into Taiohae's third restaurant, where we remembered our lesson and bought two large beers and a pizza for less than what our drinks cost at the resort. Pizza is great because it's universal and hard to screw up. In this particular case, the French influence made for an especially delicious crust, like it was really a fresh, misshapen baguette. Yummy.
One of the onboard jobs that I had been both dreading and wishing was magically done was a scrub of our waterline. Long passages, even with fresh, new paint, often pick up some kind of growth along the way. Most often, it's gooseneck barnacles sneaking onto unpainted areas like the bottom stern steps, which are always getting a regular flush when underway.
This time, we got something we had never encountered before, which I think is the precursor to the hairy green algae that likes to grow in sunny areas. Splashes above the top of the antifouling paint dry to make yellow and brown stains, as if all the clear, blue water we had sailed through to get here had really been coffee. After twenty-two days at sea, plus a couple more in the harbor, Begonia looked like one of those derelict boats that has been in the same slip in a marina for years without being touched. We know we don't have a show boat, but this was embarrassing.
So, on our first free afternoon, I left Maryanne to stow our new provisions, while I went overboard to wipe it off. Four hours later, I flopped onto the stern steps with rubber arms, having only completed one side of one hull.
That stuff is awful! The only effective way I could find of removing it was lots of heavy scrubbing with a coarse floor brush. It was slow and exhausting, but it eventually got it off. I would end up spending all afternoon for three more afternoons, sometimes in heavy downpours, to get Begonia's hulls looking normal again. Then I needed another afternoon for a more normal, and what now seemed like sedate, wipe down of the lower hulls, props, and drives. Most of the time, the heavy rains during our stay made the harbor murky and so full of debris that I could hardly see what I was doing, which didn't add to the fun. I decided I was done being in the water for a while.
An idyllic place indeed!
Anchorage location >> On google maps
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So sorry we've just added the step to moderate comments - because some idiots keep adding special offers on our blog and Kyle doesn't like it... please don't let this stop you real people from posting but you will not see your comment until it has been approved by Maryanne :-(