This morning, I was once again impressed to find that our anchor held. The water was darker but clear enough to see fish swimming around at the bottom amidst low lying coral. Our anchor was ok and did not appear to be caught.
I kayaked to check out the private island to read the sign. It said "guard dog." A dog started barking.
There was supposedly good snorkeling around the area but I didn't find any, at least none that was good as Tautau's coral gardens or Bora Bora.
Here is Shannon working the anchor!
We went back to Uturoa which was a whole different town. Still not hustling and bustling, but as busy as a two street town could be.
Ben went to pay the doctor and hospital for seeing Chantelle and buy crutches, Chantelle kept watch over the boat knitting, and the rest of us checked out the floral market, the artisans, but most importantly, the other grocery store in town, Legault, and bought subs for lunch and a few more supplies.
With Ben at the helm, we set off on an uneventful motor to Faaroa Bay. We anchored near the mouth of the Aoppomau River in 10 meters waters. We've been trying not to use the rope on the anchor since the last time and all the trouble we had raising it afterwards.
We set off up the river on dinghy and kayak and had a great cruise up the river. We got a little wet as the weather was overcast all day, and it started raining. It was like a theme park ride almost, many different plants on the banks, various fruit trees, some docks and old kayaks and dinghies belonging to locals.
On the way back, we came across a local named James who kayaked up to Mike who was paddling ahead of us, and started chatting. Next thing you knew they became best friends!
He told us that he was the "Guardian of the River." He offered to take us up to his botanical gardens. So why not? There was a little side stream we went up until it got too shallow, then walked up the rest of the way leading right to the botanical gardens as promised. Most of us didn't have sandals, but surprisingly all the foliage and leaves didn't give the feet too many problems.
So James took us all around this garden, showed us tons of flowers, plants, fruits. We sampled the hottest chili pepper Shannon and I ever tasted and cocoa fruit. James pointed out coffee, star fruit, and papaya plants. Mike tried to climb a coconut tree.
After the tour, we returned to the river and made a stop at his dock. James went into the bush and returned with a stalk of bananas for us to eat. He then proceeded to cut up young green coconuts which were full of coconut milk. I don't mean a little bit of juice like the ones we hijacked from the Barcelo trees in Mexico, but it had like a liter of milk each. There was so much that two of us couldn't finish one coconut. He also prepare two coconuts full of milk for us to go.
The meat in the young coconuts are soft. James cut up a brown fuzzy coconut that had already fallen to the ground. This was the one that had the crispy white coconut for eating.
It appeared that James really didn't expect anything in return. There was no waiting for us to tip him, no selling stuff at the end of his tour. That was it. Back at our boat, we didn't find that it was burglarized. It seemed like Guy said that the island people, it was still small enough to have genuine friendliness. Maybe James was bored and wanted to show us around. Whatever the reason, we were extremely grateful.
We invited him to our boat and fried up some of his bananas and gave him a bottle of rum.
That was such a good river tour and so much better than expected with James randomly showing us around. I wondered how many other tourists got the botanical gardens tour.
After a swim and a rain shower, we made some delicious fish steaks that we got from Uturoa. Eating Halloween candy and cookies, we played a game of Pocket Cranium before hitting the sack.
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