Meghan on Amelie-August 2015

French Polynesia was clearly only our start to the South Pacific islands because this past month has been pretty busy as we hop from beautiful island to beautiful island!

Palmerston Island (Cook Islands)

As we come out of French territory and approach New Zealand, we start to see more Kiwi trends and products (and accents)!  Actually, the Cook Islands are claimed by New Zealand like French Polynesia is claimed by France.

I may have already told some of you that on Palmerston Island, three very isolated islands in the Cook archipelago, depending on which mooring ball you hook up to in the anchorage, you will have what they call a host family.  That means that each host family owns a mooring ball and if whoever's you hook up to, that family takes care of you the whole time you stay.  For example, that family brings you onto shore everyday (you are not allowed to take your own dinghy in). 

We happened to come to Palmerston Island at the time when the 50th Anniversary party of the Cook Islands was happening at the capital island, Rarotonga.  Because of this event, almost the entire island had gone so since there were about six boats in the anchorage, we were more people than there actually were on the island!

Now, the way the people got to Rarotonga is they all went on board the last supply ship that came and so they would return on the next one that came through.  Now the part that amazed me is how many times the supply ship actually comes to Palmerston Island: twice or three times a year!  Could you imagine living on a miniature island (just to give you perspective, we walked around the entire island in a few hours) in the middle of nowhere with all your exported goods coming just twice a year?

The first thing we saw when we landed on the beach was what had once been about a 35 foot sailboat but it had obviously gone up on the reef and was now used for a little shelter (or at least half of it was).  Also, it wasn't until right before we left that I realized that the tarp in front of Edward's house, a member of our host family, was actually a sail and the pole holding it up was a boom!  I later found out that all the steel that was on the houses or in gardens or anywhere around town, all the town's steel came from that sailboat!  It made me realize that these people really do use every resource to their advantage.  

  

We have been looking for a place like Palmerston Island to present our puppet play to the school children and even though almost all the kids were away at Rarotonga, there was still one family with four children who we presented it to (for those of you who don't know about our puppet play, see "Globetrotting Puppets", one of our older blogs from last year).   It was a real experience to do it (1)outside in the sand, and (2)barefoot!

There was one teacher still at the school who stayed behind and her name was Rose.  She was actually British and she had very interesting story.  In the 50s, her father had been shipwrecked at Palmerston and some of the locals had helped him fix up his boat over the next nine months.  Later, he told Rose all about Palmerston Island and when she went to visit it for the first time, the people offered her a job as teacher and now she has been working there for four years!

Here is just a few interesting facts about Palmerston to leave you with.  The first man who came to Palmerston, his last name was Marsters and his wives and him basically populated the island from there so for the longest time, every single person on the island's last name was Marsters!  Now, many still are Marsters (anyone who is a permanent resident) but some are not, like Rose.  Also, here is a question: how many people do you think live on Palmerston Island?  Maybe 1000 or 500 or 300?  I bet none of you guessed 64 though, am I right?!? 

Beveridge Reef

We had originally planned to go straight to Niue right after Palmerston but some unpredictable weather started going through Niue so we decided to take a detour and just stay for a few days in a place called Beveridge Reef instead.

Beveridge Reef has honestly got to be one of the top phenomenas on Earth!  The reef is thin and in a horseshoe shape.  Inside the horseshoe is just a normal anchorage but really, the amazing part about it is that the nearest land is 120 miles away so all you see on the horizon is breaking waves but you are still anchored in 20 ft of water!

We only went snorkelling once on the reef because of the unusually cold water temperature (about 20 degrees C which is quite cold for the ocean).  This is caused by a change of currents called El Niño which happens every few years.  In some places, it makes the water warmer (like the Galapagos Islands) and in some places it makes the water and air colder (like most of the South Pacific islands).  I don't actually mind the colder weather too much because it is preparing me for New Zealand which will be more like a Canadian summer instead of a Caribbean summer.   

Niue (pronounced nyoo-ee)

Niue is the largest coral island in the world.  But don't start thinking it's a humongous island or anything because it is also the smallest independent country in the world (apart from Vatican City). 

In French Polynesia, we saw dolphins galore!  On almost every crossing in the Marquesas, we saw dolphins.  Now, since Palmerston, we have been seeing no dolphins but quite a few humpback whales!  It is migrating season for them so they move north into warmer waters, like here, for calving.  In Niue, they were right in the bay and we saw them almost every day (one time, one was just like 30 feet off our stern!).

Everyone kept telling us about the fabulous caves in Niue so we (and our friends SV Seabbatical and SV Perry) rented a van for a couple of days and toured all around Niue.

We visited five caves and chasms that were all really cool and yet, all very different.  At some caves and chasms, we got to swim (one of them really reminded me of the Las Grietas in the Galapagos).  We also went on hikes, went to a Niuan brunch on the second morning and saw a few excellent whale breaching shows!

Tonga

For most of you right now, today for us is yesterday for you because we have crossed the International Date Line (actually, technically speaking, we haven't actually crossed the line yet but Tonga is considered past the line).

There are many groups of islands in Tonga but we chose to focus on only one: the Vava'u group (which is kind of like the Gulf Islands).  On our very first night, we went to anchor in front of a little island called Lape island (our friends had organized a traditional Tongan feast at the local village).  It turns out that that village was the smallest town in Tonga with five families living there.  It was a very beautiful town with no cars and where the houses had palm tree leaved roofs.  Then, the feast that night was incredible!  It was all freshly picked crops right off the island or meat roasted right over an open fire (no seriously, they had an entire pig laying out on the buffet table, it was so cool) and the best part was, our plates were made out of banana tree trunks!  It was after the meals we had had in Palmerston and then this Tongan feast that I decided that the best food in the world doesn't need to come from an expensive, fancy restaurant at all.

About a week after the feast, we went back to that town to do a puppet show for the local school.  This time, the entire school was there and there were still only six kids and they were all very young ones (from ages five to about ten at the most). Also, the kids were just learning English so I don't think they understood much from the puppet show but just the puppets definitely put smiles on their faces.  After our show, our other cruising friends did an origami demonstration for the kids which they really enjoyed.  Then, there was a surprise at the end and the kids sang and danced to some songs (in English) which included: "Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed", "If you're Happy and you Know It", and many other counting and alphabet learning songs.  At the end, they gave us three papayas to thank us for the shows! 

You always hear about one room schools in the old in days, well, they are still around in some places!  Even though it was small, we could tell by all the good quality posters and supplies all around the room that the children were going to learn just as much as any other kid in any other school (or even more). 

As well as visiting towns, we have also been on great water adventures here in Tonga.  One day, we all hopped on board our friends SV Miss Behaving and we all went together to some snorkelling caves.  The first one was a hollow opening under an island that to get to, you had swim underwater for about fifteen seconds.  Most of us were able to do it and once you got inside it was a phenomena of nature.  The cave was about a hundred feet tall but because of the pressure inside, sometimes it would fog up completely (and then your ears would pop) and then a few seconds later, the pressure would go down again and you could see clearly!

The second cave didn't involve swimming underwater for a long time but it had thousands and thousands of fish!  In the movie "Finding Nemo", at one point, Marlin and Dori meet this giant school of little tiny fish and that's exactly what it was like in the cave!

Then, about a week after the cave adventures, my mom and I went on a tour to swim with humpback whales!  For those of you going to Tonga who want to swim with whales, I highly recommend going with the company Whales in the Wild because they know exactly when it is safe to swim with the whales and when it is not, they will try their best to let you swim with the whales without having to wait for another company to leave and they will get you as close as you can possibly get to the whales (see my mom's last blog, right before mine, to see some pictures of the whales)  

We swam with three different groups of whales.  The first time, it was one adult, the second time, it was two adults, and the third time was with a mother and a calf!  It just got better and better every swim we did!  The best part was when the baby (who just to give you perspective, was the size of a regular sized car!) would come up to breathe but he'd also play by slapping his tail, breaching and coming just six feet away from us!

In about a week or so from now, we will leave for Fiji which I am really excited for!  

From whale capital of the world, :)

Amelie IV